Sea Shelling in Wisconsin? Sometimes Hitting the Beach is Picking Shells in a Friends Northern Boat House!!

Where do you begin to sort such treasure? (just a small sampling from one box)

After soaking in bleach the long sorting process begins!

Sometimes finding choice seashells involves hunting the most unusual places, even thousands of miles from the nearest ocean beach!

A dear friend of mine from Baraboo, Wisconsin had heard I was designing and making original shell jewelry and said there were a few boxes of shells laying about in a boathouse on the Wisconsin River from visits to Florida beaches decades ago.

I was flabbergasted to find they were wonderful quality specimens of just about every size and description, carefully packed away for crafting projects that had never happened as the person who had so carefully collected, sorted and stored them safely away for future crafting had passed away unexpectedly leaving the collection abandoned and languishing to a fate of eternal storage, my friend being unable to lightly part with an important part of past lives lived.

Gladly, my friend found me worthy of bestowing the collection to as I was of a like mind as its originator, that of making beautiful things from found wonders of nature.

Scallops drying in the sun, an unusual sight in Wisconsin City Parks...

Some of the Sand Dollars sorted from different boxes and ice cream pails!

Cockles anyone?

As I worked on grading and sorting over several days, it was as if I had a window into the mind of this fastidious and skilled sea sheller as she picked her way along the beach taking only the most exquisite specimens she found. She, like I, had a passion for olivella shells and sand dollars, scallops and conches, taking only the best and most unusual of what she found.

As I sat at a picnic table at an RV park in Platteville, Wisconsin I couldn't help but find myself walking the windswept Gulf Coast with this unusual woman whom I had never met but felt a truer connection with than most living people as we cleaned and sorted her lifetime of treasured memories.

We became friends of sorts and it almost seemed as if her hand guided me as I selected and classified each shell and many times in the Fall breeze I heard her whisper stories of how she found a particular specimen on a certain day when the sea and surf was particularly beautiful and the smell of the ocean often wafted close as I worked.

Although one can find quality shells at wholesale prices both in the stores and on the internet, a find like this is a true treasure trove and is an adventure itself into the mind of the collector as you sort and clean, communing with them in a shared love of everything ocean.

Olives! Sand Dollars! Oddities! True Treasure drying before the fireplace at the end of a days sorting

More Cockles! More Sand Dollars of every size and description!

I spend a great deal of time traveling in the Northern parts of the country during the Summer and I am always amazed that just about everyone I meet has a sea shell collection no matter how far they are from the ocean.

Some were sent to the recipient by Grand Parents or vacationing relatives and friends, others were picked on a once in a lifetime trip to the beach as children long ago.

The love of sea shells is universal, no matter where you live or where your path in life takes you, you can always be sure to find in even the most remote sea less shores a small box of shells collected from the beaches long ago and carefully preserved by the owner as a treasured memory as precious as gold and other family heirlooms.

I was blessed to be the recipient of this great gift of the sea from Wisconsin, and I hope to do its former possessor proud as I make beautiful things to share with others who may never have a chance to hear a wild sea gulls cry and the sound of a rolling surf tinkling musically on the shore of our great Southern oceans. I know she will be watching me and I will enjoy her company as I work with her self found treasure.