Favorite thing No. 123b

There's no way around it.  Where I live is one of my favorite things.

I am a coastal dweller. I could never NOT  live near a coast.

(Or at least near enough to be able to be there in under 40 minutes.) 

 Lakes are certainly beautiful. This is a lake near my brother's home.

But they are not the same as an ocean coastline.

For one thing, there is a boundary visible in the distance.

(Unlike the seeming limitless sprawl of an ocean.)

 And barring the occasional swell from a motor boat, a lake has no tide. 

And I am a person who needs a tide.

I need that pulling and pushing and the sense of being drawn away

into something far greater than myself.

I need the scent of salt air now and then when the breeze is just right,

and knowing there are boats at the ready not far from here,

going off in the night or early morning to ply the waters,

bringing bay scallops and other treasures to the markets.

See that little break in the horizon behind the trawler's cottage?

The one between the island on the left and the jutting coast on the right?

That is the pathway I need.... directly into open waters.

Sometimes wandering along the waterfront in one of the nearby towns is enough.

Just knowing that the seawater lapping at my feet is on its way into the Ocean's trough.

(And hours later it may return with stories to tell....

or it may journey on to somewhere more exotic.)

There are the long walkways that stretch outward over the water,

a perfect vantage point for watching Cormorants dive and hide under the waves.

And there are the shingle beaches where I find lovely shells and rounded stones,

worn by countless tides that tumble them in and out of the ocean, over and over again.

 

 And no rocky coast would be complete without its lighthouses.

 There are quite a few just south of here, some on the mainland
and some on neighboring islands, shining outward over the sea.

 Kindly Lights that have saved so many lives,

impervious to the seas that erode the very rocks that hold them.

"Even at this distance I can see the tides, upheaving... 
a speechless wrath, that rises and subsides."

—H.W. Longfellow

I cannot imagine living anywhere else.

Put on a shawl and walk up the coast with me to Claudia's place.