For Deacon Ritterbush of Waimea, Hawaii, beachcombing is a form of daily meditation and post-cancer therapy as well as a way of life.

“Beachcombing is a Zen-like experience,” said Ritterbush. “You just focus down, you look and the past and future worries and issues, they don’t even exist. The now takes over.”

For her, walking along a shoreline also offers a window to history, culture and lessons in life.

Ritterbush is the founder of the International Beachcombing Conference, which this year runs from Wednesday through Saturday in Waimea. The gathering, now in its seventh year, was first launched in Annapolis, Md., and last year was held in Pacific Beach, Wash. This is the first time it will be held in Hawaii.

Many beachcombers start out finding pretty treasures such as seashells and glass for craft and art projects, she said. But over time they become more interested in an item’s origin or how it reflects the state of the ocean. Many eventually love the beach so much they become the coastlines’ best stewards.

Ritterbush, 64, is a lifelong beachcomber, having grown up near Annapolis, where she found pieces of French pottery from the late 1700s at Chesapeake Bay. In Hawaii she finds clues to plantation life on the Hamakua Coast and enjoys collecting olivine sea glass, surfboard skegs and granulated cowries, also known as sugar cowries, which have a rough, bumpy surface.

She is the author of “A Beachcomber’s Odyssey: Treasures From a Collected Past” (Ritz Dotter Publishers, 2008). Ritterbush studied anthropology and is married to an archaeologist from Tonga.

After fielding questions at book lectures, Ritterbush decided to organize a conference for fellow beachcombers. She describes it as a hands-on learning experience with workshops and excursions that draws novices and veterans of all ages.

“It’s like sitting in a sandbox when you’re 3 years old, with a bunch of friends and everyone’s having fun,” she said. “There’s no hidden agenda.”

The conference will start with an overview of beachcombers’ ethics, which include leaving alone shells hosting live animals, disturbing the beach as little as possible and never taking more than what you need. In Hawaii it also means leaving lava rocks and indigenous items alone.

Ritterbush still remembers childhood summers spent at the Jersey Shore where she found a channeled whelk when she was just 3. Her mother held it up to the tot’s ear and asked whether she could hear the waves.

“I still have that whelk shell,” she said. “Every time I see it, it takes me right back to my mom and I on the beach.”

Walking shorelines later helped Ritterbush overcome the grief from her mother’s death, and with her recovery from cancer, which she was diagnosed with two years ago.

“I think nature is healing,” she said. “Beachcombing draws you out to nature, and you’re out with all that wonderful energy — the wind, the rain and sun.”

When she was undergoing chemotherapy and could not walk the shoreline, Ritterbush kept beachcombing treasures with her to lift her spirits, including the bottom of a black bottle with a smiling face, and a fishing float from Waikiki.

Fishing floats signify hope, she said, because they somehow manage to make their way intact from the South China Sea to the Pacific isles over decades of time.

For her, the life lesson is, “If you go through extreme times, lie back and trust that you’ll land in a good spot instead of getting overcome with worry and dread.”