Blind faith with eyes wide shut

August 30, 2023, 1:36 pm , by Richard Lutz

With closed eyes, Richard Lutz takes a coastal walk

My beach is an empty beach

It’s full of light and weather

It stretches north from the village of Maidens to a lava flow headland called Barwhin Point

It points into the bay. That’s Holy Isle perched on the horizon. It’s a Buddhist retreat.

Sometimes, on this beach, I close my eyes and take a sightless step, then two. And then two more. I wait to smack into a brick wall, a big plate of glass, fall into a sudden chasm or get ravaged by rabid dogs. It never happens. I’m now up to fifty steps walking blind. It’s difficult because the natural response is to keep eyes open. To see what’s around, above and beneath me. It’s our main sense. Without sight, I feel the constant breeze, if not a wind, from the southwest, funnelled between the crescent of the Ayrshire shore and

the mountains of Arran. With eyes shut, there’s the shushing sound of the sea and its sharp tang of salt. And there’s the tetchy cry of an oystercatcher patrolling the shoreline. I know, though walking without eyes, that out in the water a pair of swans paddles in the morning sun and a heron still as a statue, is waiting, waiting, waiting. Gulls and gannets swirl above.

When I open my eyes, I’m at wooden steps heading upwards. They are constantly being repaired as they’re worn by wind, sea and sand.

It leads to a quiet hardscrabble wood that’s pummelled by weather but never defeated. It’s tough, bent by wind, knarled.

And within it, a twisted pine. A pine so whipped by the westerlies that one of its branches has curled around to seek light and air from the shore.

You can only see this radical curve when you approach from the north. It resembles an eye. Here’s a closer look:

Below the tree, back on the beach, a low lying bush blushes with a lilac coloured flower. It’s called sea rocket.

It looks delicate. But it’s as tough as the trees above it. It is salt resistant and withstands temperatures of -23C. It stabilises sand dunes, stops erosion. It’s bitter tasting. But can be used sparsely in salads. Its seeds are borne away by wind and the sea. And its flowers, which decorate coastlines everywhere, can change from lilac to white to purple. If my eyes are not shut on a beach, I’ll always spot sea rocket- a resilient survivor on the world’s shores.