Standing on the balcony of our cruise ship, recently having just returned from yet
another epic Caribbean adventure, I savored a flame orange sunrise painted across the vista of a Florida morning sky.
The distant oceanic horizon drew my attention. The eternally ageless sirens’ song of the sea beckoned me, as it has done my entire life. By the age of five, I had traveled across the raging North Atlantic on a family trip to Great Britain. So impressed by the journey was I that upon reaching Britain, I informed my family that I would be joining the Navy when I reached adulthood. Five-year-olds making such impactful life choices typically are not taken seriously. However, this childhood prophecy came to fruition!
While home-ported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, thousands of miles at sea were chalked up across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. From Australia’s Coral Sea to the ice shores of Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk and the horrifyingly turbulent Bering Sea off Alaska, we sailed. Along the way, I earned Shellback status by crossing the Equator north of Papua, New Guinea. Great sea stories abound, but that is for another day.
Now I live I mere steps from the sea and walk the beach watching the distant horizons. It is out there that I wish to be. To me, traveling the open ocean, whether upon a cruise ship or naval vessel, is the greatest show on earth. Nowhere is the insignificance of humanity shown more clearly than at sea beneath the seeming infinity of sky and space above our blue planet. We are but a speck.
The beckoning of the ocean is not dissimilar in my opinion from the woodsmen’s curiosity about what lies beyond the next mountain ridge or the astronomer’s desire to learn what the next distant solar system really holds. In each case, “what is in the great beyond?” stimulates the brain. Explore your horizon.