Seymour Glass

In my little green bungalow at the Waimea Plantation Cottages is a copy of Kauai Traveler magazine that I quite like. It has gorgeous photos of just about every waterfall on the island and a nice article on “Canoe Plants,” the 27 crucial plants, like breadfruit and taro, brought over in long voyaging canoes by Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands sometime around 200 A.D.

There’s also the requisite “best beaches” piece that gives you insider information on all of the island’s beaches from Kauapea, “the secret beach,” to Lumahai, “one of the most stunning and photographed beaches in Kauai, made famous as the location for the movie South Pacific….”

There’s Barking Sands Beach and Baby Beach and Tunnels (one of the best snorkeling beaches on the island), but nowhere will you read about Glass Beach, which truly is Kauai’s most secret beach.

I first heard about Glass Beach from a Hanapepe local almost twenty years ago. My daughter and I were slowly combing the sand at Salt Ponds Beach looking for the odd piece of coral or seaglass when an old auntie sitting in a beach chair beneath the shade of a coconut tree said, apropos of nothing, “Da kine glass by da gas tanks.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. But a young girl—maybe her niece or granddaughter?—explained to us that she was talking about Glass Beach. “There’s a million pieces of seaglass there,” she said. I asked her where it was but her directions weren’t great. Take the road to Port Allen, turn when it runs out and follow the dirt road down towards the big white gas tanks near the beach. “You find it no problem,” she said.

We followed her directions, ending up in a very ugly industrial area near Hanapepe, parking our rental car next to what looked like an oil refinery surrounded by a cyclone fence, and, hoping our car would still be there when we got back, walked a few minutes down the dirt road towards the water. There was this very ugly little crescent beach within the shadows of the giant gas tanks and a stretch of black sand littered with, as auntie had said, what must have been thousands if not millions of pieces of glimmering sea glass: white, brown, amber, green, dark blue, pale aqua. It was amazing. My daughter and I filled our pockets with the stuff and took it home. Today it sits in a glass jar in a bathroom and every time I see it, it reminds me of that day with my daughter.

A couple of years ago I was staying near Poipu and one day I went off in search of Glass Beach. I found it after a bit of wandering around but when I got there, there was lots of plastic and paper litter but only a few pieces of glass on the beach. In talking with someone back at my hotel who grew up in the area, I was told that that’s always the way it’s been at Glass Beach. Some times there is lots and lots of glass and some times there is nothing; it all depends on the tides and the winds and the wave action.

Yesterday morning, after breakfast, I drove back down to Port Allen, past the old warehouses, and parked along the cyclone fence protecting the big white gas tanks, which are still here, and walked down to the beach. Beautiful, sparkling jelly bean-shaped shards of blue and brown and white glass were everywhere. Not as abundant as it was that first time I’d visited with my daughter but still quite a treat. I took just a handful. Just enough to fill a plastic sandwich bag which I will send back to my daughter in San Francisco—without telling her where it came from—once I get home. I have a feeling she’ll know immediately where it came from.