We tend to think of building as a human action. Sometimes animals partake — consider a beehive or beaver dam — but for the most part, “building” usually evokes the image of people working with tools.
Other things, or maybe it is better to say forces, can also build. The weather, and hundreds of years of it, creates its own buildings all over the world.
One such occurrence appears in Marblehead. On the coast of the Neck is a spot in the rocks that has been long-known for the way that the water crashes and swirls during mid-tide. While it is no Old Man of the Mountain or Grand Canyon, over time it has garnered a reputation of its own as “the Churn.”
In the Marblehead Historical Commission’s archives, there are three pages of records (that is, 59 items) relating to “The Churn.” Some are postcards, others are old photos, and some are even drawings. Moreover, Samuel Roads Jr.’s History and Traditions of Marblehead describes this spot, saying, “One of the greatest natural curiosities on the ocean side is the ‘Churn,’ a fissure in the rocks about 30 feet deep, where the water roars and seethes at half-tide.”
Another book by Roads, A Guide to Marblehead, gives more details about “the Churn.” He describes “the Churn” as a special type of ravine called a spouting horn or sometimes a “purgatory.” These geological formations acquired their name from the way that waves splash up through them, both deepening the fissures and creating what Roads calls “magnificent jets or spouts of water” during certain storms and tide levels.
It turns out that Mother Earth is something of an architect herself.