Red Rocks, Millowl. Paintings: Ann Shenfield
By Sue Saliba
Ancient rocks, sea creatures as alien and beautiful and strange as the oldest language. The rock pools with their miniature worlds. And beneath the smooth water, a forest unable to be seen. Or perhaps imagined, not in its entirety or its exquisite detail.
A seal pokes her whiskered face through the blue surface, a cormorant stands like a crucifix on the edge of the rock platform, his black wings outstretched to slow his beating heart. On the sand are the tiny footprints of shorebirds – hooded plovers –whose species might not outlive today’s children.
There’s something familiar and utterly strange about this beach at the end of my road. Red Rocks Beach. Coming to this place awakens a sense of wonder, invites a welcome sort of not-knowing. And yet, there is something else, something that arises and can almost be grasped, but not quite.
Could it be a kind of remembering?
Ancient rocks, sea creatures as alien and beautiful and strange as the oldest language. The rock pools with their miniature worlds. And beneath the smooth water, a forest unable to be seen. Or perhaps imagined, not in its entirety or its exquisite detail.
A seal pokes her whiskered face through the blue surface, a cormorant stands like a crucifix on the edge of the rock platform, his black wings outstretched to slow his beating heart. On the sand are the tiny footprints of shorebirds – hooded plovers –whose species might not outlive today’s children.
There’s something familiar and utterly strange about this beach at the end of my road. Red Rocks Beach. Coming to this place awakens a sense of wonder, invites a welcome sort of not-knowing. And yet, there is something else, something that arises and can almost be grasped, but not quite.
Could it be a kind of remembering?
