As I’m writing this, it’s the most glorious evening at John Muir Country Park, the kind of evening you dream about all winter. Sunny and warm with sparkling light; an evening where you want to be outdoors. I’m observing this from the car, in the car park, as Richard and I are taking turns for our solo walks. Rather than being out for a few hours, enjoying this weather, we’ll probably have an hour’s walking at most, as there’s only so long that anyone (including the lads) wants to sit in the car – especially when it’s warm. So, clearly not an ideal set up, but, as I mentioned in a previous post, this has turned into my writing time. I’m sitting with the door open, listening to the birds, and there are worse ways to spend an hour on a sunny evening.
There are evenings when the light just catches your breath. This was one of those evenings. We’d timed this walk at Yellowcraig for low tide – something I’d always advise if you’re visiting for the first time as this beach is so wide and expansive at low tide, while the tide line is high at a very high tide. They’re two entirely different beach walks.
During the locked down weeks and months of 2020, I walked to this harbour often. And whenever I was here, there were always other people doing the same: standing at the sea wall, gazing out to sea, or sitting on a bench, quietly absorbing the view across the harbour.
Every so often we’ll have a beach walk where the light just surprises us. ‘Surprise’ isn’t really a strong enough word. Astounds us is probably a better description. Indeed, this has happened a lot recently with some incredible sunsets. But I’m really referring to those days when the skies are gloomy; those ‘nothing-y’ days with low cloud cover, when you don’t expect any light drama, and then suddenly, there it is.
I don’t tend to share many throwbacks on Instagram, but this one was an exception – and it’s also encouraged me to dig back into the archives from the last few years and revisit (and share) some older photos with a fresh edit. This was John Muir Country Park on March 8 2020, and I hadn’t shared this photo at the time as the highlights were so fierce. It was one of those photos you take in the moment, and the light isn’t right, but you can’t resist capturing it anyway.
It’s been just over a month since my last post, and I’m not sure how this happened. While it feels as if lockdown has lasted for a very long time indeed, when it comes to work and deadlines and cramming things into a week, June seemed to fly past. Anyone else feeling this? Lockdown has created a pattern where every piece of work has taken longer to do, and I was creating Steller stories too, so the blog took a backseat. But here we are on July 3, and this feels like a big date in Scotland as after all these weeks (almost fifteen weeks) of staying close to home, we can travel again. Just knowing that we can get in the car and go places, and return to our much-missed coastal walks, feels so good.