The thin place

In Gaelic, the “thin place” translates as “closest place to heaven on Earth”. The cloud appears to touch the water. As you gaze on the iron clad surface, the peaty mud between your toes, a deafening silence surrounds your ears.

An extra sense has been engaged, a sense you’re not normally conscious of.

Time stopped the moment you took off your watch. How long have you spent slipping into the warm mud, pondering the water with your hand before fully committing to it?

To join the water, you need to cast material things aside: the watch, your shoes, look flimsy on the massive rock where you undressed. Laying them down was a tiny sacrifice.

Water, like air and time, softens everything eventually. The jagged piece of glass, now smoothed, returned to shore, reminds us that all man-made things transform.

As you commit more of yourself to the black water, you wonder about the ancient things beneath. Will they accept or reject you? The mind touches some terrifying places as you plunge into the black. The body flooded with cold and warmth.

Your head submerged. Only your arms are visible: white and fuzzy, almost green, against the unrelenting black. You are only a tourist in this world. At some point you must come up.

Air.

That essential element.

You can’t remain. The depths will keep their treasures, maintain their mystery. Although you sense them, you can never see them.  

Lying on your back, atop the choppy surface, you venture further ahead, as though suspended in a cloud, swimming to a sun that glimmers through a gauzy haze. Your mind is empty of all thought.

You emerge, new-born, shuddering with cold, disappointed with your human form. Why haven’t you become the glen that cradled you? The thin place you joined, momentarily. Yet still you’re grateful for your small communion, stripping worldly concerns. The watch and shoes remain flimsy. You laugh as you pick them up. They could be useful later. The honesty already fading.

You run through the field completely naked, as a Cro-Magnon hunting dinner. The horses guarding the field look at you bemused.

The warm cabin is filled with family and friends, logs feeding a fire. They can’t understand where you’ve been. Your mind is still in that thin place, empty and infinite, eyes skyward, depths tempting below.

Back in London, you dream of returning there.