Traces and tracks pointing to the very best of us all.
The strange sight of a pair of tyre tracks heading dead straight to the vanishing point where the surf meets the sand.
At first glance it looked like someone had driven a car straight across the beach at speed and into the sea, leaving no other trace, before disappearing.
At second glance I could see that the tyre tracks were a double pair - a there and back - and I knew that they were made by the Lifeboat launching, and returning.
The realisation came with a chill.
I’d woken at six AM and driven down the hill from the Hieatt’s farm to Poppit Sands - a pilgrimage I always make when I come to Cardigan - maybe for a swim, but definitely for a walk on the huge expanse of grey and where the Dirt Meets The Water. First light was turning to sunrise and my car dashboard was registering 3 degrees but the chill wasn’t the late April air.
The tracks hadn’t been washed away by the incoming tide so the Lifeboat must have launched sometime between midnight and the dawn, in the pitch black, on a close to feezing night. Back on the farm people were talking about hearing the sounds of low-flying helicopters in the night.
The sea state was calm, but who had they been tasked to save? Who was out there in distress? Had they found them? Were lives saved? Were they just training to practice search and rescue in the blackness? I knew someone who I could have asked to find out the full story, but I didn’t because I didn’t need to and I didn’t want to.
The full story behind the photo, for me, is a pair of beautiful traces that point dead straight to the bravery of the women and men of the RNLI. Those tracks were gone in an hour or so, but they’ll be back again, and again, and again. On warm summer evenings and through ferocious winter’s squalls. The tracks will be often unseen between the scramble to answer the shout of the pager, the return of the little orange RIB, and the tide washing away the evidence that they rushed out without hesitation. Evidence often of just false alarms; evidence mostly of scared people rescued; frequently evidence of truly lives saved, and sometimes evidence of the last voyage to bring the lost home.
I don’t need to know if it was a good mission or not, a training session or a tragedy. The picture doesn’t need that information to be an image of selflessness and courage that will stay with me forever.
An image of how utterly wonderful people can be.
An image of the very best of us.