When we stand on the shore, we are on the edge of a different world: the world of the sea, where mysteries lie concealed. Old stories told of an inconceivably huge beast that swam deep below the surface, a beast called the Kraken. Something like a monstrous octopus or squid, the Kraken was so enormous that when it rose to the surface, it could pull down ships with its tentacles, which reached as high as the tallest mast, and when it dived, it churned the water into whirlpools that could devour and destroy entire fleets of boats.
Only one such vast creature could inhabit the ocean, a lonely giant that was created at the beginning of all things, and would survive until all other things had passed into destruction. Then the Kraken would rise one final time from the depths, and die: and with its death, the world would end.
While it still lived, the Kraken caused the sea to move. This was the legendary explanation of the tides, the regular, unceasing invasion and withdrawal of the waves that pull the sand and pebbles from the shore and carry them back. Suppose that unseen by us, the stupendous Kraken has breathed the water in, leaving a stretch of sand for us to create mountains. Suppose that soon the Kraken will begin to breathe slowly, slowly out, sending the sea back to wash the beach smooth again.
Science proved long ago that what causes the tides is the force of gravity and the pull of the moon, a truth that may seem as extraordinary as any fable. Nonetheless, people believed in the Kraken, and these northern seas, that circle the shores of Scotland and its isles, were thought to be its home. Off the coast not many miles from here, a ship’s captain reported that he and his crew had actually seen the monster: a living, moving shape as big as a floating island, with tentacles that curled on high like an army of fighting soldiers.
Are these tales nothing but fantasy and illusion? You might think so – but it’s a fact that huge and extraordinary animals live in the water’s hidden deeps: the Giant Squid, and still larger, the Colossal Squid, a dweller in the coldest oceans. Its ten tentacles can measure more than sixty feet in length, and its round eyes are bigger than dinner plates.
No legend, but a real species, the great squids were glimpsed by sailors of the past, who told horror stories of immense creatures lurking in the green shadows below their ships. From the innocent surface of the sea, a thing like a long, blind serpent would rise and attach itself by suckers to the side of the boat, moving on and up, while a second and third tentacle snaked from the water, groping for prey. Men swore that they had seen their companions snatched from the decks by such uncanny means, and the rumours were repeated and feared for centuries.
Whatever truth lies behind old myths, the ocean keeps its secrets well. Today, building sand into mountains, we mirror on a human scale the cosmic forces that go to build real, towering mountains from the material of the earth. Then, as we watch the foam nibble at our sand peaks and level them, in a short hour or two we reflect the immeasurable spans of time that reduce real rocks and cliffs to grains of sand, trickling between our fingers. The tide is our partner in the artwork. Eternal, unstoppable, it could be the inhale and exhale of a creature bigger and older than any we can imagine. However much we have learned about the planet where we live, the sea is our image of the unknown, and when we stand by the shore, we are on the edge of a different world.
