Pebble Dash & Pick. Tuesday 1st October 2024.
Not quite first light but not far off it, the light bouncing back down off the clouds, not yet pink. Running on pebbles (as opposed to tarmac) gives your whole being a work out. From the stabilising muscles in your feet and ankles to your eyes and ears as they assess the ground around you, crunching under foot, some shingle packed harder than others, you get used to the sounds, learn the difference between large and small pebbles, the densely packed and the recently wave action sifted and loose. A sensory feast after slumbers abstinence, a transitionary space from that world to this one. The sea is low but still loud and the birds are sifting the pickings on the strand-line – not yet molested into retreat by human activity. This is their space until the human traffic starts in earnest. We are interlopers.
Today we decide on a one way run to the pier due to time constraints. Life with children, life with work impinges. It takes 28 mins dead to the pier. It’s the stops, squats and swoops picking rubbish that make the timing for the run to the pier aslong as it is. One of these days we should do it without picking up the hundreds of items large and small and compare run times. But that’s hard to do. Compelled to pick up? Absolutely. I’d like to think I can scoop up a piece of discarded net or coffee cup like an eagle plucking a fish from some tranquil lake but in reality my movement is more halting, less smooth. I am recovering my functional movement from this sedentary life one piece of misplaced manufactured tat at a time.
Todays bingo rang for a full unopened 400ml water bottle and untouched packet of in Ibuprofen. Both miracles of modernity. Key components of an emergency kit. One could significantly relieve pain and discomfort armed with these two items in a way unimaginable at times and places in history, even right now in specific places where these luxuries are scarce, even denied.
I am reminded of the remarks of a local man who scours the streets (picks up waste like us) for that which has embodied energy and deep value when viewed through a true undistorted lens. A man who cares deeply for that which is carelessly, flippantly discarded. This man remains nameless, he does this work of recovery (my description) through a deep sense of duty mixed with equal part compulsion, not recognition of any sort. He does allow a small wry smile of humour occasionally when it comes to discarded dregs of bottled water which he will collect and drink in any state, seal broken or not. He will say soemthing along the lines of (for I have heard this many times) “I long for the day that a rich man wants this water that he once put no value on at all, and I drink it down in front of him whilst he fondles his filthy luca uselessly. Money is nothing and is the root of all evil”. It’s hard for me not to agree.
Running home in the pink light of fuller dawn, we are joined by small finch or tit, flying soemwhat desperately alongside us, wings beating furiously like that of a hummingbird. It arcs between benches, leading us along. Is it lost or merely admiring the public art recently put up, more recently torn and graffitied? Is it leading us somewhere like the honeyguide picaforme birds I’ve only seen in documentary films? What symbiosis is this bird possibly trying to encourage us into? None of course, but it’s early, the light is magic and that where a mind can wonder when one lets it.