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.
Read more about Beach: Overview, Beach Formation, Beach Wildlife, Beaches and Recreation
Famous quotes containing the word beach:
“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)
“We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)