Where the sea meets the sky, there flies my soul.

15th May 2022

Where the sea meets the sky, there flies my soul.

I wrote that many years ago, gazing out from a high window, west across the Wash in North Norfolk. The flat line of grey blue sea rippling with an underwater mirror ball of lights as the sun touched the waves like elegant fingers on ivory keys. I thought perhaps mermaids were dancing in the deep wearing tiny mirrors in their hair.

I spent a lot of time with that horizon and the changing colours and the vast sky.

Rachel Redfern captures it beautifully, the magical light, the restful contemplation of horizon. She was speaking about it the yesterday day and how ingrained in us it is to find solace and safety in the open view of that line. A friend who is a teacher mentioned that children, if asked to draw stripes, will usually draw them horizontally.

 A most particular light.

Driving the last bit of the journey up to my parents the other day, heading East towards Cambridge and feeling the edges of the fen country, the early evening light struck me as such a particular sign of coming home.

The trees were turning ginger under the grey blue stormy sky as the sun set silky over the flat lands. A twist of lemon on the tops of the trees, lime fields stretching, like a cape thrown wide across the dark earth. The drama of approaching rain. Warm spice of leaf and light against a smoky indigo sky.

Places that hold particular memories of light, live long in our souls, don’t they? Like landscapes we have loved, that make our hearts sing.

A sense of place, a scent, a song.