Logging in today and I am surprised how much time it has been. I last wrote on the Winter Solstice. This week heralded the Summer Solstice. Half a year has passed. Six months of intermittent visits to the sea, of gradual improvement in fitness and health, so slight it is barely noticeable. This blog has loosely been mapping and tracing a recovery of my health, threaded with connection to the sea. I have been conscious of this blog, waiting. I’ve had thoughts of posting a picture or some words, but they have not seemed substantial or pressing enough. And yet it has snuck up behind me, my recovery. I am doing more things that I want to – that glorious luxury of choice. I can walk to the sea without questioning if I can, or what it will cost. This is worthy of a celebratory post if nothing else. And on Sunday I have the rare and great privilege to talk with Helen Scales – marine biologist, writer, diver, ocean storyteller – at Wealden Literary Festival. In preparation I have been re reading Eye of the Shoal and remembering what it is like to dive, to be held in and by water, the awesome power of the ocean and the wonders that it holds. It is a fine parallel of the surreal world I am currently inhabiting, with one foot in wellness (and the outside world) and one foot out.
