It’s a fast-growing, faster-changing concrete sprawl, but just occasionally, this little island of Malta surprises me. If you know where to look, when to go and can forgive terrible road signs, you’ll find beautiful, tranquil spots where nature has held on.
In the same way that the imperfect, scrawled marks in the sketchbook can allude to an artist’s entire oeuvre, so these little corners of natural wonders on this mostly desolate island can be woven together to create a landscape that is diverse, rich and unique. You need to be a very selective artist, travelling light and eliminating a lot of the visual noise - the concrete paths, the rubble walls, the distant roar of cars, telegraph poles - to be able to be present in whatever fragment of nature you can find.
I’ve seen beautiful wild poppies - the most spectacular blood orange shade - marching up and over rubble walls like an army about to emerge over the trenches. Bursts of sparrow songs from amongst the hubbub of political radio-babble, you wonder how so many decibels can emerge from that little quinoa coloured ball of feathers.
On one occasion, I was caught off guard by just how cold an August night could be on the high, exposed cliffs, being beaten by the sea winds as the clock approached midnight and we scoured the heavens for the Tears of St Lawrence - shooting stars. It was silent, and just coming into my peripheral vision, I saw it. A single flicker, that lengthened and then vanished into the inky night. It was gone. My husband missed it. I almost did. But that split of a second - less than a second I’m sure - were a thousand wondrous thoughts.
I remember sitting on the pinkish-grey rocks sprinkled with coral and animal remains, overlooking the patterns of silver, orange and turquoise as we were treated to a beautiful sunset from Malta’s highest point of Dingli Cliffs. It was a day already heavy with anger, struggles and lengthy conversations in the midst of parenthood, but as the sun dipped gradually west, with it I felt myself grow lighter, slow down, and find space to breathe.
From plants growing straight out of naked concrete to listening to a chorus of unidentified birds, these pockets of nature are best appreciated in solitude, in beautiful weather and ideally in pockets that no one else knows about. But if they do, it’s best not to start a conversation with them. Choose a different route, choose a shady spot to sit and do nothing. Open all of your senses to the natural world and you’ll start to pick out different notes and hues: the throaty squeaks, the pulsing notes of robins, strength rhythmic tweet and chirps. You’ll hear one bird call, and another respond somewhere in the near distance. You’ll hear the hums, rustles and whistles of the leaves and bushes as they share their thoughts on the day’s wind speed and direction. You’ll hear a twig snap and freeze, wondering what’s hidden just out of your sight.
