Today I woke at 5.45 because that was the time of the tide. But it was still black outside and rain was battering down. My bed was cozy and I rolled over, went back to sleep. The rest of the day it rained. The sky was thick with cloud, the mountains disappearing, shadows of grey, peaked layers on the horizon. Rain spat at the windows, agitated the puddles. The tide pulled back, bladderwrack left in yellow clumps on the empty sand. A curlew pecked on the beach and a shag preened on the edge of the emerging sand bank. Bit by bit the bank emerged, tiger stripes emerging from retreating grey, growing, colonising the centre of the estuary stream. In the afternoon, we went out. Up behind the houses again, up into the woods. We climbed past a broken slate wall, out onto an outcrop of rock. The landscape was stretched below us, a space we’d come to know from ground level now laid flat and tiny, for us to look down on and assemble, all the small paths, the walks joined up. Fairbourne on the horizon, low limbed, the marsh in front of it, water filled cracks making round edges of moss. Barmouth across the water, boats on the sand, dunes pushing into the narrowing neck of the Mawddach. How is the neck so narrow with all that force of water flooding daily? Why has the long arm of Fairbourne not been washed away? They say by 2050, Fairbourne will be drowned. Endless amber curls of bracken fell away beneath our feet. It started to rain, whipping hard, beads smattering my glasses. We could see the clouds, the shaky air on the horizon all around. We walked down the mountain, grass so sodden it floated atop inches of water. We walked home by the road, curving under cackling trees, everything washed and jewel bright in the wet.
Bonnie Radcliffe 