Walking down the stumble path, every stepping stone tried that offers foothold and each mistake painfully remembered. Unlocked with safe steps and enjoyed with feet dancing. Each day more flowers, startling blue gentians, timid violets and naked primroses.
Down at the rocks familiar shapes stand out in the greys. Rocks with teeth faces, singled out by tons of raindrops. Rocks rolled smooth by stones rolled round on rocks. Rocks scarred by the mini-meanders of the patient overflow of holes. Big rocks, once landed in the fierce force of tempest, refusing to give up their hard-won place. In every crack and crevice a deposit of rounded pebbles, like pocket money, small change for the ocean. Ferocious vortexes foam-text fleeting phrases on the flooded features of the flinty fond.
At the reef shy ripples climb into sharp combs that flash a golden kelp garden through the wide lens at the height of their moment. The frill dancing before it crawls into a carpet of snow white bubbles. Two cormorants, their wings spread, drying in the breeze.
After a week of off-shore wind and abundant sunshine the water is still very murky. When I arrive Dusty is doing her rounds at the reef. I'm not sure if she's resting or hunting. For hunting the area is too small and for resting her surfacing too irregular. A combination seems unlikely. I decide on something new. Usually I let her know I'm there by throwing a few stones on a submerged rock so the sound will carry further. Now I'm throwing in a stone each time she surfaces. Resist a trigger happy tendency to keep on throwing. And after five stones it works! She pops up right before me.
I've been out there so many times, but always found it hard to home in onto the right place. Every rock grows grey and lumpy by the distance and the low viewpoint. But Dusty manages to navigate under water with nil visibility to exactly where I stand. She must have a sonic blueprint of P'watch in her head.
She swims away, turns and I see her very dark, just under the surface. I catch her through my viewfinder, but the camera refuses to focus. And gone she is.
I see no more of her, which mostly means she's gone. I turn my attention to the telephoto but all of a sudden, in the corner of my eye, I sense her diving right before me. Why was she there, what did she do? This is no random animal act. If she was a person you naturally would question her motive. Was she watching me from under through the lens of a wave? Can she sonar me from under water? So trivial an act, so hard my questions. We tend to be blind to our own unawares. Again it's back to the drawing board.