THE LURE OF THE HEALING SEA

Atlantic Beach, North Carolina

Miles of sand and a yellow flag yesterday, a color seldom seen, marking a calm ocean.  Water temperature is up to 59° and the sand comfortable for bare feet, not blistering as it will be mid-summer.  Atlantic Beach has been a vacation spot for a hundred years, a town of under 2,500 on the Southern Outer Banks chain of barrier islands.  We are here at Pine Knoll Shores again and I'm thinking about those who answer the call of the sea.  People who live not in cities or ocean front high-rises or even newly built waterfront homes, but those who live in those out-of-the-way spots that others dream about.  And where, sometimes, I too get to visit. 

Inner Hebrides, Scotland

Last fall's post-pandemic trip abroad included the archipelago of islands off the western coast of Scotland, a rugged landscape of towns and fishing villages with a history of kings and clans.  My grandmother was a Chisholm and as a child I learned that the Clan Chisholm migrated to the Scottish Highlands in the 14th century.  Our hunting tartan is brown and the dress plaid red. I've waited a long time to see this part of my heritage. It's doubly exciting that one of our grandsons is going to St Andrews University in the fall.   

I remember (once) being on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, at 1,745 feet elevation, standing high above the sea with the water both distant and hugging the shoreline below.  That trip felt like magical realism to me; yes, it was real, but oh the undercurrent of magic.  When I round a corner and hear the long slow notes of a bagpiper standing at the edge of a cliff shrouded by cloud, the fantastical has slipped into my ordinary day. Far out a whale rises up from the deep and I wish I could lift gently from the earth to float with arms outspread like I do in my dreams.  

Cape Bretoners number around 135,000 and for someone drawn to the sea like I am, I can't imagine a place more attuned to nature, with a crenulated coastline, lowlands and highlands rising south to north. Sometimes you're so high it feels like heaven.  

Today on our Atlantic coast the ocean is wilder, white caps all the way to the horizon but still a mild cloudy afternoon. Water doesn't have to be calm to heal us.  The sea's negative ions boost our moods, the rise and fall of the waves relaxes us and the sea releases our feel-good hormones, dopamine and oxytocin.  At the same time, we are restless like the waves.  Scientists (or maybe poets) have called the sea the planet's heartbeat.  I can see that.  No, I'm not one of the lucky who lives remotely by the mothering sea, but I am lucky enough.  Yesterday and today are perfect.  Tomorrow will be too; I'm pledged to that.  Nina Naomi