The percussive crashes of the storm reverberated through the house and fractured all notion of sleep. It wasn’t a problem, as the working week was over and I had no need to wake early for work, so for hours I lay awake as the wind shrieked through phone lines, drummed against the window and clashed its way down the chimney, a heavy metal dissonance that I knew was dismantling the world upon which I’d turned out the lights the previous evening.
The next morning brought an expected scene. I rose early regardless of the day off, and took my coffee to the back door to look out on the weather’s night work. Mottled grey clouds like sheet metal rolled across the sky and, although the worst of the storm had long since passed, the wind still rumbled on in the background, refusing to let go, to allow calmness to return.
A garden around the time of the autumnal equinox is an apt symbol of the time of year. As the annual cycle begins to break down once more, fragments of the year’s growth lie scattered everywhere – leaves, twigs and petals from the last of summer’s colour, a few scraps of paper and fragments of packaging blown in from elsewhere – all the fragments and detritus that brings a symbolic end to the busier seasons of the year, none of which did anything to help dispel the mood of fragmentation I felt as I sipped my coffee. That, though, would be a job for later, after our planned long coastal walk that would help to blow away the cobwebs of the week.
“Oof!” As I stepped out of the car, a sudden gust slammed me back against the door, causing me to groan. Being a tad on the hefty side, I’m somewhat difficult to move if not in the mood, so I wasn’t used to this inability to resist.
“You okay?” Rachel called from the passenger seat. I took a moment to steady myself. “I’ll be fine”.
We shuffled out from the side street and onto the promenade, she clutching onto the crook of my inner elbow in that comforting gesture so often seen in walking couples, as the wind out in the open screamed in off the shore, pushing and pushing and pushing me from every conceivable angle while it swirled around and flung sand into my face.
Such vulnerability here is not new or entirely alien as, a few years ago, it is where I came to walk, and to simply breathe, when pneumonia swept in from a clear blue nowhere and turned the x-rays of my lungs into a series of wild and unpredictable storm systems that swirled through my life for weeks, causing chaos and making me feel like a stranger in my own body, divorced from energy, my classroom, and all other activity alike. It’s where I came, too, when making the recovery from COVID. The crippling lethargy and time away from work, the isolation from all that was routine and familiar, echoed back again to those days and nights of pneumonia-tinged aloneness. Thankfully, there was no need for such recovery this time, just the simple need to hunker down, zip coats up to the chin and plough on with our walk.
Below our promenade vantage point, a neap tide raged impotently, lacking the strength of its bigger brothers yet still displaying enough spite when sulkily tossing around clumps of weed and handfuls of spray. Rachel stopped to retie her shoelace and I walked on a little way. Another couple, gazing seaward from a short promontory opposite us, looked so much like castaways thrown onto empty land by the storm, too wrapped up in each other and crouched too far down inside their hoods to notice me. Above us, three herring gulls held their station, pointed into the wind like trout into a current. I marvelled at them, making so many minute momentary adjustments to the angles of body and wing as though all the mysteries of Mathematics lay at their disposal, and I envied their assuredness in the face of random chaos.
“You’re a million miles away!” Rachel sauntered back up to me, hooking her arm through mine again and following my gaze up to the hovering birds. We watched as, one-by-one, the gulls made some imperceptible alteration, turning suddenly to describe long, looping arcs that swept them back inland. I tugged gently on Rachel’s arm, diverting her along a path that roughly followed that of the birds even as they began to disappear from view.
Back at home later, it was time for a quick cup of tea before settling in to the garden work. Despite the widening of a clear blue sky, after the dampness of the previous evening and the morning, even the first few weeds pulled were enough to release the pungent, damp aroma of earth and set it circulating. As we weeded and trimmed, turned over and swept, the fragrant dampness permeated the entire garden, another elemental treat for the senses that hung heavy in the air until finally, we were finished, all the trimmings and weeds bagged up and ready for composting. Now that the breeze had settled entirely, all evidence of last night’s storm was now nothing more than memory and a slight tiredness that hung upon me like the heavy folds of an old blanket. Soon, it would be time for a bath, but first, a little something else.
I stooped to fill the fire pit with logs and kindling, the first tendrils of smoke rising and a flame sparking into life just as Rachel emerged, smiling, from behind the cotoneaster tree, holding two generous glasses of red wine. “Thought you might appreciate this”. Perfect.
So we sat, at this autumn day’s “last oozings”, the fire crackling away and the tang of smoke replacing the aromas of wet earth, chatting about the day gone by, our elemental day of air, water, earth and fire now drawing to a close, the last wisps of dissonance smoothed over by the harmonies of a sunset coming together like choral music above our heads.
