Castelejo, southern Portugal

Free creature of the sea

I examined the boulders that lay around the beach. Jagged edges, like teeth smoothed by attrition, projected out of the ground at an angle, their deep light-absorbing blackness creating a stark contrast to the sand. They were composed of tightly-packed layers, and the broken-off edges were very pointy- like stacks of paper with the corners fanned out. When I applied a minimum of pressure, they splintered into dusty charcoal-like fragments, and their chalkboard surfaces gleamed alluringly as I scratched the edge of one rock against another.

Walking along the fascinating coastline, I was entranced by the cliffs, which were largely composed of this rock (that I thought of, in the absence of ready information, as coal). I scrambled up one of them (imagine climbing a heap of charcoal fragments- fine dust mixed with splintered pieces that poke your skin enjoyably), sinking slightly and sending clouds down with each cushioned footstep, and soon reached a private ‘landing’ that levelled out into gentler slopes, flanking an unobtrusive little river of water that snaked between two hills.

I tested the rock to see how easily it fragmented, pulling at the onion-skin-like pieces and prying at ever-deeper layers. The uppermost layers of rock came apart with little effort. Evidently they had weathered away in position, with grooves forming between the fragments, leaving the pieces of the puzzle intact and nestled in place, ready to preoccupy a playful child. Amazingly, entire chunks of large rock could be displaced with little difficulty. As I pulled at a piece halfway down a modest slope, the entire chunk above it shivered, and eventually came loose. I felt as though I was disassembling the mountain! I kept pulling and pulling, till fairly large pieces lay in a precarious pile just above my feet, and the fear of bringing a cascade upon my toes restrained me.

I descended. A pile of sand that had accumulated at the base of this particular hill (not my doing) was all warmed up by the sun- I flopped into it and lay there perfectly happy, and dug little trenches for my body to rest in, and piled sand over my limbs, covering my legs and back.

After a while, I continued along the beach, occasionally passing busier points that lay adjacent to car parks. During one particularly empty stretch, with a great expanse of lovely sand and long white wave fronts that approached the shore unbroken for tens of metres, I was struck by the sheer beauty of the cliffs- stretching grandly up from the beach, gleaming in the sun, punctuated by clumps of vegetation. I lay down in sheer bliss, and looked sideways at the unobstructed view all the way down the beach. I noticed that the sand surface was incredibly flat- the waves from the previous high tide had left a wonderfully level plane that sloped gently towards the water. With my eye close to the ground, and the sand surface almost at eye level, I saw little mounds that barely jutted out of this great even expanse, at roughly evenly-spaced intervals- and realised that they were the displaced piles of sand left by someone’s footprints. To think that a beach could be so flat and untouched that the only just-noticeable irregularities, all the way to the distant hills, are footprints!!

I examined the individual bits of sand. They were a mixture of colours- orange, colourless and transparent, and black (from the charcoal-like rocks), merging into a tortoise-shell-cat-like orange. The orange fragments tended to be more shard-like (with acute-angled corners, and quite planar), whereas the colourless grains looked just like sugar or salt- roughly cuboid and quite three-dimensional. I thought it profoundly intriguing that rocks of different mineral composition and molecular structure gave rise not only to vastly distinct formations at the scale of large cliffs, but also to differences at a much finer level, when eroded into tiny grains.

When I was warm enough, I plunged back into the sea. While wading out, I checked to see where the rocks lay, to ensure that my stretch was clear. The water was transparent, revealing harmless golden sand. As the waves travelled further inland, their amplitude was constrained and their ferocity increased. So, upon entering the water, I focused on cutting through the initial, highly-variable turbulence, and swam out to greater depths, where the waves were gentler and more predictable. If the sea had been calm and untroubled, I would have been able to set the pace- alternately swimming and treading water, floating on my back, and using a variety of strokes. With the constant arrival of large waves, however, I had to entrain my strokes and breaths to the frequency of wave motion.

As each wave front loomed, I tracked it, took my breath, and waited for the right moment to plunge under. As I gained familiarity with the frequency of wave onset, I played a game in which I observed the approaching wave, and waited till the last moment to duck underwater, as it swept powerfully overhead. It was wonderfully thrilling- watching the frothing white line of foam in its contained fury, getting closer and closer, anticipating the impending crash- and avoiding it with an assured dive.

As I plunged through each wave, I could feel the intensified energy surge past, particularly overhead. I was wearing contact lenses so kept my eyes shut underwater to avoid losing them, and even through closed lids, the levels of ambient light provided an accurate indicator of my position- when I first plunged in, slicing beneath a substantial mass of water, it would be relatively dark; then as the wave passed and my head neared the surface, it got brighter.

On some occasions, when the wave was particularly turbulent and churned up a blanket of frothing, bubbling foam, I could detect the sheer whiteness of the waterscape though my lids, and knew that I was in the midst of a sparkling, incredibly complex, sunlit water paradise, just before breaking the surface. I emerged to see the bursting remnants of bubbles- as though my head had been propelled through a layer of exuberant clouds into welcoming sunlight- and quickly spotted the location of the oncoming wave front, in order to pace myself and do it again. I was confident about being able to hold my breath for several extra beats if necessary, which sometimes happened when I was caught unawares by a wave. This extra buffer of air made the difference between feeling out of breath and battered by the waves, and feeling exhilarated, a free creature of the sea.

Wandering further down the shore, I came across tide pools in the fields of rock left uncovered by the low tide. They were populated by little red clumps of plant-like creatures (they contracted when touched- I don’t know whether they were plants or animals), barnacles, and molluscs. Some of these pools had long windy patterns traced in the shallow layer of sand that had collected on the rocks. At the end of each of these intricately curling, intersecting lines, was a mollusc, and the molluscs were arranged along the water’s edge of each individual pool. I realised that the curves marked the routes taken by the creatures, as they eased their way around on their single sucker foot, pushing sand aside into two side-flanking trails. Think of the patterns that SUVs leave in the dust of a Californian desert, and what they would look like to an overhead observer. After patient meanderings around minor hills and clumps of teddy bear cholla, funny little organisms are regularly seen to spill out of a carrier parked at the terminus of each sand trail, pausing to hold things up to their eyes, occasionally orienting towards each other. At some termini, several carriers are spaced at equal distances apart, and their tidy streams of arrival and departure through narrow passages belie a system of organisation that is surprisingly efficient and logical.

As I went further along the beach, the number of people decreased. I turned yet another corner of layered rock- and was stopped, stunned, in my tracks by the sight that lay before me.

I had reached a little sheltered bay- not much more than several tens of metres across, framed by a semi-circle of sandy-coloured cliffs. It had an intimate, embracing feel- like a haven into which one is ushered, designed to awe and simultaneously engage, with its comprehensibly human-sized scale. In the middle of the circle, flanked by the cliff guardians and lapping blue waters, was a Tower of Black Stone. It was roughly obelisk-shaped, with a pedestal-like base, composed of horizontal bands of rock that tapered up to a point at the very top. My impression was that of a monument to the gods- a place of whispered rituals and sun-kissed splendour, kaleidoscopic robes and dangling talismans.

One could imagine man, both primitive and contemporary, paying pilgrimage to this spot, dazzled by the illuminated tower, entranced by the radiant sunlight that threw shadows upon its layers and rendered surrounding cliffs in high relief.