I settled my horse at the stables and put my belongings in a room at the Inn. I was tired, but I decided that I needed to get out and walk around or I would fall fast asleep and not be able to sleep that night. I walked over by the harbor and watched the gulls flying for a while. The boats were all out and there really wasn’t anything going on here in the middle of the afternoon. Finally, I decided to walk along the shore for a while. The tide was running out and there would be a good bit of beach exposed for a while. Maybe I could see some sea creatures in tide pools or something.
I took my boots off and tied the laces together to make them easy to carry. Then I set off away from town along the shores of the bay. It was peaceful and the sun was warm and pleasant. I watched shore birds hunting small things to eat and watched the small things try to scuttle away to safety. Rocks divided the shore into little coves – private little sandy rooms.
In one of these coves, I found people digging for clams where the tide had gone out. I watched for a while and then tried my hand at the digging, much to the amusement of the local people. We laughed and they offered me some of the clams, but I declined. I wanted to keep on exploring and didn’t want to carry them.
About half and hour’s walk from town, I started to hear voices – children’s voices. I climbed up on the rocks separating this section of the beach from the next and looked down. This little beach was full of children. It looked like every child in town must be here. Big, small, and in between, they were all busily engaged in building sand castles.
The sand castles were of all sizes and shapes. Some of the children worked alone and others worked in groups. The children were laughing and shouting and planning together. It all looked like fun.
“Hello!” I called, “May I join you?”
The children stopped what they were doing and looked up at me. Several of them looked at each other and the oldest ones – they looked to be twelve or so – said, “All right, sure, only…” They paused and shrugged.
I caught their drift. “I promise not to be bossy and take over or anything like that. It just looks like fun to build sandcastles.”
“Okay!” came the reply and I scrambled over the rocks onto the sand. At first I just walked around looking at what the children were making. The sandcastles were remarkable. They were very detailed – the children were careful to use sand that was just wet enough to mold. They had buckets and tin pails and little shovels and cups which they used to make the basic shapes of the castles. They were decorated with rocks and shells and even feathers left by seagulls. One enterprising child had brought along some leaves and flowers and was using these as decorations. Older children were helping the littler ones and everyone was busy.
Finally I found a castle that I could help on. The children making it were a little bit behind the others and one of them handed me a bucket and asked me to go and get some water in it to wet the sand a little bit more. I did as I was asked and soon I was very involved in creating a large sand house. The children said theirs wasn’t a castle. They didn’t want to participate in the battle.
“The battle?” I asked.
The children giggled and replied, “You’ll see!”
We worked for quite some time and everyone finished up about the same time, just before the tide began to turn. Buckets were filled in the bay and used to fill the moats around the castles. Then several of the children did something strange.
They went over to the rocks and climbed up above the high-tide mark. One of them reached into a small cave and began handing out little boxes. All the other children ran up and grabbed these and took them to their castles. As I watched, the children set up toy soldiers- hundred of them, all in different styles and colors of paint. There were infantry and cavalry and artillery, all sandy and well used.
The children I had helped, and a few others, took boxes that were marked differently. These turned out to be full of doll’s house families instead of soldiers. One smiling child carried off a box that proved to be full of toy farm animals.
The children saw me looking and said, “There’s a set of zoo animals, too. The littlest ones like the farm and the zoo and the Noah’s Ark best. Most of us prefer the soldiers, though.”
The children hurried to set up the toys. There was some discussion over where the soldiers should go, and some regrouping of the little units, but just as the tide turned, one of the older children called out, “All right! It’s time! Here we go!”
And as I watched in wonder, the toy soldiers began to move. They came to life and attacked the sandcastles. The doll’s house families moved, too, and so did the farm animals. All of the toys came to life just as the tide turned.
The children cheered on their favorites and watched excitedly as some of the castles began to fall to the little soldiers.
One of the children explained, “We try to see who can make the best castle. The ones that last the longest are the best. But it doesn’t count if you just make a big pile of sand. It has to look right, too. Some times we put two sets of soldiers on one castle. The set that gets their flag to the top first, wins.
The children were running around and supervising the battles, picking up the toys that had gotten knocked down and putting them in their boxes. “If they get knocked down, they’re out,” the child beside me said. One child ran around refilling moats, carefully avoiding stepping on the toys.
The children with doll’s house people and farm animals were contentedly watching their toys go about their business. Little piles of shells, rocks and vegetation were being used by the toys to make things and decorate the houses. One very small child told another, “I think they like the house better this time than they did last time. Look! They’re really fixing it up!”
I was entranced everything and had forgotten about the tide. I was surprised when the oldest ones called out, “Tide’s almost up to the rock! Get ready to pick everything up!”
As the water reached the lowest of the rocks, all the toys fell still once more. The children discussed whose castle had looked the best and which ones had withstood the battles the best as they picked up all of the toys and placed them carefully back in the boxes.
“Would you make sure everything gets picked up?” a sand-covered child asked me. I did, rescuing one little soldier from the bottom of a moat and another from underneath the ruins of a tower.
By the time the water reached the first of the castles, everything was picked up. The children sighed contentedly and lined up to put the boxes back in the cave in the rocks.
“That was fun,” the one of the children I had helped said. “I wish it happened more than once a month.”
“No,” replied another, “then it wouldn’t be as special.”
I went over to the older children who were up in the rocks and began handing up boxes.
The children putting away the boxes explained to me, “Every month, on the full moon, this happens. The toys come to life just from the lowest point of the tide until the tide reaches the first rocks. It’s happened for years. We call it Cove Day. Our parents used to come here and do this, and so did their parents. Some of the toys that we play with were theirs, even. We don’t know why it happens, but it’s only in this cove. Usually, our parents make sure we have Cove Day off, if we’ve been good. You better believe we try to be good, so we aren’t grounded! No one wants to miss this. Sometimes our parents aren’t too busy and come along. That’s okay once in a while, but…”
“I know!” I laughed. “Thank you for letting me stay. I’ve seen some amazing things in my time, but this one was special. Thanks for sharing!”
The children finished putting things away and then stood at the top of the beach to watch the bay roll in and wash away the castles. Then, sandy and happy, they ran off for home and their suppers.
I walked back slowly, savoring the magic of the day along with the sunset
