Beach

A beach is a landform along the shoreline of an ocean, sea, lake or river. It usually consists of loose particles which are often composed of rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles or cobblestones. The particles comprising the beach are occasionally biological in origin, such as mollusc shells or coralline algae.

Wild beaches are beaches which do not have lifeguards or trappings of modernity nearby, such as resorts, camps and hotels. They are sometimes called undeclared, undeveloped or undiscovered beaches. Wild beaches can be valued for their untouched beauty and preserved nature. They are most commonly found in less developed areas including, for example, parts of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Beaches typically occur in areas along the coast where wave or current action deposits and reworks sediments.

Famous quotes containing the word beach:

“The seashore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-traveled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

“The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe.... The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others.”
—Janet Malcolm (b. 1934)

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