Growing up in a coastal village in Cornwall the beaches obviously became a favourite playground.
When the tide ebbs and ribbons of rock glisten with fresh sea water, seaweed, shell fish and rock pools the adventure of looking, searching, getting wet and clambering slowly transform over the year into a knowledge of not what lives upon the rocky shore, but how the rocks live.
The undulations, sudden gaps, slippery surface, hardness and challenge all seem to merge until the day comes when you don’t clamber over them on all fours, or balance precariously over a drop that sheers away from you into a messy looking froth turned brown with disdain, but jump. Your feet your safety, your arms your balance, your eyes your pathway and you run from one to another in leaps and bounds. Run with the smell of salt around you picking your way through the seaweed, sliding now and then with your coat catching the wind. You run across rocks that know you. To the ebbed tide. To the seagulls bobbing on the water. To the last rock, the very edge of the known world and without any triumphal music you bend down and scoop up some water..
and somehow, somewhere in the panting and the colours of the sky an indelible memory and a useful skill become part of your being.