THE THIN BLUE LINE
“I’m walking a narrow band of coastal wildness, a partition shared with seabirds and seals and the roar of the crashing waves.”
I’M WALKING a thin line between land and sea; a hinterland between two worlds. To my left is the North Sea, vast and untamed and perpetual. To my right is the land, shape-shifting with every mile into different guises – fishing village, seaside town, agricultural field, urban sprawl. And in between, where my feet tramp and I lay my head at night, is a narrow band of coastal wilderness, a partition shared with seabirds and seals and the roar of the crashing waves. It feels special, as if this slender strip is a haven shielded from outside influences – a place where you walk from dawn to dusk and let your everyday worries float away on the salty sea breeze.
In her beautifully poignant book , Raynor Winn describes her coastal wanderings as being “drawn to the edge, a strip of wilderness where we could be free to let the answers come, or not”, walking a tightrope “between tame and wild, lost and found, life and death”. There is a similar sense of duality to
