O green and pleasant land

I don’t know how to begin other than to say I love this world of ours. It’s been the most beautiful summer here where I am by the coast, and I can tell you that nothing opens the heart up more to gratitude and peace than to be faced, day in, day out, with all the glories of nature.

It’s what I miss the most when I’m in London – to turn around and see nothing but trees and green in your vision, or to look out across the sea, watching the hundreds of shades and shadows constantly forming and breaking across the surface. All I can hear is the waves crashing and the gulls calling. All I feel is the gentle touch of wind across my face. That, and a soaring joy in my heart.

It brings me back to childlike wonder.

The solar eclipse happened a mere half hour ago and we all gathered to (indirectly) take in the spectacle, hairs raising along our arms as the temperature dipped and everything was cast in dim light. Now it’s sunset – my favourite time of day down here – as the birds make their way out to sea, the sky is painted in pales hues of blue, pink and lavender.

Venus winks at me from the sky, the first celestial being to be visible down here, shining brightly even though it isn’t even 9pm yet. Bugs mill about lazily in the air, their jagged flight patterns too unsteady for the eye to follow for very long. Occasionally, I catch snatches of faint chatter on the breeze, the clinking of cutlery, but they’re far away from my world. It’s just me, the soft wind, and the sea.

The view here makes my chest swell so much it almost hurts – I can feel tears springing to my eyes from the back of my throat, the simple overwhelm at the beauty of everything I see in front of me. The Romantics called it ‘the sublime’ – a complete feeling of awe at nature.

As I drove home, the light bathed the rolling hills in a golden glow, the same light which glimmered off ripples in the estuary water, little white boats floating gently on its surface. It made my eyes greedy for every detail, wishing in that human way of ours to somehow capture everything I saw, capturing the feeling and the view in one great big glass bottle, that I could peer into and experience whenever I wanted.

I’ve seen temples in deserts, jagged lines of mountains, rays swimming across reefs on the other side of the world, and still nothing can give me the same sustained feeling that the English countryside and this patch of coastline does. I wonder how I can return to London when my soul has so much peace here, with the ebb and fall of the tides, that proximity to the very stuff we are made of – to be a person who notices the birds, who spends a day with dirt track or sandy beach beneath her feet, to curl her toes in the parched grass. That gasping rush when you submerge in cold water, feet kicking in the waves, never so alive.

I might have only walked this earth for 26 years, 3 months, and 14 days, but I can tell you with utmost certainty that this is what life is really about.