The magic and mystery of the ocean: So many of us learn of it at an
early age, when we first become enchanted with the sea as children.
The
tick-tocking crocodile of Disney’s Peter Pan was for many
a first encounter with marine creatures. Other children got their first
briny taste of pelagic wildlife—real and imaginary —through
Hans Christian Anderson’s telling of “The
Little Mermaid,” while
yet others met her and her fishy friends in the contemporary animated
movie, which was followed by the wildly popular Finding
Nemo. Or we laughed
as we twisted tongues, reciting “She sells sea shells by the seashore.” Or
we parroted Mother Goose nursery rhymes, in which cockleshells grew in
gardens and “a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea … was
all laden with pretty things for thee!” I remember catching sea
fever from my mother, who sometimes chanted John Masefield’s famous
lines: “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and
the sky ….”
Children and beaches and breaking waves seem
to go together. They certainly do in this issue of Sea
Stories, as
you’ll discover in the suite
of writings included in “Children of the Beach.”
But humans of all ages love to play beside,
and in, the Earth’s
salt waters. Our bodies take up paddles and ply the sparkling surface,
as John Hutchinson does in “Kayaking the Chesapeake.” Our
imagination takes wing with fanciful imaginings, as in the portfolio “Mermaids.” And
our capacities for empathy and relationship are expanded in the presence
of the living (and sometimes the dead) inhabitants of the sea, as in
Ashton Nichols’s “Face to Face with Wild Dolphins” and
in the moments of silent or raucous communion observed by this issue’s
bird poets.
Through these and other entries, we invite you
to recapture the childlike sense of magic, mystery, and majesty that
the ocean offers us. It’s
our gift to you this season, as the sun crosses the equator once more
and life’s journey continues.
KLM
* * *
This issue of Sea Stories comes to you through the work of:
Steven Pavlos Holmes, Editor and Project Consultant
Karla Linn Merrifield, Editor
The staff of Blue Ocean Institute, Julie Pareles, Executive
Director
