The Sea

ten things i have learned about the sea from lorenzo fonda on Vimeo.

I spent most of my life in the middle of the country very far from the sea; I never saw a body of water larger than Lake Erie until after my 21st birthday. I learned to love the smell of the sea and the beach later, when I started vacationing in Marco, but never began to understand life at the shore until recently. Now that I am living on The Cape I am beginning to understand what it is to live on the water. I pay attention to the tides when I plan for my dog walks on the beach; I clean up the clam shells the gulls dropped in the yard before I cut the grass. The wind coming up Bourne's Pond has the uninterrupted force that the prairie winds brought in Oklahoma, but with the added corrosive force of the salt air.  When I am finally moved into my new house I will not be living on the water, but in the middle of The Cape you are never very far from it, and never far enough away to be away from its influence.