14 February 2012
One summer, long ago my friends and I packed our cars and vans and took the roman road south, heading for the coast. The land heaves like a roller coaster there, with a hair line footpath that follows its curves, chalk white, cut into the tuff, wind bent greenery of the southern downs. Geology has been hard at work, tipping the vast layers of sandstone and limestone up on end, folding them into mind boggling elastic curls. Our destination was a pebble beach that sits at a point where the ever patient sea has scoured the friable sandstone from the more resilient chalk. A thin slice of bare strata angles away from the cliff, towering over the sea forming a great stone arch, it's centre having fallen away millennia before we cast our campfire shining eyes upon its gnarled splendour. As the last light left the day our beer befuddled minds would smudge its massive silhouette into the shape of a dying dragon, slipping gently into the sea. When night had fully fallen it's pale cream coloured surface reflected the firelight and our dancing shadows, that flickered across its time weathered surface, tribal, primal, ancient.
We partied, till all alcohol and higher brain function had gone, then slept around the dying embers snoring and muttering while the stars wheeled above us and the tide turned its back on our disgrace.
In the narrow eyed morning we would gather out stuff, clean the beech of our mess and trudge our pounding heads up the switchback, crumbling cliff path, up the steep long stepped gravel track, wearily to the campsite where the vehicles were parked.
The showers were magnificent and the site bar opened early. We washed ourselves of dirt, salt and smoke and cured our heads with hair o' the dog. When the two pint red haze came down we would plan another evenings stupefaction, in the bar, the next cove, or closest large town.
This time, the cove won, despite the spectacularly knackering walk we would have to endure getting to and from its tiny village. There was a cracking pub there, it would be worth it.
Drunkenness and laughter dulled the calf bursting climb away from from the cove into the star spattered crystal clear night. We recovered the stashes of beer, hidden on outward journey amongst the multitudes of rabbit warrens. Then sat on the hill above the cliff looking out into the half dark as a great full moon rose yellow bright over a black ocean. Far below, the sea danced with uncountable pinpoint lights that crowded round a shaft of shimmering moonshine.
The sea grew fuzzy.
It's deep black became grey, the sharply defined sparkles faded to dim glows. A fog was coalescing out of thin air, aligning itself with the top of the cliffs below us. It thickened until the sea was hidden from our senses of sight and sound. The rolling hill side and billowing cloud top, lit silver by the harvest moon seemed made of the same material and it looked for all world as though you could stride out across it and touch the moons luminous, mottled disk. We sat on the hill, breath taken. In the stillness that accompanied that exquisite moment a whisper of a breeze crept across us, chilly sharp, a hint of another season. The sea fog churned from within, its bulging solidity thinning into curling tendrils as the air around took back the moisture that gave it form. We stared out at the seascape, stars above, shimmering sea below and the moon, the conductor in this exhibition of planetary alignment and thermodynamics, gazed impassive down on us. At our feet, then all over the hill, glow worms ignited their pale green fires, whatever the joke was, they got it and shone their appreciation back into the heavens. 'Bravo' a voice croaked. We stood on beery legs and applauded, cheered and hollered. We hung around for a while after the show, but there would be no encore, and by then the beds in our tents and camper vans were calling to us louder than any earthly phenomena.
Sea Mist And Moonshine • Opuss № I