Arenophilia

means love of sand!

Here is part of my sand Collection.--Russ Colson

Why Collect Sand?

1)  Collecting sand can give you a way to focus and plan vacations, particularly if you like finding out-of-the-way places with fewer people.  One of the best adventures of my life was hiking with my young children across a grassy coastline to a tiny little cove in south Hawaii, where we scrambled down a rocky bluff to a beautiful turquoise lagoon with a green sand beach. 

2)  The sand becomes a tangible reminder of experiences in far off places and activities shared with loved ones.  I have sand from places I've been with my parents, brother, friends, wife and kids, and looking at them reminds me of hikes together, conversations, and laughter. 

3)  To a geologist, the composition of the sand, along with its particle size, sorting, and other characteristics tell a story of the environment of deposition of that sand.  Thus, the sand tells stories of crashing waves, or gentle lagoons, or volcanoes, or wind swept deserts.  I can look at the sand and remember the place where I found it all over again. 

Start your collection today!  Be sure to record where each came from (no, you won't remember in 20 years, or even 5!) and the date (some beaches change through time, sometimes naturally, sometimes due to human activities).  I always record whether the sample came from a beach face, an eolian dune, weathering residue from a pre-existing rock, or some other source.  I try to collect a representative sample, and never sieve or change my samples, although some people like to clean their sand to remove bits of organic material or the finer clay and silt fraction of the sediment.  I don't do that because that is all part of the story of the sand.

Here is one of my latest prizes: Sand from the Mediterranean coast of France with abundant echinoid spines and fragments. Echinoids are fragile and do not readily accumulate along beaches.

Here are three more of my more rare types of sand.

Green olivine sand from Hawaii (because olivine is chemically unstable in a weathering environment, it is rare in a beach, found in only a couple of places on earth)

White gypsum sand (gypsum is very soft compared to more common quartz sand, and so doesn't survive tumbling down a river to the sea).

Gray oolitic sand.  Oolites form in an environment with water enriched in CaCO₃ (often very salty) and where waves tumble particles so that the CaCO₃ coats it evenly on all sides, making tiny spheres.

If you would like to see more pictures of sand from my collection, and learn where they are found, my pictures  are available HERE (Warning:  This is an MS Powerpoint document of over 29MB).  These pictures are the property of Russ Colson.  If you would like to use any of them, please contact me for permission at colson@mnstate.edu.

last updated July 10, 2010.