The Big Blue

I have a complicated relationship with the ocean. I grew up on Long Island Sound and going to the beach was a daily summer camp ritual. But the sound is emphatically not the ocean. The water is still and calm, the biggest natural threat stepping on a horshoe crab or getting stung by a tiny jellyfish. The sound is like a boring but nice girl you grew up playing with while the ocean is that bad-ass girl who smokes behind the school, dangerous but exhilarating.
Every summer, my family would escape the sound and go to the ocean for a week. Like most New Englanders, our destinations were Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and the coast of Rhode Island. As a young kid, I loved the feeling of waves crashing over my head, that delightful second of disorientation that takes your breath away. The movie Splash came out in 1984, and many hours were spent pretending I was a misunderstood mermaid stuck with a human family. When I was twelve, I got in a pretty bad accident involving some too-big waves, an inner tube and some horrible pre-teen decision-making skills and it sadly kept me out of the water for years.
Today, the beach feels like home, feels like childhood (the good and the bad memories) and I don't think I could ever live too far inland.

Images from top to bottom:
Tim Barber for Muse Magazine via Munuque
Lyrics from Real Estate "Easy" handwritten by me
After Storm by Karen Smidth
Editorial from Vogue Korea from Asi Es Como Es
Caux Landscape with Rising Clouds by Ferdinand Hodler
Bathymetry posters by Odd Hero
Photographer by Christopher Wilson
Craggy Coastline by Paul Ferney