Notes and Images from a Small Island (Practice 12 Day 7)

I have been writing a lot recently about entanglement in my thesis.  I became aware of the idea in the context of physical entanglement during my early practice and research as I read about the entangled web below ground in forests.  The works of Peter Wohlleben such as The Secret Network of Nature (2017) and The Hidden Life of Trees (2017) and Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree (2021) inspired me and helped me to access the hidden reality of trees and subsequently, Merlin Sheldrake’s  Entangled Life (2020) whose fascinating account of mycelium and how it pervades all aspects of our lives led me to develop my thinking.  However, it was on the beach a couple of years later that I witnessed a sight I see every day from a different perspective.  I watched as the tide came in, the rolling waves gradually creeping across the beach in front of me.  I began to focus on the continual ebb and flow and the repetitive motion of the waves.  I began to see the significance of the process as each wave became entangled with the seabed discharging its energy onto the shore.  I realised that the rollers were in fact a combination of many smaller waves rising and falling in synchronicity.  A combination of an unstoppable force.  And as their journey ends they become entangled with the land, and all that remains is a reflection of the tidal movement in the sand or stranded seaweed resting on the damp sand.  The reality of the waves becomes part of the reality of the shore in a moment of decoherence.  This observation served as a three-dimensional exemplar of entanglement in the natural world and I recently went out with my camera to capture four images showing the process of entanglement in action.

After a winter of very poor weather, I recently headed out in a bad storm to capture some images to illustrate what I had written.  I went out just after high tide and struggled to pitch my tripod in the strong winds and the deep water made it difficult to retain contact with terra firma.  But I persevered and eventually gained some equilibrium as I settled down to capture the process of entanglement.  I found the weather very challenging – it was wet and cold and I was shooting under pressure.  I have chosen five images that represent the time out in the storm.  I do not think that these images will be the ones I put in my thesis but nevertheless,my time outdoors has been a learning experience!