Thursday 18th May. 4pm. High haze. 16o C. Easterly wind, coming in off the sea. I always get confused by wind direction. I’m never sure whether we name it for where it’s from or for where it’s headed. I had to look it up. Easterly. Coming from the east. Define by point of origin, like nationality. I’m here to walk tomorrow and it is good walking weather. Warm enough to be on the coast, cool enough to be covered up. After the dark, wet April it feels like a little optimism is creeping back in, and that matches my mood. Optimism is creeping in, but I need some sun, and I need to walk.
For now though I am sitting on the beach, hard up against the dunes. The tide is out and tumbling gently. I can hardly hear the waves. Some of them ripple; others manage a muted roar, like an angry dragon a very long way away.
I sit quiet and listen hard. The sea is all I hear. There is no background noise of traffic, or children playing, or radios. The marram grass isn’t stirring enough to raise a rattle. A pair of gulls are patrolling the dune / beach border in stealth mode. They fly low behind me and I see them by their shadows.
Then the swifts arrive, with their darting flight and screeling call. I spot a pair, then two more, and the flock builds, dropping to ground every now and then, and then back into the air. I cannot figure out if they are playing kiss-chase or fighting off rivals. It’s a wonderful air-show all the same.
They say that swifts rarely touch ground. Surely that cannot be true. They seem to drop at regular intervals, though to be fair they also seem to use the earth more as a springboard than a resting place. Perhaps they only come down to forage, catching food close to the ground rather than on
it.
Swifts. The last of our visitors to arrive and the first to leave, but they make up in entertainment value for the fleeting nature of their visit. Indeed, it seems appropriate that they do not hang around. They come to breed when our insect population is at its early summer height, and as soon
as the job is done, they start their journey south again. Perhaps we love them because those couple of months seem somehow synonymous with the traditional shortness of English summers.
Having scavenged what they could find on the beach, my little flock disappear away over the marshes for richer evening pickings.
I sift sand through my fingers. It is the colour and texture of unrefined cane sugar. Soundless. It makes me look for all the other things I cannot hear. Some sounds are intrusive and unwanted, others are harked for but go unheard. This afternoon, I’m not listening for anything in particular…I’m just tuning into the weather and the place and the quietness, and noticing the things I cannot hear.
I cannot hear the flap of sail or chink of rigging on that yacht that flows across the long flat horizon – nor the thumping of the engines of the container ship that lags behind.
I cannot hear my own breathing, which is always a good sign.
I can, suddenly, hear Woof Woof followed by abrupt calls of Lo-la…Lola! No! And then from another direction is a piercing Peeeeeeeeeee! A distress whistle, blown by an idiot for no apparent reason. If it’s meant to bring a dog to heel, it fails. People and dogs. I quite like dogs. But they and their humans are sour notes this afternoon.
I have been sitting on th beach for an hour before it occurs to me that this would be a good time to ask questions and listen for answers…
...but it turns out that today I have no questions. Is that a definition of contentment: the absence of questions?
I smile as a young couple hare barefoot down the beach. She is wearing a pink sash, like some local beauty contest winner, or an elopee fresh from a hen night who decided she didn’t want the wedding after all. They are both carrying champagne flutes. Her squeal against the cold of the sea echoes up the beach. It is the joyful squeal of childhood games, laced with laughter.
19th May, 1:56 am, clear, 6oC
I’ve slept for a few hours, but get up to look out across the marsh. There are faint lights on the horizon, and an orange beacon flashing. I don’t know if this is some internal waterway navigation aid, or a road-hazard light. The flashes are irregular, which makes me think the former. I see nothing marked on my map. Away over to my left there are bright white argon lights. Again I have to guess where they are, and my explorations the next day fail to confirm whether they are lighting up the harbour, or the boatyard, or the caravan park, or something else entirely.
I don’t really care because they are too far away to matter. The white lights that matter are directly overhead. Looking across the marsh, I catch the low cloud and mist. Only when I step outside and look straight up is my breath snatched away.
The sky is clear and dark and speckled with more stars than I have seen for decades. All of them close enough to touch. Oh, I have missed this in my light-polluted suburban existence. I get excited about the occasional starry night, but I never get this kind of clarity. This would be worth moving to the remote mountains for, with all the inconvenience of living there.
The pub has closed for the night. There is nothing on the road. There is nothing in the air. It is completely silent. The tide must be high but the dunes muffle even wave-sound.
Still night. Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht
19th May, 8.30am, cloudy, 10oC
I wake to clouds and puddled evidence of early-hours rain. I check the forecasts. They disagree, at least in emphasis. The pessimist suggests a day of scattered showers. The optimist tells me it will be sunny spells. There is no reason they cannot both be right. I ask for no-rain. Anything else, I will take as it comes, but I would like an absence of precipitation.
A muntjac slowly munches it way through the lushness that is the gift of the late wet spell. No cattle yet to snaffle all the best the menu has to offer. Too far away to hear, but also too far away to hear me. I sit and watch.
The weather bodes well for a morning’s walking. I am happy. It is gentle weather. Simple. Undramatic. And that suits my mood admirably. I spend a focussed hour working what I can remember of the Tai Chi form on a deck slightly too small to accommodate it, and leave all the windows open when I go down to breakfast. Any weather that calls us outside, as this is doing, also deserves to be allowed indoors.
Internal: calm, becoming sunny
Focussing on the weather and reporting on it, is an art form and a science all of its own. It is also a simple doorway into what is happening around us and inside of us. Whatever the weather is doing, dramatic or somnolent, it is a good place to start with our noticing. The weather knocks on the door of our consciousness quite insistently, so open the door to it. Notice it. And then let it lead you into what else the world around you, very closely around you, is doing...and let that lead into how you are feeling, what you are thinking.
Be aware of the weather, and then simply respond to it. It wants to talk to you. Answer, and start a conversation with the world around you.
I start many of my "got nothing to say today" journal entries by recording the weather. A few words about what is happening in the sky or in the trees, leads me in to what is happening in my life or in me, because all of that is also, ultimately, only weather...passing cloud, becoming clear.
