It was beautiful and wholesome. For at most an hour, I let the world of human travails fall away. Here there was no politics, no anger, no confused shouting.

The world was full of sounds and smells, strange shapes and the scars of yesterday, and I walked among those things.

I felt a sense of my own history and fancied perhaps the ghosts of aged fisherman, poachers and vagabonds had disguised themselves as birds and mist. They looked at me, maybe even knew me, but apart from the song on the far side of the breeze I could not hear them speak.

I looked out towards the sea, and thought of all those folk who have come and gone from these shores. I thought of the fear and pain that causes us to flee the land, and then the longing and desire we all have for a home. Out there in the middle of the river where none would build a home, I sensed that in the end it was in places like this that the human spirit is housed.

Shortly after I took the picture below I left. A life of family and the promise of good company called me back. I felt nourished and invigorating by nature. My head was cleared of so many dull and burdensome concerns. The trivial bickering of those who sow discord and indifference seemed a million miles away. I was at one with myself, no longer set apart from nature, I felt a bond with humanity that was stronger than the chains of the sea and her tides, but nonetheless born of it.