- by Dennis Thompsett

Really? A stone beach is comfortable? You wouldn't think so, but it is. Lord. It is.

As an Owen Sound kid I was very familiar with warm sand beaches. Sauble, Port Elgin ( Exotic vacations), Leith and the little sandy beach at the bottom of The Long Stairs. My first stone beach was at Presqu'ile Rotary Camp.

"Put your stuff in your cabins and come down to the beach" said the counsellors who seemed so much older and  wiser but were really just high school kids.

But there was no beach. Just stones going into the water. Water which was clear enough to see that there were crabs under those stones that were there, under the water.

Come on. Those were just stones. It wasn't a beach. But by the end of summer camp it was a great beach, crabs' and all. And I never even noticed.

I also encountered stone beaches in Big Bay out at North Keppel, where my parents had a cottage. (Claimed to be the stone skipping Capitol of the World. And rightly so), And later on out at Balmy Beach, where I also had a cottage.

I've been on beaches all over the world: Africa, Mauritious, Thailand, Phillipines, Australia, Florida, Hawaii,  Hong Kong and the Caribbean and California. And I have never come across another stone beach. Maybe other places hide them so the secret won't get out. Maybe we only have them here around Owen Sound.

But I have to say that some of the most wonderful and most comfortable times of my life have been spent on our amazing local stone beaches.

If you haven't been blessed with a stone beach of your own; here's the secret. The stones are flat and smooth. The edges are round. They'll never hurt you. They are large enough to stand on, yet small enough to lie down on. And they are usually nice and warm. But not hot enough to burn. Lying on a stone beach is so comfortable and so restoring that, if it's not a spa treatment already, it should be.

There's a lot of local stuff like this that is just not known or  is being forgotten. Anne and her people at the Owen Sound Hub are giving it a venue to bring it to the community. It'll be a great loss when they are gone.

In everyone's life the idea of a comfortable Stone beach comes along. Something that,  on the face of it, just sounds  totally impossible. But don't turn away from it so quickly. You will likely find the stones are flat and smooth and warm and oh so comfortable. As I did.

And that will change everything.