(Neurodivergent) Notes on Nature: Whitesands

Whitesands, East Lothian

The pale sand is whipped into the air by the wind, like the beach is haunting itself. The curve of the bay is pitted with these spectres and the sea is as choppy as it gets in this sheltered cove. It is September, that dusk of the seasons, where the sky and the sea should be at their equilibrium – temperatures as close to each other as they can be, on a good day.

            I’m trying to escape that feeling of something slipping between our fingers, ignoring the signs of change. The way the sun is dipping lower in the afternoons, the way families cower behind their windbreakers, the way the grasses that tickle your legs on the short walk down to the beach are subsiding.

            I take my glasses off before getting into the sea and my eyesight is so bad, the world becomes a child’s painting, a slash of several colours in tight rows. The darkish navy of the sea stretching out into the distance in front of me. The ghostliness of the shore, crowned by the muted greens of the grasses which shift as a block in the breeze. The biggest colour is the sky. A shade of blue so large it could carry you away to rest on the one fluffy cloud in view.

I don’t mind it this way. I can feel everything but I don’t have to stare the changes in the face. As the sun hits my skin, I can hang onto summer for a few more days – or weeks if I’m lucky.

            On the shore, I can just about make out the blob that is my black dog, pacing back and forth on the sand. I know he’s looking for holdfast, kelp, bits of dead crab to crunch on. I trust that he will be safe on this cosy nook of a beach as I drift further out – although never out of my depth, as my anxious disposition can’t fully relax even here.

            The wind and the waves mingle together in my ears, a crashing, calming cacophony. My noise sensitivity has been making life in the city difficult, and my body unclenches in the salt water. The mixture of sea and sound is a soothing potion, a remedy that gives me reprieve, and I know will help me last a little longer in a place where sensory overload threatens to overwhelm me every day.

            The squawk of a seagull pierces my brain. I slip out, after a moment of escape. Ready to face the world again.

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