Estuary

From the rocky basalt prominence of the headland I look down on the flux and flow of the estuary where sea and river meet and mix. But here is a new sight: into the crisp, silver-blue of the waves rolling in from the sea there fans out a broad gush of murky brown. After recent heavy rains the silt of ochre clays and red earth washed down from the fields and hills has supercharged the river and pushed out into the sea.

‘Estuary’ — aestus (L) : boiling, commotion. the ebb and flow of the tide. Estuary, the twice daily commotion of currents, when the inflow of sea and the outflow of river engage in a boyish wrestle, which, on this occasion at least, the river seems to have won.

I often walk the shores of this wide estuary. In its dome of sound echo the cries of gulls, the plangent queries of the curlew and the pipings of the oystercatcher and his nimbler shore-companion, the redshank. The carrion crow is never far away, with his bully-boy snarls and threats.

A watercolour sketch of the estuary shore

Looking across….

At low tide the slick quicksilver of the river’s meanders slip and slide seawards. The sleek flanks of the sandbanks stretch their limbs.

Low Tide 1. This and the following four paintings are watercolours on a gesso ground

There is a calm beauty in these horizontals, these planes of light, panes of reflected sky, hovering like a mirage.

Low Tide 2

The tidal estuary has its own slow choreography, a pavane of approach and retreat. It has its own mischief too. I have stood watching over the flat sands the distant blades of river light only to find, the next minute it seems, the tide visibly advancing on my walking boots.

Low Tide 3 from the shore of Sandy Hirst

At high tide the brimming estuary becomes the sea itself, quiet or wind-whipped, a salt tang on the air. It brings with it a cargo of flotsam…detached branches, whole tree-trunks and swathes of weed and plant debris. I have found in the strandlines clumps of sycamore leaves where there are no sycamores, washed across from the plantations on the far side of the estuary.

Low Tide 4

I become aware that my own breath is a human enactment of the slow inhalation and exhalation of the estuary. The rhythm of the tide is my own rhythm too….the way it fills and empties, reveals and deletes, exposes and annuls, the way it summons and forgets.

Low Tide 5

However long I stand on this shore, like the tide I am never still, moment always giving way to memory, the present melting into the past. It is, of course, a one-way attachment. River and sea are old hands at this perpetual ebb and flow, from millennium to millennium. It will be going on, indifferent, long after my tide has ebbed for the last time.

The gulls inscribe their italics in the sky, and a sudden epiphany of swans — two of them, feathered snow, heading down the estuary to the open sea.

Dark Estuary

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I end on a note of whimsy brought about by my mistaking one thing for another. For example, when a brown leaf blows across my path I often think it is some small creature, a low flying wren or a toad.

What I Saw

I took the path by the shore
where the bright wind played,
and this is what I saw:

a smooth and glistening rock
slumped in the shallows like a seal

a washed-up creel
I supposed was a giant lobster

an old mooring post
standing still as a heron

a shadow flitting up a pine trunk
I fancied was a squirrel

the hulk of an upturned boat
stranded like a whale

a fluttering brown leaf
I took to be a toad

a tree-trunk beached and bleached
gaping like a great white shark

a plastic bag in the sand
I mistook for a jellyfish.

I came to the edge of the sea
and peered into a rockpool.
I saw a face I thought was me.

Perhaps I should just get my eyes tested.