A lullaby of black on black

Seduced by dusk. Probably the most beautiful evening in my life. Nature teaches me not to fall into the trap of the holiday blues

Welcome to this week’s short tale from the Cava vineyards in northern Spain.

This latest story was inspired on a visit to Portugal in May and was edited home here, in the land of Cava vineyards. I have recorded it too, (I love reading out loud) with an adlib introduction. The story is called—

A Lullaby of Black on Black

It was just a just short drive back to the apartment on the last evening of our holiday. I could feel a slight downturn in my tummy, signifying the end of rest by the sea. Maybe my husband was thinking the same; hoping to stretch the last hours (like a dose of medicine might alleviate the symptoms of holiday blues) he made a spontaneous decision, not to turn left, but to drive on further downhill, a couple of minutes more, for a last evening’s glimpse of the lake.

Only when we stepped out of the car, into a pool of silence, the car lights and engine off, did I realise that there was still an eyelash of daylight left; night hadn’t quite sunk into the pores of the damp sea air. We walked along the wooden pathway at the water’s edge. We walked slowly, so slowly even the mosquitos kept up with us, circling our ears like tinnitus but weirdly, for once in my life, they didn’t bother me at all.

We came to a stop, elbows on the wooden fence and stared at the view, both of us wrapped in the silk of dusk. There was no moon. There were silhouetted pine trees topping rolling hills to our right, that sloped downwards to the water. They stood out against the sky. To our left there was a faint reflection of orange on the lake. The lake was like glass, reflecting a dusky sky. There was a stillness and an undeniable sense of deep peace.

Breathtakingly still. We parked the car and sank into the magic

The sweet air was caressed by a woman singing from some expensive restaurant in the distance. The soft lighting floated in vertical trails with melted edges towards us, fading, eventually into nothing. Her voice ebbed and flowed across the water, sometimes fading into night itself.

We watched and breathed in mother nature’s take on black. I have always loved black because it can complement every colour with such ease and it is so versatile. It can be as empathetic and modest as it can be rich and dramatic. What other colour is so good at both funerals and birthday parties? And I have always believed until this day, that the reason for its popularity is that there is only one tone of black. I’ll take that back. I now acknowledge that there are fifty shades of grey, as there are fifty shades of black.

‘Sunset ignites the smouldering embers of the moonlit soul’. -Virginia Alison.

There was a gap in the rounded pine trees. A stork with its long-outstretched wings appeared flying away through the middle, towards the sigh of light. In case I hadn’t seen it, my husband nudges me gently and points without speaking, as if he too was afraid to break the spell. The bird was flying away from us, as if it knew it was closing our holiday. I felt as if it were teaching me to accept the end of my holiday with gratitude, with grace and to remind myself, how lucky I am. In that second, its wings were so long they filled the gap in the trees, stretching from one outline of a tree to the other, creating a singular piece of ornate black stencil-scape down to the water.

Everyone else had gone home. The lake beach bar had shut an hour or more before and yet the night was still warm, so we stayed, staring at the lake that runs in a self-made parallel line behind the beach.

The view was a lullaby of black on black. Just when I thought I was seeing genuine black, there was another black standing beside the other. Matt black embossed on black. Black velvet on black silver with elegant curving edges and everything was so still, but for the occasional jumping fish.

The spell we sunk into just moments before the birds flew into our lives

Suddenly, and from near our feet, something scurried out of the bank, onto the lake and skimmed the water. Maybe we had frightened it. The glass lake became divided by its trail, cutting into the middle in a diagonal line like the hand of a clock, gradually fading, when the creature seemed to have gone for a swim underwater. We still have no idea what it was.

While we watched the clock hand fading to nothing, distracted no doubt, by the mystery of the scurrying animal, the stork returned. It appeared from nowhere, homed in on the bank and flew in towards us. Its fine silhouette, dressed in midnight, caught us in wonder. I’m not sure if I gulped for air or held my breath, as it started to fold its seamless, stepped-edged wings in on landing. It was a marvel of black velvet on black silver. Then its mate landed too, no more than four meters in front of us. They made no sound landing on the silt, with such, finesse and poise. They stood facing each other, their faces no more than a wingspan apart, like soulmates do. I wanted to grab my phone and snap a picture but didn’t dare move. Move? I didn’t dare breathe. So close. So black. So real. So clear. My heart, our hearts were there, caught in their weightless landing.

Whether they realised the creature had run into the lake or they had spotted us and wanted more privacy, we will never know, but the first one, deftly opened its huge black wings, flew up and away towards the, by-now-pitch-black woods behind us, where the lake tapers off.

Without hesitation or murmur, the second bird, its lover I swear, upped and followed suit a split second later, its outline another perfect work of art as it lifted its huge wings. This was no award winning Chinoiserie art gallery collection in 3D. This was the real earth, the real night and we were truly smitten, if not utterly head over heels. Overwhelmed by grace, by beauty, mother nature, by the purr of flight, we remained lost for words.

When we did find words, we both admitted we wished we had taken a photo. It would have won any prize. We also agreed you could wait for hours, days, weeks to see anything so inspiring, and also, that we would have missed the magic if we had even so much as attempted to grab a camera.

‘Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, … the fields the colour of love’. —Jack Kerouac

It left me wondering if I was up to the challenge of writing it instead. On the flight home, sitting on the plane I faced the challenge, sitting wondering where to begin and how you can ever honour such a moment with only words and no pictures. One thing I was sure of, was that if I attempted to bring the moment alive again, it might at least live fresher in my mind by doing so.

I can’t deny I want that elusive magic back. It was so delicious, I could have captured it, eaten it, drunk it down, or given the chance, put it in an envelope and sealed the edges for another day. I wanted to make it ours. I am guilty of wishing to capture the moment. How greedy of me. That peep of night was a jewel to be treasured not coveted.

From the plane we see marshland, salt flats, and sand dunes where people have made their homes, proud of their very loved asbestos-roofed-huts. They smiled when they explained that they had lived there since they were born. We could just make out a line of their oyster nets standing in the tide. They have been told to leave but refuse and face eviction. Their lives, their waterside homes. Living and breathing the sea?

Tourism is growing and others tell them to leave, to smarten the town’s image, but I can’t help but question, who has the right, to claim the dunes after they have fished for decades there?

As the wheels lift off the runway I sense a sadness that we couldn’t spend more time by the lake, not as sun is setting, as often we do on holiday, but after, when you think the day is auctioned off to night, just then, on the cusp, on the salvage of day; I wish I had listened more to the breath of the earth, to the fish jumping, watched ripples of black silver, and waited for another prayer of wings.

I vow to return to the lake as we shake our heads in disbelief at that night! The intimacy and magic of it all! The memory still lifts my spirit and always will, like the first kiss.

Well, I do know one thing, writing this and editing some weeks later, even without photographs I have enhanced the image of that night and it will live on in that part of my brain which is the life gallery, like a stained-glass window that you stand in awe of. I hope more than anything though that I have recreated at least a little of that night’s magic for you too, ambitious though that desire is.

I would love to hear from you, if you have seen such evening magic in black, if you liked or didn’t like the audio- how could I improve it and things like that. I hope to get better at writing and reflection is a marvellous tool. I thank you so much for reading. You perhaps, will never know just how much it means to me.

Some wonderful writers on Substack who really know what they are doing are:

Holly Starley and her three-part story ‘Sharks’ mouths’, writing from the US/Mexican border, Susie Mawhinney who has a wonderful way of bringing a whole meadow alive in your living room with a thread ‘of inextinguishable sense of hope’ weaves its way through everything she has ever written, Kendall Lamb , and her very moving ‘Butterfly in a parking lot’ poem written in conversation with her inquisitive six-year-old. Carmine Hazelwood reminds us, soothingly, how ‘we are in the arms of gravity, that constant lover holding you so close to the skin of the world. There is a path to be walked. A ground to carry you. A sky to expand into.’ Emily Charlotte Powell writes her ‘Because Creativity guest letter’ celebrating the ability to write words that ‘hold both sorrow and wonder, science and soul’, writes with rebecca hooper a lesson in accepting a liquidity of vision , a lack of control’. She talks, from the Orkneys, of the intriguing, complex relationship an artist or write has between the body, mind and mood and the brush, paper and paint. Alex Dawson’s Second Nature this week invites ecopoets to join up in his ‘We could be the last generation to see fireflies’. Feasts and Fables with a heart of gold, continues to promote nature writers and Sarah Moorcroft writes ‘Roses and Raindrops’, despite being less mobile herself this week, she still would like to inspire people to look more closely at the nature around their feet. Fiona writes notices, while she is nature writing, a sense of osmosis, ‘I am soaking into this place as it soaks into me’ - I liked those lines. Sorry - I couldn’t add any more- Substack told me the post was too long.