Life’s complicated just now.  I don’t need any more challenges.  But here I am, taking on one which is entirely self-imposed. It’ll help me reflect on the good moments in life, or at least on interesting times.

The challenge is one provoked weekly by WordPress, my blogging platform.  Once a week, they provide a word.  Just one. To respond, I and fellow bloggers choose one of our own photos to interpret the theme.  Just one.

This week’s challenge is ‘Magic’.  Other bloggers have published photos of sunsets; a cube magically suspended from a building; a fairy-tale castle in Schwerin; scacciaguai, or benign demons; a butterfly; pebbles; flowers; scenes from distant lands – all magic in their own way.

My own magic moment is from South Korea.

Imagine Busan, the city where Emily’s living just now.  Imagine busy streets, crowded markets, streaming traffic, a high-rise metropolis of three and a half million people.

But it’s a coastal city too, and one day we took the path at Igidae. Here were views across the bay to those high-rise towers at Haeundae, to Gwangan Suspension Bridge, and to a jagged, rocky coastline.

As we walked away from Haeundae, we replaced city bustle with solitude, with crashing foaming waves, salty spray crusting our hair and faces, rugged paths leading us first up craggy cliffs then down again. The busy city was never more than minutes away, but we were at the edge of a primitive, savage untamed world, unchanging since time began.  That was a kind of magic.

My challenge posts will appear on Sundays.  Hence ‘Snapshot Sunday.’