The Treasure Hunt for New England Sea Glass

Article by Contributor Tim Nichols

Sea glass fever boils in my Yankee wheelhouse. Pieces of cobalt, kelly green, lavender, and rare lemon yellow wet appetites in hungry anticipation. For over a decade, I have combed solitary pebbly beaches around Portsmouth, Litton Compton, Salem, Gloucester, and tiny beach secrets like Saunderston, Rhode Island.

Bejeweled by the spell and call of sea glass is the hope to find glistening shards atop a low tide beach making the heart race with joyful discovery. Fragrant salty mists and dazzling crimson sunsets fill endless memories looking for the hope of smooth and frosty globes of glass. Each beach is truly unique to the coastline around each New England haunt.

Rhode Island often boasts serene pastoral glimmers upon the cadence of breaking waves, but Gloucester yields torrent and intense energy often reflected in the supple and smooth dimensions of glass churned and pounded under a more raw open sea. 

Massachusetts intermittently yields marbles once enjoyed long ago by children through hours of tidal slingshot practice or artists mixing pigments of paint in tin cans transforming over time into frosty orbs of pitted glass. Also, the North Shore offers the potential of delicate fragments of pottery discovered in endless design, shape, and color. Clay colonial tavern pipe stems can be that special find once a month for the dedicated hunter that sits along any New England shoreline.

Sea Glass riddles sandy and rocky stretches yawning along with timeless seaside nook and cranny – all awakening in potential discovery in sublime glassy touchstone; connecting past and present in an echo of meet and greet gifted from a timeless New England seascape.