Travel · 4 min

The wind that clears the head

Everyone wants the calm, turquoise sea, and I understand that. Yet my favourite moment at the Calanques is another, the day with wind, when the sea beats against the white rock and the spray flies all the way up. Something in that uproar, strangely, makes me still.

Growing large by growing small

Before a raging sea you grow small, and that does good. Your own worries shrink to their right size when something so great works before you. I think we need that now and then, a place that does not flatter us but reminds us that the world turned before us and will keep turning.

Salt, wind, a clear head

The mistral clears not only the sky but the head. After an hour on the windy rock something in me is sorted that was tangled for weeks indoors. No screen does that, no app. Only salt on the lips, wind in the ears and a stone millions of years old that will not be unsettled.

The children and the water

The little ones stand at the edge then, safe by the hand, watching the waves as if it were cinema. And perhaps it is. I let them watch as long as they want. For this early awe before something greater, they carry it with them, long after the sand has trickled out of their shoes.