I walked over the cliffs today to my special crevice. I’ve been going there since my early teens, hidden behind high cliffs on a headland is a crack in the rock shaped like an armchair specifically made for me. Protected against the most extreme Atlantic winds, but still with a view of the waves crashing against the rocks below, I’ve written, read and thought many big thoughts.
I haven’t been here for seven years, but still it was surprisingly easy to find my way back. It’s like the bluffs and rocks have become part of my internal geography, forever part of my mental map of the world.
But I only had time to eat my lunch and read five poems, before thunder started rumbling like an old grumpy man over the mainland. Three poems later, the drops started falling.
There is something beautiful about those first moments of rain. The drops fall on the dry rock, creating a dotted pattern with the darker, richer colors of the wet stone. The smell, too, is something very special.
Thinking that this might become as dramatic a rainfall as the one yesterday, I tried to find the fastest way back to the main trail. But I couldn’t know if the narrow paths that I found among the heather and the junipers were human or grazer made, leading me back to civilization, or if following them would take me to a destination only rational for sheep.
Suddenly, I came upon a wet clearing. There, I met a tree. A beautiful old rowan, with branches growing in all directions. The trunk light grey. It made me think of the weirwood trees of Game of Thrones. There is a wisdom in old trees, the perseverance in having survived on the edge of an ocean. The thunder and rain kept on coming, so I didn’t stay long, but we shared a moment, and then I walked on. I will probably never be able to find it again.
I finally reached the main trail. By the time I was back at the house, the rain was done falling for the day.
Katja Malmborg 