Horizon Line

The ice lies along the horizon, glowing so fiercely silver that it hurts my eyes. It is as if the moon has been stretched into a thin thread and tied around the circumference of the earth, a blazing line across the nimble fields of blue.

Beach in Winter

Cold weather changes this place: wind bites; sand becomes rock; shells become fossils; waves leave the thinnest layer of ice all along the shore, like a white line in the sand that only the seals cross. We stay on the dry side, counting barnacles and pulling scarves around our faces.

Old Shipyard

The line of posts along an empty expanse of beach is all that remains. Infused with a century of seawater, covered in mops of rockweed, these dark-wood sentinels wholeheartedly deny the massive sides of ships once built here. The distant echo of wood on wood is so faint that it is as hard to hear as history. When the tide is in, even this small evidence is covered over completely.

Stone Tree

The tree is as huge as a Greek column in the Doric style. Buried for three hundred million years, it emerges from the cliff like a lost civilization. Looking at this length of stone, it is almost easier to believe in Artemis, Demeter or Hermes than in the swamp forests that existed here so long before the dinosaurs.

Swallows

For many years I have mourned the loss of swallows from farmyards; but this night, no barns in sight, the hundreds and thousands of flickering birds congregate in an evening dinner-dance that commands the whole of the fading ultraviolet sky. We paddle through the cloud of hurtling birds: silent planets amidst a darklight meteor shower.

Moon Over Water

The full moon slipped in the sky. Not all at once, but in a series of small dips, as if the pins holding it up fell, one by one, into the smooth water. Its luminous reflection danced across the resulting ripples. It was over so quickly that my eye missed it, but the camera saw it all.

High Tide Line

Two thousand years ago, give or take a few hundred years, Seleucus of Seleucia in Mesopotamia and Wang Chong in China concluded separately that the moon was responsible for the tides. They may not even have been the first; there may be a line of bright celestial thinkers stretching back into deep antiquity: In each age the connection made, and lost again in disbelief. I walk slowly along the beach, gazing steadily downward along the wrack line, and think about how long it would take me to claim such a far-fetched sisterhood between sea and sky.

Fire

There is something unnerving about having a fire outdoors, watching the dusk turn to dark, watching the sparks fly up and kiss the emerging stars, looking up at the the hundreds and thousands of glowing embers scattered in that upside-down coal black fire pit: our hearts the tiniest of sparks, unseen in the blind darkness.

Waders II

The boys run through the shallow water like piping plovers. Their calls carry across the beach: “Look! A crab! A jellyfish! A minnow!” They run back and forth, pointing to the living creatures at their feet, jumping backwards when the pinchers get too near their toes. They don’t think of lunch; but still, they have a mouth-watering curiosity.

Waders

The plovers lift their wings on the beach and dash across the sand into the shallow water, laughing like carefree children. Once there, they wade slowly along the tide line, looking intently for lunch. They change their demeanour by the minute: playing turns to to squabbling; running gleefully turns to standing solemnly. Like children, they are made up entirely by the here and now.