The gannets fly solo today. On other days they mass over the Brisons in a frenzied cloud, raining down like arrows in a relentless assault on fish shoaling near the surface. Today though the columns of spray that shoot up, as the birds puncture the surface of the water, are far apart and far away. Even with binoculars I cannot make out the efficient lines of their origami bodies. So, I adjust my focus and look to the ground. A wiry pelt of sea ivory (Ramalina Siliquosa) curls upwards from the face of the rocks like bleached coral. The stone glows green in the afternoon light, rough beneath my hands as I lower myself down from the headland, sliding cautiously between shoulders of pitted granite. Beneath the grey-green haze are whorls of other lichens, flaking chalk-white pools and bright circles of yellow scale (Xanthoria Parietina). In bare patches quartz crystals wink at the sky. Here and there sea-thrift bubbles up, thick with green-starred foliage, and fingers of rock samphire reach out from dark creases where sand and salt gather.

At the tide’s edge I rock slowly across white boulders encircled by a thick brown carpet of kelp. Heaved up in the last high tide, it will soon be reclaimed by the returning waves. For now it drenches everything in pungent saltwater dreams. Long kelp stalks stick up at awkward angles, yellowing and rubbery. They might be ancient wind-worn bones yielded from the cliffs just like these smooth egg-like boulders—remnants of prehistoric sea-beds that tilt skywards waiting to return, stone by stone, to the water.

Crouching over the mat of drying sea weed, brown disassembles into greens, purples, golds— dark fronds of bladderwrack, smudges of emerald sea lettuce, and crimson dulce emerge, brittle under the tentative March sunshine. I rake my fingers across the surface, peeling back a crisp, paper-like layer to reveal glossy depths. A dank labyrinthine twilight beneath my palm, hidden from the delicate warmth that touches the back of my neck.

Between the shore and the horizon sunlight bounces between sky and water. A distant fleck of white arches up and shoots downwards, dazzlingly sharp. My fingertips are cool in the underbelly of weed, pulsing with the vibrations of the approaching tide.