“But the sea
                        which no one tends
                                                is also a garden
when the sun strikes it
                        and the waves
                                                are wakened.
I have seen it
                        and so have you
                                                when it puts all flowers
to shame.”

― William Carlos Williams ― 

A series of images from the Sonoma Coast in California.

The beaches of the Sonoma Coast, which stretch along the borders of California about 25 miles north of San Francisco, are littered with a variety of rocks ranging from the small to the very large, from the oddly and dramatically-shaped to the typical mounds and piles most of us are used to seeing at a beach.  Some sit in seeming solitude; some gather in small groups; some congregate in large crowds even sitting on top of one another; others are split by the incessant rise and fall of the tides with its waves rushing in and out to the melodies of its movements.  In the summer, the fog often thickens the atmosphere and in the winter and spring the rain and its clouds saturate the coast-- the sun often insisting that its presence still be felt even as it is blanketed.  

I visited and photographed the Sonoma Coast often from 2013-2019-- and these images represent my attempt to catch some of its spirit-- some of its inherent silences.