Ahhh . . . There isn’t anything like that feeling when your bare feet first touch the soft, sugar-white sand on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. As you walk, you may notice a squeaking noise coming from under your feet.
There is a reason our sand is so white and soft, and so apt to make a squeaking or whistling noise as you walk. The sand on the beaches of the northern Gulf of Mexico is made of tiny grains of quartz crystals that have washed down from the Appalachian Mountains over thousands of years. When the dirt and sand flow into the gulf, the darker, heavier sediment sinks to the bottom and the sparkling white grains we all know and love are deposited on the beaches by the waves.
So why does it squeak? Those quartz crystals are tiny spheres. When we walk across them, the round grains of quartz rub each other and the air around them escapes. That’s when we hear the squeaking or whistling sound.
Help us keep our beaches “squeaky clean” by always following the principles of Leave Only Footprints.