Salthill prom and my mind make one mighty cocktail !

I had a bit of a moment the other day. With an hour to kill before a meeting in town, I drove to Salthill, walked across the car park to the Prom and stood on a rock on the sea wall.

The early evening air was cool and clear. There was not a breath of wind. Under the fading light of a clear blue sky the water in the bay lay perfectly still, a silvery sheen pockmarked by bobbing bunches of seaweed.

Climbing down the rocks I walked along the beach, until I was beyond Palmer’s Rock. The sun was sinking behind a massive wall of dark cloud, towering high into the west, rising from the horizon until it occupied a third of the sky.

As the sun disappeared behind this great grey barrier, a line of golden light lit up along the length of the cloud’s upper edge, a shimmering rim of brilliance running across the entire opening of Galway Bay.

In contrast to this dazzling line of light, the wall of cloud below turned black. Had you just arrived as a stranger in the place I stood, you might well believe that this water vapour was in fact stone; that Galway Bay was a lake, edged by mountains high and mighty, from Black Head to Barna.

Even though I know a cloud when I see one, something primal deep inside me double checked to make sure that this black monolith was not a tidal wave, rushing to consume us all.

No. Nothing as dramatic as that. So calm, in fact, that the ocean’s edge became indistinguishable from the beach. As the tide edged out it left a glistening shine on the sand, while dusk’s light bounced off the motionless ocean, appearing as a blend of mercury and mirrors.

Despite the roar of traffic in the background and the hordes walking along the Prom, I still managed to find my own space and peace down there.

Staring at a tiny lump of sand, watching as the water lapped over it and receded, waiting, watching, waiting, watching, wondering when will come that moment when the tide might turn.

That’s what I do. I watch the tide and drift into peace. Neither Mindfulness nor Meditation, and yet equally both, I have no desire to put a label on it.

It’s what I do; what I did that evening and have done everywhere I’ve lived in the West of Ireland. I stared for hours at the sunken rocks of Bunowen Bay and the dunes of Doonloughan when I lived in west Connemara.

For many years in north Mayo I watched the tide turn along Ross beach, and lost myself many a time in the utter splendour and endless beauty of Kilcummin back strand.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.