Welcome to British Bliss. I’m Chris, and it’s time to soften the day, slow the breath, and drift into sleep.
The Last Gold on Muckross Lake
The sun lay low over the valley, and the hills held its light in long bands of gold. Warm air rested on the wooded slopes, where the leaves of a thousand oaks barely stirred, and the day's heat rose slowly out of the ground into the softening sky. Below the slopes the land eased down towards water, fold after green fold, until it opened at the shore of Muckross Lake.
The lake was calm. A broad path of gold stretched across it from the sinking sun, and the water carried the light gently, letting it ripple and settle, ripple and settle, with the slow breathing of the surface. Far off, a blackbird sang from somewhere in the trees, its notes drifting out over the water and fading there. Midges drifted in the warm air above the shallows, rising and sinking in their small silent clouds.
Along the shore the ground grew softer, grass giving way to moss, moss to smooth stone at the water's edge, where the lake lapped quietly against the land. The lapping was faint and patient, one small wave after another, each one folding into the stones and drawing back.
The shoreline curved on beneath the trees, and beside it ran an old stone wall, grey and warm, its stones furred with lichen. The wall followed the water for a while, holding the low sun on its face. Partway along, its line broke at an old iron gate, and the gate stood open.
Declan came through the gate and onto the worn grass path, its line pale through the meadow ahead of him. He walked easily, his boots quiet on the trodden ground, the warmth of the evening resting on his shoulders. The meadow spread away on either side, long grass standing still in the amber light, seed heads glowing faintly where the low sun caught them.
He let his hand drift out as he walked, and the tips of the grass brushed his palm, dry and soft, one feathered head after another. Swallows moved above the meadow, curving and turning in the high warm air, their small cries thin and far away. The light was lowering. The gold of it lay deeper now across the grass.
Off to his left the lake showed between the meadow and the sky, its surface smooth and bright. The lapping of the water reached him faintly, a small patient sound beneath the quiet, coming and going with the air. Far out, on a low stone rising from the shallows, a heron stood, grey and still, its long shape mirrored beneath it in the water.
The path ran on gently, bending with the shape of the land, and Declan followed it without hurry, the grass whispering against his hand, the swallows turning above him. Ahead, the meadow ended at a wood of old oaks, their crowns full and darkening in the late light. The path led towards them, and entered the trees at a mossy gap between two leaning trunks.
Declan passed through the gap and into the wood, and the light changed around him, the amber of the open meadow giving way to something softer, broken and scattered by the leaves. The path wound on ahead between the oaks, a mossy line threading through the trees, and he followed it at his own easy pace, the ground cool and giving beneath his boots.
The trunks stood close on either side, old and broad, their bark deeply furrowed and green with moss on their northern faces. Above him the branches spread and crossed, and the low sun came through them in a rose-coloured light, falling in patches on the path, on the ferns, on the grey backs of stones half sunk in the ground. Where the light fell it was warm, and where the shade lay it was cool, and he moved through both, one and then the other, as the path curved among the trees.
The air held the smell of the wood, warm resin and old leaf litter, the deep sweet smell of a summer's day settling into evening. Leaves stirred somewhere overhead, a soft rustle that rose and faded, and the birdsong had thinned now to a few single voices, a wren somewhere low in the undergrowth, a blackbird further off, each note clear in the quiet between.
Through the trunks on his left the lake showed in glimpses, small panes of bright water between the trees, and the lapping came to him more nearly here, carried in under the branches from the unseen shore. The sound kept beside him as he walked, faint and steady, always a little below the rustle of the leaves.
Among the oaks stood arbutus trees, their smooth limbs leaning towards the water, their bark a deep glowing red where it had peeled to the new skin beneath. Declan let his palm rest on one as he passed, and the bark was smooth and cool under his hand, polished almost, like something worn kind by long weather. He went on, and the path went with him, winding gently, rising a little over roots and settling again.
Ahead the trees began to thin, the spaces between them widening, the glimpses of water growing longer and lower. The rose light was deepening towards the end of its colour. The path eased down through the last of the oaks towards a shoreline of low boulders, where the wood opened to the water.
Declan stepped down out of the trees and onto the shore, and the water lay close before him now, wide and dim in the gathering dusk. He made his way along the stones slowly, choosing each step, the boulders rounded underfoot, their backs cushioned with moss that gave softly beneath his weight.
The air off the lake was cooler here, a gentle breath of it rising from the water and touching his face, his hands, carrying the clean smell of damp stone. He moved through it slowly, stone to stone, and where the moss lay thick his boots made no sound at all.
Ferns grew between the boulders, their fronds brushing his legs as he passed, cool and feathered in the half light. The colours were going now. The greens of the moss and the ferns had deepened towards grey, and the stones were losing their edges, one shape softening into the next. Far out on the lake a last thread of gold still lay on the water, thin and low, the final reach of the sunken sun, and it trembled faintly as the surface moved.
The lapping was close at hand now, just below him, the small waves arriving at the stones one after another, folding and withdrawing, folding and withdrawing, unhurried as breath. He paused sometimes to listen, his hand resting on a mossy boulder, the stone cool and damp beneath his palm, and then went on, more slowly each time.
On a rock a little way out, the heron stood, nearer now than before, its grey shape settled and still against the dim water, its head drawn down into its shoulders. It did not stir as he passed. Nothing stirred. Only the water moved, and the thin gold thread far out upon it, fading as he watched.
The shore curved gently ahead of him, drawing in around a small quiet inlet where the water lay darker and stiller than the open lake. And there, reaching out from the bank on old dark piles, stood a wooden jetty, low and worn, its boards grey in the last of the light.
Declan came to the foot of the jetty and stepped up onto it. The boards were smooth and silvered with age, and they received his weight with a low, wooden softness, each slow step sounding gently over the water beneath. He walked out along them without hurry, the inlet lying dark and quiet on either side, the shore falling away behind him.
At the end of the jetty stood the old mooring post, thick and rounded, worn by ropes and hands and time. He settled himself down beside it, his back against the wood, his legs stretched along the warm boards. The post still held a little of the day's heat, and it eased into his shoulders as he leaned there, letting his weight go into it, letting the evening hold him.
The dusk had deepened to a soft blue-grey. Across the water the far shore was only a dimness now, the hills behind it dimmer still, and above them the first faint stars were coming through, one and then another, small and pale in the fading sky. Where the gold thread had lain there was only a low glow left along the west, quiet and colourless, sinking slowly into the water.
The heron was a dim shape away on its rock, unmoving, part of the stillness now. Declan's hands rested on the boards at his sides, and the wood was smooth under his palms, faintly warm still. His breathing had grown long and easy. The shore, the trees, the far hills, all of it was softening into one grey gentleness, and the glow in the west sank lower, and the stars grew slowly brighter, and then even they seemed to blur and drift.
Beneath him the water lapped at the jetty posts. He could feel it as much as hear it, a small soft knock and hush travelling up through the boards, into the wood at his back, into his resting hands. It came and went, came and went, patient and low, each small wave arriving and folding and falling away. The dimness settled. The last glow slipped under. And there was only the lapping now, soft against the posts below him, rising through the boards, one gentle sound repeating in the dark, folding, hushing, folding, hushing, slow and low and endlessly kind.
The soft lap comes again, and where it falls a ring of pale light opens on the dark water, widening slowly outward. Another lap, another ring, each one rising where the last began, spreading in the same patient rhythm, light moving outward in slow circles over the dark.
The water glows faintly now beneath the rings, and the glow rises through it from no source at all, filling the water and the air above the water until both hold the same soft brightness. On the surface rest small leaves, loosened and drifting, turning gently as each ring passes beneath them, tilting and settling, carried a little further into the pale.
A grey shape glides low over the water, long and slow, moving without wingbeats, passing above the rings and the turning leaves, its stillness carried along inside its motion. It drifts on through the glow and the glow receives it.
The rings widen. The water spreads further than before, and further still, and the line where it meets the sky grows thin and soft and quietly lets go, water and sky becoming one pale field, brightness above and brightness below and no edge anywhere between them.
The laps come more slowly now. The rings open further apart, wider and gentler, and the leaves thin into the light, and the grey shape is only a paleness among paleness, drifting, dissolving. A last ring opens, wide and slow, and does not close. The glow softens, the brightness dims gently down, lower, dimmer, into hush.
