On a recent coastal walk, I met a wild sea with white whipped waves, a long damp beach with receded evidence of a very high tide, and a strand composed of murky froth.
The blobby yellowish-grey froth always puzzles me, as it looks quite disgustingly un-natural, polluted. It was especially revolting this day as it wobbled slightly in the wind.
But sea foam is actually a natural phenomenon — find out more here
What does not move are the rocks — extraordinarily varied in colour and composition, layered and exposed to different degrees.
Yet again, I wish I had a geologically-savvy friend with me to explain these odd pairings of materials, worn down differently and left in strange sculptural poses.
Some are more consistently like a pebblecreter’s dream, millions of small pebbles held together for another eternity.
How long ago did time and wild storms send them tumbling from the cliffs above, to begin their weathering, their sculpting, from the fury of wind and rain?
Such thoughts certainly put our puny human lifespans in perspective…
Russell, I love your word flows and the pictures they paint, although I often don’t get all the allusions. Are you sure you aren’t James Joyce reincarnated?
Aye Sharyn, high seas habitat, moon bystanding. On moving rocks – pitch a tent off an anchor chain! (Shetlands, pioneering spirit vs biggest ship on planet? Ark? hmm). Meanwhile, a little person asked a giant to throw some 3 ton rocks from the ocean up a 30 metre cliff in time for a day trip on the littoral zone. It would be more obvious if they were SUVs with fridge-freezers further inland. Horses are measured in horizontal hands and giants have a sense of humour pretending to be David, for when the little person says to a bigger person ‘fetch’ they mean hundreds of miles. And there’s always choices about how to learn about Great Skuas. They’re friendly with the giants in mutualism for Maslow’s highest. Thence a Grind o’ da’ Navir centurion, who not only imagined the biggest seas imaginable, but realised the imagined through appreciating how far and fast boulders can move. Finally up to Muckle Flugga before knowing the natural harmonic between high seas and high trees, thus missing the concept of a swift parrot not looking like it’s driving a Hogwart’s steam train well over 60 metres ‘above sea level’. Straight through the front door. Might have looked like foam or froth, naturally. Safely back in the capital and da da! That’s where the giants must have been, writing two very big words to fathom.