Carved by Tide and Time: Blowing Rocks Preserve
I came for the rocks. Or maybe for the gaps between them. For the places where water pulls back and reveals a different architecture. Jagged, tidal and very ancient. Blowing Rocks Preserve is a stretch of protected shoreline and time doesn’t move in straight lines here. It moves in waves, in wind patterns, in the quiet returning of sea turtles to the same strip of sand every summer. Memory itself is held in the tide.
73 acres of sand, limestone, and light, stubbornly resisting the flattening forces of development. We walked south along the beach at low tide, slipping between formations that looked like they had been bitten into by the sea. The limestone isn’t gentle. Eroded, exposed and very sharp.
I kept thinking about how Florida surprises me, even after all these years. Since 2012, it’s been home, and still, I find places. Lately, running’s been guiding me to even more of it. But sometimes I have to stop. Sometimes the wonder comes not from moving through a place but standing still inside it.
We passed flagged nests… Small sanctuaries were roped off for the sea turtles. More than 600 will return to this shoreline, again and again, carving memory into the sand with flippers. It's hard not to take that personally. That return. That instinct to come back.
The sand here is soft, until it isn’t. Near the water, the limestone emerges. I want to come back during high tide, when waves slam against the rocks and send saltwater up.
For now, I’ll remember the hush between waves, the pelicans drifting overhead and the small Ruddy Turnstones dancing at the edge of it all. Just grateful to have been there.
