Sunday
The adverse wind is howling like a steam hammer and the swell is toiling against it. As soon as an apex glazes she is nearly halted and her energy turns into fuming steam that, like a wedding veil, is hurled behind in a high coil.
By nature, the extreme seeks its superlative and so it occurred to me, that in Doolin, where the swell comes in from the Atlantic unhampered, the blast would be beyond portrayal. In which case my video camera would be a godsend. (LINK: YOUTUBE, DOOLIN DOWN)
And indeed, the towering virgin waves heaved themselves a mile away and next thundered time and again into their own trenches where the wind blustered so much fizz from the spume that the ferocity was masked by a wheezing daze. In other words, a jumble.
Therefore I took it higher up. (LINK: YOUTUBE, DOOLIN UP). What panorama loses in drama, it gains in dimensional imagination, with the lighthouse of Inisheer for good measure.
Tuesday
Today at the meadow, a powerful, yet composed surge, very wide and high, knife-like edge, hardly a breeze and a drop drone that Dopplered away in rolling concert like the aftermath of a thunderstorm. Still the untimely dissonant, a protesting grunge from escaping trapped air being prompted by its own pressure wave.
Seagulls plummeting, deviling in short dares, shaving the crest for fish that are helpless preys in this turmoil. And every now and then a dutiful cormorant, fully taken by his placid rule, winging over the water in air cushion flight.
Again I notice the logic of Nature. The waves approach me through under the surface. I can see it as a wave that moves forward, but also as a surface that is sucked backwards. The taller the wave rises, the stronger the suction, until the bearings come to a balance that subsequently crashes. Then the foam is thrown forward by the accumulated energy, until it is slowed down by the backwash, which it joins in a froth carpet flowing towards taking down the next wave.
The waves arrive in sets. The smaller ones drive the froth carpet towards the coast. The larger therefore come initially clean, but as their spill lengthens the foam zone, the bubbles calligraph the rearing screens with dynamic graffiti until the cast becomes a grizzled frenzy.
And the cormorant is aware of this. Like the gull snatches his snack from the crest, he dives in the waves vanguard where the fish is wrapped up in the turbulence. A perfect coordination.
The only thing we can improve in Nature is ourselves.