The Westward Connection.

My garden faces west, and tonight I stood in the gloaming looking at the dark blue sky above me grading to a lighter and lighter shade until it changed abruptly to blood-red above the horizon. There was no breath of wind to disturb the warm evening air, and the trees stood like black statues in silhouette as the landscape faded to near-darkness. And then another silhouette appeared: the silent flitting of bats across the darkening sky. Some of them came into my garden and flew so close that I could feel the air displaced by their wing beats.

I’ve never been able to explain why such a view means so much to me. There are prosaic explanations for every element, but they don’t come close to the magic of the whole. No prosaic rationalisation will account for the waking reverie which holds me spellbound in such a scene.

And this isn’t a new thing. I remember as a child having a picture book with a story of the Santa Fe Express heading across the prairie at dusk on its way to a far off destination. I felt the magic of it then, and I felt the magic again when I first heard the expression ‘Westward Ho.’

There’s something about facing west at twilight which carries my consciousness to a rarefied level beyond simple reason. Might this be the means by which the mind of the sensitive – be he poet, prince or peasant – is taken to the near end of some mystical bridge, there to stand and look across it into the mist of a different reality?