How do I recognize a haunt? It’s a cultivated skill. The tipoff is that yearning expression in their eyes. That quality of stillness. Of detachment. An affinity for certain colours, musical notes, shapes in the rocks. Haunts are not truly in the here and now. It’s subtle, but once you’ve seen one, others are easier to spot. You just need to know how to look for them. And where.
I discover this particular haunt at the promontory bracketing the western reach of Cold Knap Beach. He’s facing the Bull Cliff rocks. The rocks are Liassic limestone—sedimentary layers bulging out of the cliff face. Nearly, though not exactly, like the bright-yellow stone in the cliffs of that other place. Click. When I see the way he gazes at the cliff, I suspect that he, too, has been there.
