sunset

I’m tired now.

Today I walked eight miles by road, a big looping path under the mountain and over the moor, finishing up where I’d parked down by the storm beach. The island is filling up for Summer. The caravan park tonight is bubbled with tents, and in the late evening, campers, young and single, sat in circles and drank and talked and ate. The tide was low, and the beach was full of walkers, reflected in the wet sand. High over the cathedral cliffs, paragliders floated, five of them, hovering impossibly up against the white sky, floating up and up and not getting any higher.

It made me want to be up there. I want to be able to float. I want to be able to trust the thermals, to jump off the mountainside, and know the air will hold me. I want to do it, one time, before I die.

I don’t actually want to die at all, I think. I only want to float, suspended but free, high over the island, catching the last of the light.