Sands of Time.

I wandered through those halls supported by frail or massive columns … spires which looked like rockets starting for the sky, and to that marvelous assemblage of towers, of gargoyles, of slender and charming ornaments, a regular fireworks of stone, granite lace, a masterpiece of colossal and delicate architecture. – “Legend of Mont St. Michel” by Guy de Maupassant

It is magnificent.

The rolling fields and weathered stone villages have vanished into the night and all that stretches out below the fading full moon are miles of liquid grey tidal flats. Leaning out beyond the window sill as the wind howl s and rain falls on my face, I feel alive in this ghostly place.

We are staying in a centuries-old hotel knit tightly into cobblestone pathways that wind through a medieval town wrapped around the foundations of a towering abbey, the first stones for which were laid a thousand years ago. The history embedded in this place is fascinating – thousands of souls whose names are long since forgotten walked the dark halls of this holy castle in worship while others rotted in its bowels. I am fascinated by old buildings, both preserved and crumbling. It’s the stories we know that draw us in, but it is the stories captured in the mortar and lost in time that fascinate.  

For all of its bleakness, there is something magical about this cold and barren place.

Watching the moonlight’s shimmery dance across the sand, I wonder what lies beneath it. If we scraped it back would we find the roots of this rock? Would we find the remains of the unlucky ones who disappeared into the quicksand while others watched from the shelter of this stone refuge as their footprints faded with the slow weep of the tide?

Or would it run through our fingers like time slipping away?

I want to stay here and climb under the covers with the windows thrown open, sleeping away time as though it would somehow return to me the moments lost in the mortar of our life. Here I could linger – without regret and anger and sadness and impatience – in that middle ground between rest and awake where we let down our guard. Here, surrounded by stone awash in a sea of shifting sand, I could simply linger.

While the sands of time lost run through my memory.