The grey town shrouded in loneliness is how Theodor Storm described #husum, the menacing sea and melancholic skies a topical constant in his works and in his heart. I see in Storm’s poetry, amidst the sunny dispositions at the centre of North Friesian “Moins,” the daunting, bittersweet relationship I share with my island home, a yearning that is mellow yet never satiated. On the strand overlooking the #nordsee, I closed both of my eyes and hear his words: “And as the pain,/wave upon wave, gently lies down to sleep,/as the last heartbeat stirs,/you fill my whole heart.”

At the lowest tide, the islands of #amrum and #föhr can be reached by foot. The 8km hike is usually undertaken with an experienced guide lest the journey is mistimed and you are stranded midway with water rising all around. Andreas, our guide, jokes that mudflat tours are sometimes cancelled because of the weather but mostly because he has taken a precursory look at the group and deemed that they are incapable of finishing the hike. Bright in a yellow windbreaker, he hums old sea shanties and complains about people from Föhr. The rest of us plod gingerly around jellyfishes and shells and crabs and crab carcasses. A dad makes a joke about how the coiled castings of lugworms look like spaghetti and the son says “ew” and contorts his face. Fiona is quite some distance away. She turns back and we wave.

On the wooden path, kapuzen flapping in the wind. A rabbit skittles away, dust in its wake. Dark coniferous clouds, orange-lined. Nothing in sight but the end:

Sand as fine as
time.