My mind is soothed by the sight of the sea, and the sound of her waves breaking upon the sandy shores and ancient, granite bones of this world. My skin is caressed with a blanket of fragrance laid upon me by the smells of the sea. The call of the deep tugs at my heart and beckons, “Listen to my voice.” I am terrified by her fury, spellbound by the unstoppable might of her flow, surprised by unutterable joy in her beauty.

I stood on the bow of a great aircraft carrier in a moment of solitude, salted air blowing past my face, and listened as the gray hull sliced through the sea. The ocean hissed as it parted and sluiced along a million pounds of steel skin, a pocket of life holding five thousand souls in the infinite reaches of the deep. I ran to the fantail and watched as the waters flowed together again, trailing white and blue and green, a roiling path perpetually tethering yesterday to today. I sat that night under a sky washed with the brilliance of a trillion of stars, and the hymn of the ocean closed my eyes. I rested in the womb of the nourishing waters of life, rocking in the crib of the sea.

I took my rocky seat one morning in the grand granite theater that looks across and beyond the great bay. Long-winged seabirds called and circled among beams of yellow-orange light as the fiery orb of the sun peered above the horizon for the trillionth time. My spirit rose with the rising of the sun against the sparkling brilliance of the sea. A joyous heave of my heart as I greeted the dawning future of my life. A new day, and the waters, ever present, ever patient, ever graceful, spoke to me. I had queried her for where I’d be in twenty years, in forty years to come, the man I’d be, the life I’d have, what I would reap from the seeds that I would sow. She whispered with the wind and waves that all was right with me.

I smiled and wiped away a tear, such happiness I could not fathom.