Contemplative Inquiry

watching the waters

in the cool of this morning

a feeling of home

9.15 pm 25 June 2026. 32C/89.6F, after a peak of 38C/100.4F earlier in the day. Elaine and I sheltered in our air-conditioned hotel room for much of the day. (We don’t have it at home). We ventured out towards sunset, which was once again magnificent. But we did not stay out for long. Some people seemed comfortable and were enjoying the evening heat. Our age and health conditions made it more problematic. I for one was became dizzy and ennervated.

This shouldn’t be happening in an Atlantic coastal town 51 degrees north. The heatwave of the last several days should be the final, local, experiential proof of the climate crisis many of us have anticipated since at least the later 1980s.

Depressingly I can predict  that many people won’t see it that way, held in the malignant trance of a manufactured denial. For me, this is the scariest aspect of the crisis: the influence of insanely short term vested interests and a general human talent for not recognising inconvenient truths.

Elaine and I go home today in more clement weather after an overnight storm. It has been a memorable visit, one that had room both for pleasure and a certain weirdness.

Today I’m on the English side of the Bristol Channel/Mor Hafren (1), in Weston-super-Mare. The tide goes out a long way at Weston, and this early morning image is not unusual. The picture faces in to Brean Down, memorably depicted in Dion Fortune’s occult novel The Sea  Priestess.

This is the first time I have been to the English west country coast for three years. It’s longer since I’ve been to Weston. This visit has some of the features of a homecoming. Crows on the beach are a familiar, welcome and well remembered feature.

I’m out early (6-7 am) and there’s limited human activity as yet, though I am glad to see some. At this time I find  a stillness here that includes the town itself, both as it meets the coast, and inland, as it begins to slope upwards from sea level.

I’m gradually reconnecting with a place I have known all my life, discovering how I and the town have continued to age and change. This is the first time I’ve appeared with a walking stick. I’m glad to find that I’m fine with walking on the beach. For me, Weston is a place layered with memory and changing perceptions and understandings. It has depth as well as extension. It’s good to be here.

(1) The names,  geography and something of the spirit of place are described at:

MOR HAFREN

It is 21 June, the morning of the Summer Solstice where I live. I feel refreshed and enlivened by a morning walk that became a solar celebration. I went out at 6.45 am, just short of two hours after dawn, leaning in to the influence of the sun in the here and now  A time when the sun was high in the sky, but the temperature still a friendly kind of cool.

Neither I nor the camera could look straight into the sun. I observed and experienced the sun through indirect effects. This was a physical, naturalistic, rather than metaphysical connection with the solstice morning. I was an inside rather than outside observer and can show my own presence too through my shadow on the path. I was part of the morning, this dance of light and shade.

In some places I saw sharp distinctions of light and shade and in others subtle ones. In both cases I was aware of a nurturing power, that of the sun in this time and place. I know that the sun can be different  – either relentlessly fierce or seemingly absent. I felt blessed that I could experience an hour of gentle solar celebration on this solstice day.

It’s as if these birches are drawing  me further into their world. A Nemeton has been growing in silent slowness beside our home.  As the the birches continue to grow, I notice a change in me.

These trees have decisively burst out of their official role as ‘landscaping’. They have shown themselves to me as vividly alive in this more than human world. In response I’m feeling a stronger embodied link to the birches, beyond simple recognition.

This sense of connection, which Elaine also feels, has been growing for some time, and I have written about it before (1,2,3). But it’s only recently that I have sensed an invitation from this group of trees to deepen the connection. Now, I can envision an active sacred space – a Druid grove. A place for energetic attunememt with the trees and of contemplation.

(1)

WAXING

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2026/03/25/lady-day-birch-in-full-leaf/

(3) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/06/11/the-feeling-of-home/

Everything changes. I took the picture above at 6.05 am, at the start of an early morning walk. The clouds are a soft grey with clear blue sky visible at certain points. By 6.41 the clouds are dark and roiling, moving quickly through the sky. The light spaces are unstable, though there are hints of the rising sun’s power.

Early morning walks, honouring the high summer’s gift of extended light, are a recent innovation for me at this time of my life. I now feel fully recovered from my falls and proficient in the use of my walking stick. My 77th birthday has inspired a more programmatic approach to diet and exercise.  June 2026 so far has been relatively cool and this has been good for my energy and motivation.

I notice that these walks are not especially meditative. I do not stop and look much. I don’t have a full direct sense of interconnectedness and non-separation, though I hold these as a strong conviction. I’m more goal-oriented and that narrows my horizons in the now. I am still in the now, of course, because there’s there’s nowhere else to be. But my subjective experience feels different, more focused on pragmatic concerns.

Often, as the summer develops and the Solstice is not far off, I celebrate clear contrasts of light and shade. This year, and this morning in particular, I have found these contrasts softened and more variable. Light and shade are harder to distinguish from each other. They don’t stand out in an obvious way. Yesterday evening, at 9.15 pm a little before sunset, I had the same sense at the end of the day. The interplay of light effects, and the rapid change (not shown in a still image) gave the whole sky a look of creative turbulence. I am happy to embrace this energy.