The island on the edge of the world
The sea goes on forever. I wiggle my toes in the impossibly soft white sand under a layer of clear water only a few inches deep. This sandbar is so expansive I can walk for miles into the sea without ever entering water deeper than what reaches my calves. The white of the sand, luminescent grey of the sky and translucent turquoise of the sea are so pure and endless they defy the eyes. In hours of walking, I come across barely a handful of other solo walkers, and everyone moves in the same quiet, reverent stillness; we all acknowledge the landscape’s demand of our awe.
From eleven years of on-and-off traveling, it’s these other-worldly landscapes and their complete rejection of human existence that occupy the brightest corners of my memory. Riding a spirited, stocky horse across the never-ending grass and sky of the Mongolian plains. Swimming in a salt-water lake in the crater of a dormant volcano somewhere in the seascape of uninhabited Indonesia. Watching the sun rise over blood-red desert mountains in a hostile Egypt. Hiking to a hidden waterfall in the Philippines and swimming in the crystal pool beneath the cascade with only the sounds of monkeys and birds for company. And now, this end-of-the-world-type vista, with sky both above me and reflected in the wet sand, the sea-glass colours staggered with brilliantly fluorescent pink flamingos.
Looking at the world stretch into nothing, I suddenly understand why our predecessors believed so adamantly that the Earth was flat.
I begin my walk back with the tide’s return. Comical puffer fish dart away from my feet in ridiculous ballooning forms. Tiny starfish smaller than my palm pepper the sand. As the water deepens, I have to watch my steps to keep from treading on sting rays. The sky above is bursting with pelicans who plummet into the sea in search of fish while sandpipers and crabs scuttle over the sandbar in orchestrated patterns. The flamingoes, both graceful and preposterously pretentious, prance away from me in high-stepping slow motion whenever I wander too close.
I return to the hostel with sun on my skin, freckles on my nose and my rucksack bursting with seashells. I slowly transition back into a world of human beings, where the Internet screams of the death of David Bowie and a group of German backpackers playing Uno slam down their cards with raucous bellows of “NIEN! NIEN!”
The air has turned cold with the breath of a thunderstorm. The hostel cat has found her usual place on my lap as the wind rustles through palm fronds and extracts melancholy melodies from wind chimes made of bamboo and seashells. From my perch on this thatched balcony, cup of black coffee in hand and cozy clothes pulled from the bottom of my backpack for the first time in weeks, I’m impossibly, reverently and uncontrollably thankful for this life of freedom.
I’ve booked an extra week on the island.
