Solstice Swim

or everything is waiting for you

I’m at the shack. The bay is still, and except for the line of sand dunes on the east and the green hills to the south, it would be hard to see where the sea ended and the sky began. The sound of the surf carries over the bay. In the dark, the surf can sound as if it’s breaking outside the door, but now, in this pretty dusk, it is over beyond, where it’s meant to be. A cow calls, a low keening, or that’s what it sounds like, probably she’s just got distracted and the rest of her mob have wandered off and she’s wondering where they are. It’s so quiet that the click of claws as James (the corgi for those new) struts along the edge of the veranda makes a little echo. He fluffs his coat and settles at my feet to watch the day fade. The water is pink. Actual pink. A fish rises. All that is left of the day is the reflections cast by the setting sun. It’s so beautiful I hesitate to put my pen to the page. I don’t want to miss the moment it tips toward darkness.

When it’s properly dark I come inside. There’s no music. No chatter. No ringing laughter. In their absence is the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard, the tick, tick of the clock and the spit and crackle of the wood stove as it heats the room. My friends, my laughing, riotous, wonderful friends, left yesterday morning and ever since I’ve been polishing my solitude.

This morning, just after dawn, the bay was dripping in golds and bright orange, a fierce red making me recite the shepherd’s rhyme, red in the morning shepherd’s warning, red at night shepherd’s delight. I took the corgis for a walk and then came back to sit at my newly created work place beneath a chart of the coast line. Out the window the bay was a nature documentary. In one glance I could see a raft of hoary headed grebes, a flotilla of little black cormorants, a family of musk ducks, a lonely great egret, a smattering of gulls, silver and pacific, a harried young sea eagle, and a pair of black swans, elegant as ballet dancers as they dipped their heads beneath the water grazing the bottom of the bay.

In contrast, the falling of the day was so quiet I wondered what I was missing. Was there some imperceptible (to me) shift in pressure this morning which brought the fish to the surface, and the birds to the bay? I’d watched as the little black cormorants formed a corral and the fish leapt, some into beaks, others to freedom. Drama after drama played out on the bay while I sat at my makeshift desk.

As always the bay distracts me, what I was going to write about, what I wanted to tell you about, was our solstice swim. For a few years we’ve been meeting for a solstice swim and this year we managed to combine it with two days at the shack. On the shortest day of the year we got up in the dark and drove through the bush to meet the sun. We walked up the beach in the half light. The sand was crisp with a light frost. Somehow the winter solstice is the beginning for me, a more obvious reset than the summer solstice. And though the winters here aren’t harsh like the northern hemisphere, there is still the same opportunity for stillness and quiet.

Sunrise on the shortest day

As the sun rose we stripped off and walked into the freezing water. Six middle aged women, wearing the scars of life lived. The sun hovered on the horizon, a golden light with no warmth. Kindly there was almost no swell, and the morning was still. The cold gripped, my blood shrank back from the edges. I ached. The ocean asked all the usual questions and as the cold loosened its grip I gave my answers. Yes to change. Yes to acceptance. Yes to wanting more. Yes to feeling it all through every pore. I reached into the sand and grabbed handfuls and scrubbed my winter white skin. After a little while the cold was not so cold and I floated, held between sea and sky.

Afterwards a few of us walked back to the shack. The early wattle dabbed pale yellow highlights through the bush. I carried the salt from the sea on my skin and the word that sat in my head was simple. I was to wait.

And so in the quiet after my friends have gone, after the gift of their laughter and splendid company, I will wait for the wisdom to write this book.

A few other things

A couple of weeks ago an honours student of mine (from my other life which I can hardly remember) found The Sit Spot and sent me an email. It was lovely to hear from her, and she included a link to her essay on the experience of being burnt out by the massive bushfires we’d on the mainland before the floods and before covid. It’s such a great essay On Losing Everything. Jeanette Winterson on prepping your soul. This profile on Pamela Anderson. This Paris Review interview with Geoff Dyer (loved his thoughts on fiction/non fiction). Ocean Vuong’s photographic essay about bringing up his brother after his mother died is far more approachable than his fiction. I’m reading Liars by Sarah Manguso and loving it - but I know most of my book club would hate it, so will come back with an opinion when I’ve finished it next week. That’s all I’ve. I’m off for a walk in the wind and dip in the freezing sea. I hope there’s been some renewal around the solstice for you too.

mmx