I’ve grown up and spent the majority of my life in Massachusetts. My state has a pretty strong bond with the sea. The nautical history of the nation was in large measure written by sailors from the Commonwealth. There are even some very popular beaches and magical spots along the seashore in my home state. The ocean is a constant presence, but one that I don’t give much mind to.
I am not, as you say a seaman. I SCUBA dive, and I admire the water in it’s change of hue and interaction with the sun. All that, I really wouldn’t call myself a student if the sea. It’s just there.
Lucky I have been to have had the chance beginning when I was 5 to visit the Southern sandbar known as Florida. I’ve explored this state and know many of it’s nooks, crannies and oddities. I feel a comfort level in Florida – it is very familiar to me.
Walking along the wide stretch of sand known as Cocoa Beach I was struck by the sea. As I walked I was greeted by a number of different emotions, but most if all I felt the sea and admired it’s lure as the Sunday multitudes flocked to the sea’s very edge.
There is a tug I feel in the very fibers of me for the sea. Some is likely nostalga, yes, watching all the kids and their buckets of sandy mud it’s easy to get pulled back in time. Idle summer days spent at the waters edge. Going to the beach is always something. Today, though, I acknowledged a deeper tug that I share with all those at the beach. There is a clensing power to the crashing of the waves on the beach. A magical tempo of the tidal shifts that seems to be a hearbeat for the very earth itself. You can stand in the path of a crashing wave and ever so slightly alter it’s flow, but again and again the tide just keeps coming.
A goodly number of us humans are just drawn to the water’s edge. For all the many diverse reasons to go, there is something deep that resonates in me when I’m there.
There is a presence to the sea. It can be felt.
…and the temperature of Florida’s Atlantic surf was none to hard to take today. Amazing feeling.
