Each fallen wave rushes up the strand with a million urgently typing fingers, and then at the moment between writing and erasing subscribes itself in a negligent cursive across the whole breadth of the page. Signatures and counter-signatures accumulate, confuse, obliterate. Seabirds put down their names in cuneiform, lugworms excrete their humble marks. And then come my boots to add the stamp of authenticity, not of the endless process of the beach which needs no authentification from anybody, but of my witnessing of it.

Tim Robinson, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage