I live on an island, well several islands. The sea is always there. I can see it from my window but I doubt ou an ever be more then 2 or 3 hours from the sea anywhere in NZ.
To me the sea means alot. All my earliest memories are about the beach and I don’t think I have ever lived more then a 15 min drive from a beach. Every summer holiday meant getting even closer to a beach.
I am from Auckland. I am not talking tropical beaches. Just beaches. I just can’t imagine not having the sea close by.
If you have never seen the sea, what do you imagine it would be like? If you have never seen it does the thought of seeing it seem scary? Exciting? Not that interesting?
If you live by the sea can you ever imagine living somewhere that was so far from it that you couldn’t see it often?
To me the sea means home. What does it mean to you?
Most of my life, I’ve lived fairly close to substantial bodies of water. I grew up in Baltimore, within an hour of the Chesapeake Bay and maybe 3 hours of the Atlantic. My tours of duty in the Navy took me to Florida (I don’t think anything there is more than 2 hours from the ocean or the Gulf), San Diego (the only place I was within walking distance of the Pacific), Rhode Island (short drive to the Atlantic, walk to the Narragansett Bay), Sicily (the Med), Rota Spain (the other side of the Atlantic). I was also in Memphis a couple of times for training (Mississippi River) and Lafayette, IN for college (Wabash River) but a river isn’t the same.
Now I live 25 miles from the marina where our boat is moored. We can be out on the Bay within 2 hours of leaving the house under normal circumstances. That makes me happy. If I had unlimited funds, I’d live on the shores of the Chesapeake. Sitting and watching the water is renewing for me. Being on the water just feels right. If I was forced to move inland or, worse still, to the desert, I don’t think I could bear it for long. It would be unnatural. It would be wrong.
I live about 30 minutes from the North Sea coast. [well…No-one lives far away from the coast. We’re a small country]
I love the beach. NOT in summer, though.
When the weather is nice, the beach is packed with tourists. Lots of German, because they haven’t got much of a coast-line.
But in fall, or winter, the sea is miiiine.
I love the smell, the sounds of the seagulls, the BIG waves bringing shells to the sand - and taking them away again.
I love it when it storms and rains.
The raging of the sea makes me feel humble and small. [and that’s what I certainly need, from time to time ;)]
I love to stare at the lighthouses, far far away. Or the big tankers, sometimes a mere dot on the horizon.
Yeah. I love the sea. Couldn’t imagine living anywhere without it.
I grew up on the shore of Lake Michigan, which is technically a freshwater inland sea. When you stand on the shore, you see water as far as your vision can reach. You can’t see across it to the other side. When I saw the ocean for the first time, people thought I’d be amazed, but other than having tides, it looked the same. Lots and lots of water. As it is, I’m surprised when I come upon lakes that I can see across - they seem more like large ponds to me.
I grew up in San Diego, and often found myself in salt water. We’d go to Pacific Beach or Ocean Beach. Dad had a 20-foot boat with an inboard V-8. He and his friends and the rest of us would go to the bay to water ski. (I was too young, but I played in the water.) I loved ‘surfing’ on these inflatable canvass rafts (shorter than an air mattress). I always wanted a surfboard, but never got one. The cool thing about beaches down there is that you they have concrete fire rings so you can have a fire. I belonged to the San Diego Navy Sailing Club, and sailed around San Diego Bay.
Even during the tail-end of my 11 years in the Mojave Desert, I learned to scuba dive.
Lived in L.A. for a while, and went to the beaches in Venice, Santa Monica, Malibu, Zuma, etc. Kayaked from Marina del Rey out into the Pacific Ocean and paddled up to Santa Monica. Spiny Norman and I paddled out to sea and then landed at Venice for a cuppa joe.
Standing in my driveway, I can look down the hill to see Birch Bay a short block away. I pull my kayak down to the water and paddle in the summer. (The guy I bought the house from, who was my roommate for a while, was a little more hardcore. He’d paddle when it was 40°F. I joined him sometimes, January 2004, in this case.) I’ve been diving at Alkai and Keystone near Seattle, Pt. Whitehorn at the opening of Birch Bay, and I dove the wreck of the Saskatchewan off of Nanaimo. I’ve been on the ferries many times.
I was a big fan of Jacques Cousteau, and when I was little I wanted to be an oceanographer.
What does the sea mean to me? calm kiwi says ‘home’. I’d never thought about it that way. Not that it doesn’t mean home; just never thought of it. Although I do like deserts, I’ve always wanted to live – and always have lived – near an ocean. Being near an ocean is something so ingrained that I can’t imagine living someplace where one isn’t nearby.
Well, I grew up landlocked in a desert (guess the state–you’ve got about five to choose from.) Most of the big lakes are manmade, but there are some natural ones. Anyway, I’ve seen (and been in) both the Atlantic and Pacific. I don’t really care for the ocean; nothing wrong with it, but salt water stings and I don’t really care for swimming in anything with tides. If I’m gonna be in a boat, I’d rather be down at Elephant Butte if it’s a motorboat and up at Heron if I’m gonna be sailing.
Not always. I was diving off of Anacapa Island (CA) once. When I finished diving I took off my wetsuit and lay in the hot sun. Well, it was getting pretty hot; so I thought I’d take a dip. I dove off the boat into the clear, clear water. I’d forgotten that when I looked at my thermometer earlier, the water was 65°F. Pretty cold when it’s 90°F out, and you’ve been lying in the sun. The shock of the cold water really opened my eyes – literally. I discovered that the salt water did not sting my eyes. Funny, it always had before.
I guessed that water in the surf zone just has so much stuff in it that that is why it stings, while the deeper (65-70 feet in this case) that doesn’t have a lot of sediment mixed up in it doesn’t sting.
I wonder how salty tears are compared to seawater?
I’ve never seen the ocean, but it’s one of my life goals to at least dip my toe in one. I’ve been on the shores of Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and the Gulf of Mexico.
Growing up on the shore of Lake Michigan, I found the ocean incredibly offensive the first time I encountered it as a child! Salt water! It burned! It burned!
I’ve lived in Massachusetts for my whole life, visiting family on the Cape multiple times a year, and taking day trips to the beach as often as I could. I would never be able to imagine not living near enough to the water, that on a hot day I couldn’t drive to the ocean and body surf. When I have kids, I definitely plan to bring them up as little fish. That’s how I was when I was little, I lived on a lake, and was constantly swimming, and when my parents took me to the beach, they had to drag me out of the water, kicking and screaming.
I grew up on a Great Lake, too, so the idea of a vast expanse of water has been familiar my entire life. I’ve lived within a stone’s throw of the Atlantic since I was seventeen.
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off --then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can…
“Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.”
I was born on a small island, and I grew up 10 minutes from the Pacific Ocean.
So when I moved to Colorado, I really missed the sea. I stayed 12 years, though, and spent a lot of time in and around the state’s lakes, rivers and streams. Colorado does have some fantastic bodies of water, and the fishing is excellent, but yes, I longed for the ocean. It wasn’t just that I missed being near a large body of water; it was more about the sand, the smells, the breeze, the seagulls - you know, the feel of the beach.
As far as beach activities go, most of the stuff that I did at the beach I could do at the lake, with the exception of bodysurfing. I did miss that.
Before last year, I had spent nearly my entire life within five miles of the Gulf of Mexico. Last August I started college, and now I’m less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean. The plan is for me to go to grad school somewhere on the East Coast so that I can say I’ve lived on all three US coasts.
I really don’t know how I would react to living away from the ocean (or gulf). I’m not really a beachgoer, but I like having the open space…I think I might feel stifled if I lived away from the coast.
I’ve been on a couple of trips to Florida, so yes, and it’s always been beautiful–like a siren song, calling towards me. One of the best memories I have is of sitting on a dock and watching the sun set over the Florida Keys.
The sea means home. Definitely. I spewnt half my growing years on a boat off the Taranaki coast. Prior to moving to Alabama I has never lived further from the ocean than Turangi
I’ve seen the sea a few times, mostly the Atlantic with one visit to the Pacific. It’s been about 11 years since I last saw it though, and I want to go back despite knowing I would miss the mountains.
I don’t know what I thought when I first saw the ocean, I was only a few months old, but I love it out there. Playing on the sand, avoiding the jellyfish… sleeping out at the cottage which is a two minute walk away from the beach and being lulled to sleep by the waves.
For awhile I even thought about going to college out east so I could be closer to the ocean.
As I said, I grew up in San Diego, went to high school in the Mojave Desert, moved to L.A., and now I’m up here in the PNW. Always close – or relatively close, as Lancaster was only an hour away from the beach – to the Pacific Ocean.
I like summertime in the PNW. I like the openness of the desert. I like the warm waters of Southern California. (SoCal water isn’t really warm, compared to tropical waters; but it’s warmer than here. You need a drysuit to dive here.) What I need is a South Pacific island with cool coniferous forests, a warm beach with clear, warm water, a vast desert, a metropolis and a small town where I can live in all of the environments at once!
I live a five minute walk from the ocean. It’s nice to know it’s there, but honestly I go weeks sometimes without actually seeing it, even though I work at a beachside hotel. I only really go there when I’m feeling lost and loney, which isn’t so much nowdays. It’s a good place to have some peace, but it’s way too cold to swim in or really hang out around long.
Maybe it is because I grew up two hours inland and only got to the beach every once in a while. It still seems kind of a hostile places- sand everywhere, cold ears. lots of wind, rotting seaweed. I’d miss if if I moved away from it, but I wouldn’t feel this incradable loss.