The Salt in the Roots

Childhood is a country we visit, but never truly inhabit. We leave our footprints in the sand, expecting the tide to keep them, yet the water is a restless traveler, smoothing the shore until no trace of our passing remains. There is a particular kind of gravity in the young—a way of sitting, still as a stone, while the wind tries to tell them secrets about the horizon. They are anchored by nothing but their own curiosity, their hair catching the light like copper wire, their eyes tracing the invisible seams where the sky stitches itself to the sea. We spend our later years trying to find our way back to that stillness, to that moment before the world taught us to hurry, before we learned that the wind is not a companion but a force to be weathered. Is it possible that we are still sitting on that log, waiting for the tide to bring back the parts of ourselves we left behind in the salt air?

Anastasia Markus has captured this fleeting grace in her work titled Seaside Adventure. Does this image stir a memory of a shore where you once left a piece of your own heart?