“The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
When I think of the sea or lakes, I think of the restless waves.
The tide goes in and out and storms send huge waves crashing against the land.
I feel as if there are lessons for me in the sight and sound of the waves. I feel comforted by them.
When I was young one summer, I spent several days on a Lake Michigan beach at Warren Dunes watching the waves for hours at a time without being the least bit bored.
Why?
I have not figured out what it was that was so soothing and yet interesting that I could just sit on a sand dune and watch them endlessly.
Living in Michigan, it was not unusual, as hubby and I did, to see Lake Michigan, Lake Superior and Lake Huron on many different occasions. My favorite time seeing Lake Superior was at the end of one summer when it had been so warm that the water was warm. I walked along the beach one morning while huge waves rolled in beside me. It was wonderful.
We have laid eyes on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, but mostly we were visiting Niagara Falls. We would leave State College, PA, and head north to Watkins Glenn and walk the Glenn and then drive up along Seneca Lake of the Finger Lakes. We would cross over to Canada and stay in a motel on that side of the falls.
Pictures of Watkins Glenn:
www.google.com/...
Hubby and I traveled and camped a lot before we had children and we managed to see both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. When I put a toe in the Atlantic, my first thought was that the waves washed up on the shores of Europe and I needed to visit that side of the ocean, too, and in 1972 we did. I saw the Mediterranean Sea and it was beautiful.
The next year we visited Nevis and St. Kitts in the Caribbean. I am lucky to have the happy memories of water and waves there, too.
Hubby and I floated in the Great Salt Lake in 1970. It was really a different kind of thing. My feet bobbed up so high that I tried to pull them back down and then I splashed water in my eyes. Ouch. But it is a fun memory.
Of course, if I had been inside a boat or a ship on the sea during a storm, I might have very different thoughts.
I have gone across the English Channel on a ship that looked huge to me before the Chunnel was built. I have ridden ferries across to Mackinac Island in Michigan and twice from Port Angeles to Washington State and once between St. Kitts and Nevis. I rode a ship on the Rhine River in 1972 using our Eurail pass. But other than that it has been rowboats on small lakes.
When I was about 12, my family was in a rowboat on a large lake and the motor quit. My dad was trying to fix it and I asked him if I should start rowing toward shore. He mumbled that I could do it, but he would get the motor to work. He didn’t until we were almost to the shore. Even he was ready to dock by then. I wish I had the muscles now to row that far.
I have mentioned before that I grew up on twenty acres of trees, hills and a pond. Which is why I agree with this famous quotation:
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Hubby and I live on a small lake and have spent 44 years rebuilding and adding on to a tiny house. It has been worth it, though.
I love water whether it is large water falls like Niagara or small ones spilling down to The Going-to-the Sun Road in Glacier Park.
We also saw Old Faithful and other geysers at Yellowstone in 1970, 71 and 90. The beautiful Artist Falls are a great memory.
Pictures of the Falls are here:
www.google.com/...
One book that I really enjoyed was River Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America by William Least Heat-Moon. It is a wonderful, scary, true adventure story.
www.barnesandnoble.com/...
In his most ambitious journey ever, William Least Heat-Moon sets off aboard a small boat named Nikawa ("river horse" in Osage) from the Atlantic at New York Harbor in hopes of entering the Pacific near Astoria, Oregon. He and his companion, Pilotis, struggle to cover some 5,000 watery miles, often following in the wakes of our most famous explorers, from Henry Hudson to Lewis and Clark.
En route, the voyagers confront massive floods, dangerous weather, and their own doubts about whether they can complete the trip. But the hard days yield incomparable pleasures: generous strangers, landscapes untouched since Sacajawea saw them, riverscapes flowing with a lively past, and the growing belief that efforts to protect our lands and waters are beginning to pay off.
I also enjoyed reading Chesapeake by James Michener.
www.barnesandnoble.com/…
James A. Michener brings his grand epic tradition to bear on the four-hundred-year saga of America’s Eastern Shore, from its Native American roots to the modern age. In the early 1600s, young Edmund Steed is desperate to escape religious persecution in England.
After joining Captain John Smith on a harrowing journey across the Atlantic, Steed makes a life for himself in the New World, establishing a remarkable dynasty that parallels the emergence of America. Through the extraordinary tale of one man’s dream, Michener tells intertwining stories of family and national heritage, introducing us along the way to Quakers, pirates, planters, slaves, abolitionists, and notorious politicians, all making their way through American history in the common pursuit of freedom.
It is the memory of water that is going to help me get through the next years. The endurance, the beauty, the flowing of it. The good memories will help. I can close my eyes and be there.
Please share your favorite places of waves, wind and water.
Poems of the sea:
www.poemhunter.com/...
……………..
The Sound Of The Sea
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine of foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.
.………………...
….…..….
Pete Seeger – Sailing Down My Golden River
Sailing down my golden river,
Sun and water all my own,
Yet I was never alone.
………
Sun and water, old life givers,
I'll have them where e'er I roam,
And I was not far from home.
……….
Sunlight glancing on the water,
Life and death are all my own,
Yet I was never alone.
…………
Life to raise my sons and daughters,
Golden sparkles in the foam,
And I was not far from home.
…………
Sailing down this winding highway,
Travelers from near and far,
Yet I was never alone.
…….
Exploring all the little by-ways,
Sighting all the distant stars,
And I was not far from home. ______________________________________
Words & music by Pete Seeger, 1971, In support of his work with the sloop Clearwater on the Hudson River.
Pete Seeger sings Woody Guthrie - Roll On, Columbia
.…..….…..…….
Roll On Columbia
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music based on "Goodnight, Irene" (Huddie Ledbetter and John Lomax)
Green Douglas firs where the waters cut through. Down her wild mountains and canyons she flew. Canadian Northwest to the ocean so blue, Roll on, Columbia, roll on!
CHORUS: Roll on, Columbia, roll on. Roll on, Columbia, roll on. Your power is turning our darkness to dawn, Roll on, Columbia, roll on.
Other great rivers add power to you, Yakima, Snake and the Klickitat, too, Sandy Willamette and Hood River, too; Roll on, Columbia, roll on.
CHORUS
Tom Jefferson's vision would not let him rest, An empire he saw in the Pacific Northwest. Sent Lewis and Clark and they did the rest; Roll on, Columbia, roll on.
CHORUS
It's there on your bank that we fought many a fight, Sheridan's boys in the blockhouse that night, They saw us in death but never in flight, Roll on, Columbia, roll on.
CHORUS
At Bonneville now there are ships in the locks, The waters have risen and cleared all the rocks, Shiploads of plenty will steam past the docks, Roll on, Columbia, roll on.
CHORUS
And on up the river is Grand Coulee Dam, The mightiest thing ever built by a man, To run these great factories and water the land,
It's roll on, Columbia, roll on. CHORUS
These might men labored by day and by night, Matching their strength 'gainst the river's wild flight, Through rapids and falls they won the hard fight, Roll on, Columbia, roll on.
…………….…..
The Song Of The Chattahoochee - Poem by Sidney Lanier
The whole poem is here:
www.poemhunter.com/…
...…...…..…..….
Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall.
………….. All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried `Abide, abide,'
The willful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said `Stay,'
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed `Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall.'
………………… High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, `Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall.'
……………
Poem On His Birthday - Poem by Dylan Thomas
The whole poem is here:
www.poemhunter.com/...
............
In the mustardseed sun, By full tilt river and switchback sea Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
He celebrates and spurns His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age; Herons spire and spear.
…………..
Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
Doing what they are told,
Curlews aloud in the congered waves
Work at their ways to death,
And the rhymer in the long tongued room,
Who tolls his birthday bell, Tolls towards the ambush of his wounds; Herons, stepple stemmed, bless.
………………..
In the thistledown fall,
He sings towards anguish; finches fly In the claw tracks of hawks On a seizing sky; small fishes glide
Through wynds and shells of drowned
Ship towns to pastures of otters. He
In his slant, racking house And the hewn coils of his trade perceives Herons walk in their shroud…
………….….……
and just for remembering the joy of it all:
“This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of them longer and fuller of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learned to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Best wishes!