A Force of Nature

I glance towards the horizon, the sea breeze whipping my hair. The sea mist catches at my clothes, tiny salty droplets, almost invisible until you start to walk and then wonder why your coat is damp. The pebbles crunch underfoot, scattering as I step. I reach a ridge and simply use the stones themselves to surf downwards, using nature as the surfboard. Surfing must be freeing, just you, a board and the waves. I wish I could surf.

I get to the shore line, the wind now more vicious, the cliff face now too far away to prove an protection, although most of the time the wind comes from the see anyway, even here. I pick up a pebble, stranded from its counterparts in the sands. Shaped by the sea, it feels cool in my hands. Nature, all powerful, its power in my grasp. I wonder what it has seen, probably things that we could never contemplate. I lean back on my right leg and throw the stone, watching it skim on the sea before being enveloped by the crashing waves that helped make it. A cycle.

The beach is deserted. In summer, the beach becomes a mass of sunburn, garish towels and fallen castles. But for now I am alone, and the beach is but mine.

The clouds gather overhead, a grey blanket covering the earth from above, but I do not want to leave. I am happy where I am, here at the subject of nature. I walk slightly further forward, allowing the dregs of foam and waves to lap around my boots. I have no idea why I am here. But it isn’t the first time it has happened. I simply keep returning. Returning to where land meets sea, waves meet earth. A meeting place between different worlds.

The waves lap further around my boots, occasionally lapping over the toe. The tide is coming in. I should probably move, but I am hypnotised, hypnotised by the power of the waves. The destruction. The birth. The cycle, continuous, never leaving, never ending. Unchanging.

The water begins to seep into the ends of my jeans, rising slowly. I turn to leave. The constraints of the world want me back. Humanity and its constant barrage of deadlines and seemingly mighty power to make decisions over everything, even over nature, the drone of the cities, the oppression of buildings, blocking out the sky. They beckon me to return to the murky world of urbania.

But nature can never be defeated, it merely acquiesces. The day will come, and I will be back here, again, back to the sea, this exact spot between land and ocean. I will never leave. The power holds on to me, and continues to reel me back, back to the wintery, watery depths of a place I wish I could call home.