Almost every weekend, astonishing rock sculptures appear on the San Francisco shoreline, beside the path that leads from Crissy Field toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Rocks of various shapes, colors, and sizes stand atop one another in uncanny balance. Broken gabbro pirouettes atop a tiny chunk of ocean-polished brick atop a roundish boulder. Rough and irregular stones, lifted in counterbalance, seem ready to fly. It’s a ballet in stone. At the end of the day it’s gone, but a new and different set is up a week later.

Many people walk and bicycle along this path and few fail to stop and exclaim at what they see. Those who pause only briefly may call out: “Do you glue them? Or do you use wires?” Bill Dan has heard these questions so often he has written the answers on a rock. “No glue, no wires. Balance.” This afternoon a little girl doesn’t believe him, so he shows her by building a new piece. Her face lights up. “Thank you,” her mother says.

Those who stay longer tend to stand quietly. If they talk, it’s softly. They watch Dan lift another boulder, selected from the riprap dumped at the water’s edge, behind the low seawall that runs along the path. They hold their breath.

The full text of this article is in the print edition of Coast & Ocean.
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