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Two In Tow & On The Go: Claybabies are a Fox Island find

Today’s column is a previously published piece from my blog. But that’s OK because I changed it up since I can’t leave well enough alone. And because it’s about one of the coolest local topics ever: claybabies!

Claybabies (spelled as one word or two, depending on where you look), are rare rock-like formations shaped naturally by the elements in select geographical locations around the world. If their rarity doesn’t woo you, you should know they’re also shaped like … cloud animals!! How fun is that?? Mostly round or flat and very light, each with a possible bump or bulge here and there, the Fox Island claybaby look is distinct.  And, lucky us, Fox Island just happens to be one of the places where these natural treasures hide along the shoreline. But more on that below.

The kids and I go crazy for them — a real-life treasure hunt right in our own backyard. Claybabies are fun to search for among the regular rocks. Hours could pass and you won’t even find one. Then you’ll sit down and a little partridge-shaped dollop will be staring you in the face from out of nowhere. There are a ton of fun facts about claybabies, too. They surpass the bounds of science, mythology, and adorableness. I’m not sure if that last one is a related subject category — but it should be.  So let’s get started.

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Finding Claybabies

Around here, the claybaby begins its journey to formation when tiny swaths of special clay break off at the water’s edge and begin to take odd shapes by the push-and-pull of the tide. With a little nudge here, a big stretch there, and a shake-shake-shake at the center, the clay’s once gooey layers are pressed together and hardened. Eventually, their exterior is smoothed by the jumble of beach life happening along and below the waterline.

Then, hark! The claybaby is born.

And it becomes the cloud animal it’s destined to be.

Eventually, the claybaby surfs to shore and hangs out with the other pebbles — for all of eternity. Muahahaha.

FACT: Claybabies are pretty hard to find! Due to the way they’re formed, they’re almost always found in or by the water. On the pebbly shores of Fox Island, that means they’re sprinkled within an endless landscape of similarly-colored rocks and shells and driftwood. Due to the residential/private property nature of Fox Island, trespassing to find them is a no-go. So what’s a treasure hunter to do? You head on over to the DeMolay Sandspit Nature Preserve (aka Bella Bella Beach).

My original post had this next tidbit a little lower, but in anticipation of the 43 comments the headline-only readers will drop in an angry huff on Facebook, I will now bring that point higher:

The Tacoma DeMolay Sandspit, located at 53 Bella Bella Drive, is a nature preserve (and home to one of my favorite posts, Mystery at the Tacoma DeMolay Sandspit). This means its lands are protected and you can’t remove anything from the property. Yep — not shells, not rocks, not plants, not critters. And certainly, not claybabies.

While you are allowed to search the beach and pick up a shell or two to examine, you have to put the items back where you found them. Bummer — I know. But it keeps the integrity of the land for everyone to enjoy, and that’s always a good thing.

Other than Bella Bella, there are maybe two or three public access points to the water in the entirety of Fox Island’s small island footprint. Except, one thing I wasn’t able to find out was whether all of Fox Island’s shoreline has clay deposits – or just some.

So the verdict is still out on whether you can find claybabies at the island’s other public locations like the Fox Island Boat Ramp (barely any parking there) off the Fox Island Bridge; or along parts of the beach below the Fox Island Pier. I haven’t looked yet — have you guys found claybabies in those spots? That said, as far as other places go, I can say with certainty that I have not found any claybabies on the shores of Gig Harbor, Tacoma, University Place, or Ruston. (That’s not to say it’s not possible, it’s just what we’ve experienced so far.)

I have, however, also seen reports of people finding funky-shaped concretions elsewhere in Washington like on Whidbey Island and along the Skykomish River. Online reports also place the formations in Vermont, Quebec, and India. This website, in particular, sources some crazy-shaped claybabies in Connecticut, Michigan, and Colorado.

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Our treasure hunt

In summer 2022, my mom and nana were visiting from California so I showed them what a special place the DeMolay Sandspit is on a beach trip one afternoon. Nana found a grass-lined picnic table by the water, taking in the serenity of skies and tides. She kept a watchful eye on Clara and Wyatt, her great-grandchildren (!!), as they worked to fill up their little sturdy beach pails with their favorite blue and purple shovels and laugh as they buried each other’s legs in the sand. Nana’s presence with the kids was oh-so-cute. It also allowed time for my mom and me to plop down on the sandspit’s slopes where the rocks met the water and embark on a truly spectacular beachcombing sesh.

It was an exploring expedition, really. We were going to find us some claybabies! We ran our hands over the sweeping layers of pebbles and rocks, turning them over into little piles and then smoothing out the tiny trenches our palms left behind in the sand. All while trying to spot the elusive, mythical, and magical babies of the clay. (What’s the fun in having my own blog if I can’t be at least a little dramatic?) 😉

We searched and searched, but turned up a vast array of other objects instead. We found foggy sea glass with polished sides, giant clam shells still home to little rough-edged barnacles, and even some wonderfully flat stones we so easily stacked into mini yoga piles atop our knees.

Sure, we scooped up some claybaby contenders that felt smooth. But they were too heavy. Others were too brown, too bumpy, too something. None met that perfect three-point trifecta of a quintessential Fox Island claybaby-ness. Where were all the delicate, airy bears, birds, and bunnies hiding? And then, the distinct cool-grey matte of a circus seal emerged among the masses. And my heart exploded!  And THEN I found a second one!! A bird!

Finding not one but two claybabies definitely makes me an official finding expert now, right?? So, yes, I’m proud to say I successfully scouted two claybabies that day, (that I took pics of and promptly put back for the next person to discover – don’t call the beach police on me!).

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Many names

If you’re interested in finding some claybabies for yourself, you should know they go by many names. Scientists call them concretions, Scandinavians and Canadians call them fairy stones, and others say they’re nothing short of goddess stones possessing tiny troves of mythical energy. Over on the blog, I called them “clay baes,” because I’m so millennial like that. 😜. The formations are also sold all over Etsy, from locations around the world.

Regardless of their many creative calling cards and geographical locations — all the formation types seem to be:

✅ Lightweight

✅ Super smooth

✅ Randomly curvy

✅ Totally whimsical.

Fox Island’s claybabies sport an origin story that hails from the same glaciers that carved out the Sound’s puzzle-piece inlets and islands bajillions of years ago (give or take). I’m no scientist, but it’s my understanding that the glacial activity did something (magical?) to the soil in some parts of the landscape, leaving behind lines and mounds of clay, called deposits, in the earth. The folks over at foxislandwa.net call them “veins of clay” and provide a cool picture of some bulbous claybabies found over the years.

 

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Fox Island’s History & Folklore

Early European-American settlers in the region put those natural clay resources to use with not one, but two, Fox Island brick factories starting in the late 1800s.

Fox Island Clay Works (pictured below, circa 1888-1900) stood on the southwest end of the island’s shoreline. Founded in 1884 as the Fox Island Brick Manufacturing Co., the factory made bricks, sewer pipes, tiles, chimney pipes, and other clay products, according to this post at the old Harbor History Museum Blog.  The plant is gone now but remembered by the modern-day Brick Kiln Road name near its original location. From left to right, the photos below show the southwest location of the former Clay Works building via Google Maps. Meanwhile, the black and white photo shows “Fox Island Clay Works viewed from the water” via the University of Washington’s historic photo collection, sourced from the public domain at Wikimedia Commons.

 

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In the PNW, so many names, landmarks, and special places tie back to the Native Americans who called these lands home first. Claybabies, for example, aren’t even the original PNW name for these creations. The evidence of which lies in “The Legend of the Mud Babies”:

The story of how claybabies cane to be is printed in one of the very first Gig Harbor history books I bought: “Along the Waterfront: A History of the Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula Areas,” written by the Students of Goodman Middle School in 1979.

In this story, much like similar Native American stories in the area, “mud babies” were made by magic. One such tale says a young Native American girl used them as toys. In another, she shaped them herself. In this mainstream version, the young girl started out human but then grew up and married a merman who lived in a glittering kingdom beneath the Sound. As she lived out her new life with him beneath the waves, the young woman popped back to shore to shape some mud babies for her human family to find on the beach as her own special way of telling them that she was OK.

I really like that last one. 🤍

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Rarity

When describing claybabies, I’ve used the term “rare” several times in this story. But just how rare are they? Regions that have claybabies sure like to think that their little corner of the world is the most unique in this geological phenomenon. Per the internet, most say their particular claybaby location “is one of the few places in the world” to produce such treasures.

I’m careful to not place a generalization on the number of places that have (or don’t have) claybabies with any final certainty. But who knows if it’s five places or 500 places. And, clearly, the formations are similar but not all the same. But I can say that the GIANT claybabies found along the banks of Athabasca River Valley Grand Rapids in Alberta, Canada are indeed the most shocking. Because OMG have you ever seen a larger claybaby?!

Overall, it’s safe to say claybabies aren’t super rare, but they’re definitely different! And, still hard to come by. For me, that means they’re still special regardless.

They’re also fairly difficult to research, because they’re not all made the same way, called the same thing, and, as we’ve discussed, they come from all sorts of different places. Still, pictures of claybabies do exist. Fox Island claybabies remain in the sphere of public information because it’s not against the rules for private landowners to pluck ’em for keeps from their own shoreline properties. In fact, an Arizona blogger has the best pictures of Fox Island claybabies I’ve seen (hello tiny dachshund and turtle shapes!). That particular blogger said her family’s collection came from her grandparents’ Fox Island home. Her post is from 2012, but the info and imagery remain relevant.

If pictures aren’t enough for your curious mind, you’ll be happy to know I also spotted some claybabies for sale in a basket of items at the lovely Fox Island History Museum. Each claybaby costs just $1, for any size. I was told the concretions were all donated from private property owners’ shores. The museum’s claybaby retal collection is nicely stacked at the museum store by the entrance to its Book Nook. Click those links for museum hours and visitor info.

I hope you see a claybaby for yourself one day.

See ya out there!

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IF YOU GO:

TACOMA DEMOLAY SANDSPIT