Of Russian Dolls and Armeria Maritima…
There’s an amazing spit of sand and scrub that juts out, like a deranged and accusative finger, into the complex hydrology of the Solway Firth called Grune Point.
It’s a stark contrast to the postcard imagery and big box office feel of the mountains prodding the horizon further south. The contrast owes its unique and uplifting flavour to the one component missing from these more vertiginous landscapes.
The sea.
I’m not sure exactly where, geographically, the feel of ‘rural’ ends and the different palette of ‘coast’ begins. There must be a hinterland, I guess, where they both overlap. A sort of geographical and sensory Venn diagram where there’s a mix of both…but I’m not sure where that is. For me, the single thing that makes my mind tune in and turn on to the fact that it’s arrived near the sea is … the light. Oh, and the weight of the air, heavy with salt; and the plaintive cry of the estuarine curlews… Mmm, that’s a trio of delights. Let’s just stick with the light for now!
It’s why artists love to be by the coast, it’s why we feel an elevated mood being there. Studies have shown a direct input between light and our limbic system, the centre of our emotions. I feel it strongly; the double delicious dose of light from the sky and its reflected counterpart from the water. You can just bathe in it; embrace it calmly but firmly charging your cells.
And so, armed with the camera it is always a lovely spot to quietly explore, absorb and hopefully capture some of its essence on film (virtual as it is…) A lovely afternoon spent, back home and going through the images on the Mac. Some contrasty monochrome landscapes, some lovely atmospheric seascape shots as the sun went down…and then on to some macro shots of gorgeous sea thrift which I’d taken.
Armeria maritima to give it its proper name. An oh so pretty, tiny, flower that’s happy in the challenging world of salt and sand, wind and rain, drought and flood that it has chosen to occupy.
And then I saw him.
Staring out of the screen. Two cheeky, bobbly eyes perched there looking straight at me, like a catwalk model who knows exactly how to melt a lens. I have no idea what his particular species is, but he made my day. And made me think. The size of the flower was about the size of the fingernail on your little finger which makes this little chap about the size of a pinhead, but there he was. Perky, happy, in charge of his own tiny floral domain. I would never have even known he was there, but the camera allowed me to glimpse into his world for a brief moment of time and capture that precious second.
It got me thinking about Russian dolls, how we think the important stuff is the big stuff, the external validation that society has programmed us to strive for. The fancy houses, the flash cars and gadgets …then we open another layer and discover a little bit more about what really matters, and another and another until just our values and dreams are left. Our essence.
This little bug reminded me that there’s a whole wondrous world going on all around us and beneath our feet that is simply uninterested in the increasingly disconnected world we seem to be building, and that answers and joy really come …from the small stuff.
Hugs,
GØ
