SANDCASTLES IN MIND
I’ve arrived just in time at a favourite spot to watch the evening light, as the tide races in at Mellon Udrigle. The previous high tide tossed tangles of kelp far up the beach, stranding them beside the burn, and carried sand upstream to smother the rocks and choke the downward flow. Then, the ebbing tide sculptured natural sandcastles and left them perched on foundation stones just large enough to divert the retreating sea around them.
I see him coming and I guess what’s on his mind. Raising my camera quickly to my eye, I make the photograph before the wee boy in his red welly boots hurtles into the frame. Screaming with excitement, he splashes into the burn and sets about the sandcastles, kicking them into formless piles of sand. Dismayed, I can’t bring myself to take an “after” picture to match the one “before”. I feel sad and angry at the wanton destruction; but then, I find myself smiling. The child is having such fun and I remember, the joy of making, and breaking down sandcastles or watching the sea reclaim them.
I wander down beside the burn and watch a group of Ringed plovers feeding on the incoming tide further along the bay. At my feet the waves rush past a shelf of sand, crumbling it away as the surge sweeps by. Currents collide at seemingly impossible angles, forcing the sea up the burn where it deposits its load of freshly churned up sand.
In the fading light, the waves loom dark, almost menacing as they advance across the now near charcoal sands and drown the last of the reflected sunset.
Next day, I’m back at my favourite spot, watching the morning light and a scene transformed by the ebbing tide as it rolls back out to sea. The ruined sandcastles remain, unreached by the previous tide, and the stranded kelp is still high and dry beside the burn, but the fresh water flows free again, carving its way through the sand and spreading its fingers to touch the sea.
Further along the bay, there are people sauntering along the water’s edge while their dogs dash in and out of the gentle waves or chase balls thrown up the beach. In their exuberance, they scatter the delicate coloured patterns made on the surface of the sand. It seems a shame and yet, who among us has not enjoyed planting our footprints in freshly fallen snow or, running across a beach made smooth by wind and wave.
I wander down, beside the burn, watching how the sun and fast moving currents interplay. Deep eddies form around the rocks, creating pools where colour patterns the surface like snakeskin. Where the rocks run out and the currents run slow and shallow over the drying sand, the light is gathered into strands; the pattern still resembles snakeskin but one cast off, as the serpent returns to the sea.
In the midday sun, the white waves tumble benignly ashore and reflect, as if painted, on a canvas of wet sand. Soon the tide will turn again and the waves will break with increasing power to strip the canvas, wash away the footprints made in fun and recreate a pristine strand … ready for the making of new sandcastles.
