Morning Light

I stood upon the edge of the earth as the sun rose. The wind whipped through my hair, stirring the surf, playing through the shrub and grass. The world yawned as the mist rose from the valley, the estuary and the dense woodland. The fields lay silently, warming their bones as the rays reached them over the horizon. Everything was shining with the golden light that only glows in the first few moments of the morning. 

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and the earth did the same; the hay bales in the distance and the stone farm buildings the only sign of civilisation, aside from the path that we were walking. On this clifftop, at the crack of dawn, you could persuade yourself that everything was right with the world; that there was nothing to fear or question; that the only existence was that of the lone walker and their canine companion. 

But slowly, other lives begin to entwine along the hillside. The first morning runner, the couple with their pack of hounds, the farmer in his Land Rover, delivering breakfast to the playful herd of young bulls. Cars begin to wind down the narrow country lanes, a fishing boat appears around the headland, other van dwellers push open the curtains and stretch in the special morning light. 

I turned my face to the sun and I let her sink in, the last rays of summer falling on my eyelids. “Remember this feeling, on darker days,” the sun told me. 

Image by Clare James Photography.