Love Letter to the Ocean

The mountains are my home, but the ocean is my Mecca.  It is my spiritual home.  Going into the water is a pilgrimage for me. Ever since I got old enough that my parents stopped trying to talk me out of risking hypothermia by diving into glacial waters in subzero temperatures, I can count on one hand the number of times that I did not go into the water when I had the opportunity.  The ocean has more power and greatness than I could ever achieve.  Swimming in its waves is a love affair.  It is different every time.  Sometimes it is calm like a lake, and I can stand still and stare clear to infinity over the surface of the water.  Other times, the wind and waves conspire to create a turbulent obstacle course; white crests boiling over the water's edge and playing dodgeball with me. 

In either case, swimming out from shore is a dangerous game of vertigo.  Vertigo is not our fear of falling, but our fear of our desire to fall (I'm sure this is not the first time that I'm quoting Tomas from Unbearable Lightness of Being on this blog).  And I'm sure this is not the first time that I'm bringing up what Tim, one of our Alaska instructors, told us:  when he was in Antarctica, he was overcome with the urge to go out onto the ice away from McMurdo and walk forever, even though he would likely never find the base again once he got far enough.  Horizontal vertigo, he called it.  It's no different in the water - you start swimming out towards the tops of the waves and want to keep going until you hit the horizon, yet that's a goal you can never achieve. 

So every time I walk away from the ocean at the end of a long, brisk day, I leave a tremendous amount of unfinished business behind - swim to the horizon.  And every time I come back, I must get in again to try and get closer to that goal.  Even though I know that I can never get there, it keeps me getting into the water every time I come back.  Namaste, ocean.  Until next time.