These are my dunes
These are our dunes.
They are mine.
They are yours.
They belong to us.
They belong to Earth.
These dunes are good.
And they are made of so many good things.
They give us so many good things.
They give. And we take. But we take from the dunes graciously.
To enter Newton Burrows and Merthyr Mawr sand dunes is to pass into a different world, in which we are transformed. Away from daily life, this is the environment where we soar. Grasslands, saltmarsh, beach and woods. The diversity of habitat within Newton and Merthyr Mawr warren is enormous. The ever present sand punctuates the landscape continuously and permeates the ground on scales both microscopic and vast. When seen from above, the variety of ground that can be trampled underfoot is remarkable. The attachment that we have to a place is, for some, overwhelming. We move through the landscape in many different ways, interacting with the environment around us, all of our senses alive; smell, taste, touch, sound, and vision all blending together in miasma of sensual experience. The shift in landscape dynamics here is sudden. On a human level erosion is rapid. Over a matter of days or weeks or months the landscape can change dramatically. During March and April the visual shift between seasons seems to occur overnight… the transition from winter to spring is quite remarkable as flowers emerge and the landscape is warmed and transformed.
The landscape gives us so much. We gain release, we gain comfort, we gain solace in solitude. We take so much that the landscape gives us and we give back with happiness, applause and everlasting memories. The traverse over sand, soil, salt, rock, mud, stone, grass allows us to be free, even if it is for but a fleeting fragmentary moment of a day. Life blooms and dies. People move through the landscape… And then they’re gone. The landscape changes and evolves every single day. Over time the landscape changes enormously as the shifting sands move, change, build and destroy. Scars remain, embedded into the landscape by eras gone. These scars remind us of the past. They represent the aftermath of a traumatic event; they are articulations within the wider power-geometries of space.
These are our dunes.
They are mine.
They are yours.
They belong to us.
They belong to Earth.
