Zero

Start with the long view.

A blade of rock cuts across the ocean, a mountain range so high that it’s white for more than half it’s height with snow slowly compacting into ice. There’s the slightest hint of more mountains behind it, but that’s hard to tell from here.

Look closer.

Down at the base, it’s not just rock and pounding waves. The terrain flattens, forming a plain which gently slopes up towards the foothills of the peaks & down towards the water.

In one direction, a massive glacier has slowly carved a path, first a valley in the mountainside, then a sprawling river delta. The other way, the coastal plain widens and slowly descends below the waves.

Closer again. Look at the centre.

The giant glacier isn’t the only source of water, and wasn’t the only thing carving this landscape. Waves have eroded the edge of the plain, creating a meandering cliff stretching out beyond the horizon. Streams from the distant mountains have carved deep gullys down to the ocean, so the coast forms a seemingly endless series of somewhat sheltered coves separated by wave-pounded rock.

Closer still. That one there.

Buildings cling to the sides of the valley, stone where they’re exposed to the ocean spray, wood further in and further up. Anything flat enough to hold some soil has been turned into a garden, anything that could be terraced or have a planting box put on it has one, and with winter receding, there’s green all around.

Boats have been pulled up the stone & sand beach, well above the thin line of debris left by the waves. Beside them are frames with great clumps of nets, drying in the breeze. Just uphill sits a ramshackle building, stone on the seaward side, wood elsewhere, sporting a row of chimneys from which faint whisps of smoke drift.

A stream still trickles down the valley, a fraction of the torrent it must have been to create the place, pushed off to one side by a smoothly curving stone path which winds down the centre and out into the waves. Mostly constructed from a rough grey rock, the blocks fitted so closely that you can barely see the seam, with a glass-smooth ridge on either side, just tall enough to trip over if you’re not paying attention.

More gardens are clinging on at the top of the slopes, trying to grow despite the lack of shelter on the plain, surrounding a squat wooden tower with flags hanging off it. A man with a watering can works his way along the rows of plants, walking back to a barrel at the base of the tower to re-fill between rows. Below him, trudging down the stone path between the ridges, a much younger man carries two buckets using a pole over his shoulder, heading towards a small pool & wier in the stream partway down the valley.