0031 Autumn's Wild, Rough Days

These wild, rough autumn days as cooling Northern hemisphere shudders towards its equinox with gales and rain and blown-off leaves, all the elements stirred up, and bringing strange emotions; everything is between; but for children living by the sea, days of joy and awe – the sea, no longer blue but savage brown-red, even emerald green, which all the year has bashed and nibbled at the cliffs like kitchen-boy at pantried half-cut cake, throws all its might as if it hated the whole idea of earth; knowing that in one night, it may do mighty things once in a while that change the maps themselves – blocking estuaries that have served ports for a thousand years, with shingle banks; throwing new beaches across bays, with stones so exquisitely graded from rock to pebble, that it’s said, night fishermen thrown onto such a beach without the moon know exactly where they are by size of stone… but for the child, a magic time: the air’s a gift for lungs, like breathed champagne; the sea after the gale is calming down; but the beach is new: new toys thrown up, seaweed of many shapes, still wild when wet, along a new high tide line; stuff off ships, carved wood, deck-mats, green globes that buoyed up nets, boxes with some foreign words to remind us that this same neighbour sea has other foreign shores across the world.. and every stone and pebble, which yesterday had muted, dusty-coloured, matt-textured anonymity, now, wet with salty water, are translucent, shining jewels each one, glass, white marble (and how far has that pebble come, hassled and scoured across the ocean’s floor..) , rough granite of so many shades, hard serpentine, purple, green, some striped; slate-blues, brick-reds, all fit for a palace; gathered in an eager hand which sees nothing in the world but gifts and miracles; this lovely, wild, wild-hearted shore.