The Georgia Bight

The tide is out on the Georgia Bight, leaving a huge expanse of gently sloping sea floor exposed below a vermilion sky. The lateral rays of a dying sun glint off the damp atmosphere, infusing the entire seascape with a hazy glow. Enjoying my solitude, I wander back and forth over the water's edge with its lackadaisical midsummer waves. Here, just here, the ancient elements – earth, air, fire and water – unite. The vastness of the cosmos and its ever-renewing energy pour forth from this uncluttered terrain. A line of oyster catchers, their red bills a delicate accent to a pink-tinted sea, fly casually over the swash as they head home for the night. Gliding on black and white wings, they seem to enjoy the peace generated by great horizontal lines and planes as much as I do. The birds remind me that the beach is not an architectural abstraction or my private platform to explore the eternal, but is alive in all its elemental compartments.

As the breakers pull seawards and regain their crests, tiny vortices in the thinning water betray small holes in the packed sand, where mollusc and worm burrows tap the life-giving flood. Unseen microscopic cells are swirling around my ankles, providing sustenance for the reclusive excavators residing under my ephemeral footprints. The scattered evidence for a matrix of living protoplasm buried in the sediment reminds me of Rachel Carson's admiring narrative about the humble lugworms, occupying these very Georgia shallows.