The Weight of a Morning

I remember walking along the coast of Cornwall with my grandfather, back when I was ten. He had a habit of stopping every few hundred yards to look down at his own shadow, stretching long and thin across the wet sand as the sun climbed behind us. He told me that a shadow is the only thing that stays with you without asking for anything in return. It is a quiet companion, a dark twin that mimics your stride and measures your progress against the earth. We spent that entire morning tracing our shapes, watching how the tide would eventually come to erase the lines we left behind. It is a strange comfort to realize that we are always leaving a mark, however fleeting, on the places we visit. We are constantly being rewritten by the light, cast out into the world in shapes we barely recognize as our own. Do you ever stop to look at what you are leaving behind on the sand?

Tisha Clinkenbeard has captured this quiet, fleeting geometry in her beautiful image titled Beach Shadow. It feels like a moment of stillness found in the middle of a long, sun-drenched walk. Does this scene remind you of a morning you once spent by the water?