El Golfo

El golfo Dark Tarmac roads lead through the mountains. Dotted with single story white box shaped houses with green doors and stubby chimneys. Into the wine growing district. Flat leafy sprigs growing out of the black ash, each one in a little dish hollowed out and surrounded by a foot high wall of lava stone. To protect from the prevailing winds that come to the island. To catch a little bit of rain, if ever it comes. The terrain winds and undulates, a barrenness prevails. Nothing much seems to grow out of the heaps of volcanic detrius. Like a spade that ploughed the field and, hueing up huge chunks, molten matter became rock, over 140 years before, though it could have been last week. We arrive to a small car park and already I can see the breakers rolling in, cresting and enveloping the rocks, kicking up a delicious spume, 2 metres into the air then blown side ways like a curtain of white in the wind. The beach is black, stones, sand, rounded pebbles, pockmarked and smooth. The bed rock, in places sharp, in places worn with the age of water flowing over, constant, unrelenting. The sea falls in then sucks back, there is a constant hiss and rush. The cliffs behind sit in waves and curves where they were laid down. Imagine a glut of thick lava meeting the sea, slowing down, these two mighty monsters embrace, one on fire, devouring, the other cooling and consuming. The molten mass coming to a slow stop, thickening, piling up, folding and setting. I see shapes in the jagged outcrops when we walk back up the path. This scene wouldn't be amiss on the set of a sci fi film. Molten shadows, depthless eyes, twisted faces, beckoning deformed limbs, something from another planet. More than anything in this place I feel something prehistoric. I can see the first creatures coming from the sea to the land. I can see a billion sun rises and sunsets whilst the water rushes and smashes and sucks onto the land. I can see sunshine and moonlight of a thousand ages, I can feel the timeless, the unrelenting, the ageless, the pureness. I feel humbled, privileged, connected. I breath deeply in this place and feel myself connected, a resonance to the centre of my being. After a week away from the ocean, i realise I miss this so much.