tempus fugit

By ceridwen

Inuksuk at Pwll Gwylog

Another gloriously sunny Pembrokeshire day gave me a fresh batch of images from which to chose a blip: the polling station/church hall where I cast my vote in the today's Welsh referendum? the little chapel cemetery full of seafarers' graves? the wind-sculpted trees along the coast as I walked home?

Then I came to Pwll Gwylog. Once, long ago, I visited a place in California called Half Moon Bay. This could be Crescent Moon Bay: a perfectly formed arc to which you make a detour from the path to descend a grassy funnel alongside a waterfall. The shore here is covered with slate discs from a couple of centimeters to a couple of feet in diameter. Perfect for the art of rock balancing - and someone had been at it because there was a column of them about 5 feet high, standing just above the beach. Its poise and stillness drew the eye. I realised it was an inuksuk.

Inuksuit (plural) were piles of stones used in the Arctic as landmarks, usually on ridges, hills or prominences. The stones (sometimes resembling human figures with limbs) had several purposes: they acted at location markers to guide travellers in the featureless expanse of snow, they served as memorials or warnings, and they assisted with the hunting of caribou, the herd being spooked by appearance of a humanoid shape on the horizon would veer away and give their pursuers a better chance of capturing them.

Nowadays inuksuit have become icons and logos (there is one on the Nunuvut flag), and they are regarded as art forms too. This one may be overturned when the summer visitors arrive but for the time being it remains a silent sentinel beside the sea.

For some more about inuksuit.

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