The Breathing Tent

For a number of months, I lived on a tiny piece of beach Called Blackstrap Cove…the beach was supported by a deteriorating retaining wall.

 When the ocean waves came in, the tent floor would rise, pushed up by the trapped air in the sand. The exhale was when the waves went back, sucking the air into the sand and flattening the tent floor.

It was like being inside  a breathing organism. A steady whoosh and slow relaxation.  It was calming and a great reminder that everything is connected.

When the tide was in, waves crashed into the retaining wall. And sprayed five feet above our little beach. We found scrap metal to shield the tent. 

When the tide was out, I could explore the rocks and tide pools like a kid. 

Everything was always in flux, changing. 

It was legal to camp on the beach below the shear side of the Rock of Gibraltar because Franco had closed the border between Spain and Gibraltar. The resident population was too small to fill all the jobs to keep the country going. I think it was about 25,000.  

All food had to be shipped or flown in. There wasn’t enough garden space to grow the food required.  Milk was reconstituted from  milk powder.

 I walked  a couple of miles around the rock to the street market , timing my arrival as the stalls were closing. I could get great deals on wilted leftovers. Which i carried back to our beach for community meals. 

The only constant at that time of my life was the rhythmic tent floor breathing. My husband—nicknamed old number one—had restored a motorcycle and was headed to Morocco to explore and woodshed his songwriting. I was to drive back to England with one of the charming 7 dwarfs who shared the beach.  And get a job and wait until my meeting time in December with old number one.

I guess the come here and go away phases of our relationship were like the tent floor breathing.