As we stand at the water's edge, we share in the rhythms of the tides, the dance of the waves, and the stories of the creatures that call it home, reminding us of our place in this vast, interconnected world, reflects nature writer, Nicola Chester.
We are more weather and environment than we ever really acknowledge. The effects of both are something we share with our human and wild neighbours, the crops we grow, the insects that pollinate them, the birds that eat those. The water in our bodies is a recycling of summer rain and winter snow.
Too often, our connection with something more elemental doesn’t move beyond an awareness of daily convenience and hope; it’s too hot, too cold, and is it going to rain on our parade and cancel our plans?
And yet we recognise the fundamental need to ‘blow the cobwebs away’ – to clear our heads, to contemplate, redress and readdress. Just like any other aspect of the natural world, we are connected emotionally and profoundly to those elemental life systems and forces of the planet, too.
Shared human traits, such as gazing in mesmeric contemplation into a crackling open fire and needing no other distraction, or losing ourselves in the earth-work of physically walking on, or working in, the soil. Or being near water for deep reflection or thoughts that flow, and getting out in the fresh air of a stiff (or gentle) breeze; even pushing ourselves into a storm like a challenge, a cathartic primal scream into the gale.
When we need space to think the big thoughts sometimes, to absolve, absorb and consider, to imagine change, the sea is such a compulsive draw – it’s a need.
If we imagine freedom – from anything: worries, work, routine, responsibility, the ties that bind – even temporarily, it is usually somewhere open, walking into a vista with the wind in our faces and hair, the top of a hill, a cliff, the shore. The sea…
The sea. When we need space to think the big thoughts sometimes, to absolve, absorb and consider, to imagine change, the sea is such a compulsive draw – it’s a need. It is natural to seek the smallness and miracle of our existence among the vastness of the world, away from the bright lights, buzz and ping of modern life; the always-available-ness of our lives.
And of course, it’s a timeless thing. Each age has recognised a version of this; each age has felt a need to get away from its own form of modernity, feel the smallness, the vastness, and record it in literature. We only have to look to poems on the sea to know that. What Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), poet, critic and schools inspector, called ‘The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea’ in his poem Dover Beach, where, in the waning faith of his times, he implores his new wife and he to be true to one another.
I’ve always lived in a landlocked county (I still do) or at the furthest point from the sea in a maritime county. My dad – also from a land-locked county in the Midlands – left it for the sea when he was just 15, becoming a sailor in mum’s naval city, where they later met, fell in love, married and had my brother and me.
I think beside the sea is where we feel closest to nature and our aliveness in the most fundamental sense.
The sea was always a destination for us. To visit family in mum’s home town, and for dad to get his sea air. Holidays, as for so many of us, were always seaside ones. To the sea then. A break from routine, a chance to breathe in the sea-salted, briny air. To think clearly. To listen to the moonpulled, wind-chased rhythm of the waves that seem to sound like the Earth breathing. To think bigger than ourselves and beyond the limits of our lives, to dream, to come-to-terms, to accept and be grateful for what we have: to make bold decisions.
I think beside the sea is where we feel closest to nature and our aliveness in the most fundamental sense. We are at the edge of our world, looking out to a horizon and imagining how our own might expand. We can see sometimes, the curvature of the Earth, watch the sun go down over an uncluttered ocean. Instigate a personal sea change.
