Nature/nurture...? But, it does seem you were probably a sea creature in a former life! I'm fond of swimming and the ocean but don't have the same NEED. Bring me to a quiet patch of forest, maybe a babbling brook where I can watch water flowing over stones. But I do and always did love collecting seashells!
I'd not heard of the film, Prue, but it looks like I can get it on Amazon Prime. (We ditched Netflix some time ago.)
Thank you for all of this and for being an accessible mermaid!
Ah... if I was in the forest, I would settle for the babbling brook. Water sliding ever onward. That beautiful tinkle and chuckle over stones.
I love our temperate rainforests, all mosses and manferns. But our dry schlerophyll forests, even though the trees are astonishing in size and scope, lack the true green density and lacy-ness of the northern hemisphere forests.
Perhaps it is all nature vs nuture. And yet, there's something deep in my soul in respect of the sea.
I don't blame you for ditching Netflix. It's pretty generic and plastic, isn't it. We tend to watch mostly Britbox, but catch the occasional movie via Apple-itunes. In truth though, we've now NOT been watching any TV for nearly 3 weeks, just as a trial. Golly it feels good!
Re the mermaid thing - legend sometimes reveals them to be very dangerous and spiteful creatures. Ouch!
Thank you, Elizabeth. There's a wonderful, most often deserted beach that we can only get to by boat and we moored the boat and went ashore, walked to this particular beach and had the most wonderful day. My husband took the pic unbeknowns to me and TBH, it's my favourite. It sums up me in a nutshell.
When I met the Pacific Ocean for the first time I fell in love with it. We were living in Ohio at the time and about two years later we got the opportunity to move to California - the ocean is my favorite place to be. Actually babbling books are wonderful too. I'm just a water person at heart I think.
That’s probably right - some of us are water people, some are earth, some are fire, some are air…? I wonder how much comes through from our ancestors, how much relates to earliest memories, does astrology have any part in it at all?? But there always seems a place or space where we feel most at home.
If I go all Freudian, perhaps its the swooshing sound within the womb and then the fact that the first nine months of our lives are spent swimming in amniotic fluid. A private swimming pool!
There's something calming about water sounds, definitely. Whether it's brooks, rivers of the ocean. I have meditation tracks of each and they're very soothing.
I recognise that call of the sea, but I find the constant noise of it exhausting! My favourite places are the drive into Thredbo (alpine stillness) and the area around Birdsville (so much room to BREATHE!). Australia is so full of extraordinary places. I’m so thrilled that you live in your Best Place, with the sea right there as comforter and teacher. Another wonderful post. Thanks so much.
I love the roar of waves. But the days when it's just a little plop of tiny waves are the best - I can't swim in roaring waves anymore but give me a ploppy wave and I'm in!
I agree that alpine stillness is heaven. Husband and self used to rent a house in the highlands here in winter and the nights were as plush and dark as black velvet, the lack of sound almost eery but so beautiful.
I wrote a few blog posts several years ago that were inspired by Anne Morrow Lindbergh's writing - the idea of shedding our shells really spoke to me. I think water, the sea, sand, and so many other nature metaphors begin to resonate even more as we reach the second half of life.
Lindbergh is proving to be timeless. I suspect she will sit with Henry Beston by my bed into perpetuity.
I've appreciated natural metaphors forever though, especially when related to the sea. I can't remember a time in my life when they haven't opened up my soul. I just want to store some writings deep inside and savour them, like a mouth full of chocolate. I looked back through an old journal/scrap book the other day and I began it - writing sayings, words, aphorisms, cutting things from magazines and pasting them in - when I was in my late twenties. So glad I kept all those things.
I have always been a water baby, by the sea is my happy place, the place where i most feel like me and feel connected to those before me and the general life force. I live 8kms from the coast, and it's becoming too far. When i drive from my home up from the valley I reach the top and there she is, the Bass Straight, it feels like a huge exhale. Every time I'm surprised by my physical reaction. My second favourite place are the temperate rainforests of the west coast, beside rivers. I think I just like damp and wet, nature.
We haven't been watching tv now for a month or so and I LOVE it, taken a long time to get hubby onboard,
Oh Kate, I remember going down into a valley way behind Boat Harbour a few years ago and when we drove to a crest and the strait stretched before us in the distance, it was indeed rather magical. The promise of a very different sort of day to one amongst the trees. Mind you, the trees were lovely, and the rolling hills of the Shire (at least it felt like the Shire - at any moment I expected to see Bilbo.)
I agree with you so much about the temperate rainforests on the west/southwest. I do have a bucket list plan to travel to Corinna one day. That stairway off the river looks like one of the seven entries to the world of the fey.
As I write this by the way, no TV again. It's so good!
I am not the swimmer you are Prue but still, I do understand all this especially the Rilke quote and the calm feeling that mimics the rhythm of the waves - just like mindful breathing, over and over. I have lived by the (Irish) sea and I definitely miss that. You are blessed to have all those secret coves and deserted beaches to escape to - there's nothing else like it is there? P.S. Best sandcastle I have seen in a very long time!!! Grand Designs ...?
Ha! Image from Wikimedia Commons. I should have acknowledged.
My drippy-droppy castles are about to get a real test this week when we have the grandson for a couple of days. I find drippy-droppies so much better than bucket castles. You get the chance to build a really atmospheric place. Then grandson will spoil the ambience by using a toy bulldozer to build the moat. Sigh! He's not as much into the romance of it. More practical.
You are right about the mindful breathing. When I'm swimming it takes one breath only to get into rhythm. Just you, the breath and the water - it's honestly mesmeric. And if you open your eyes and see the world beneath, it's beautiful.
Oh Prue, such a beautiful homage to the sea - this post has soothed my soul. Absolutely beautiful. I don't have the affinity with water that you do, but gosh, I'll be thinking of you next time I'm at our local beach. xxx
As I think of you whenever I see a map, Rebecca, or a dropped shopping list. In the nicest possible way. You're actually opening my eyes to so much more in life.
Nature/nurture...? But, it does seem you were probably a sea creature in a former life! I'm fond of swimming and the ocean but don't have the same NEED. Bring me to a quiet patch of forest, maybe a babbling brook where I can watch water flowing over stones. But I do and always did love collecting seashells!
I'd not heard of the film, Prue, but it looks like I can get it on Amazon Prime. (We ditched Netflix some time ago.)
Thank you for all of this and for being an accessible mermaid!
Ah... if I was in the forest, I would settle for the babbling brook. Water sliding ever onward. That beautiful tinkle and chuckle over stones.
I love our temperate rainforests, all mosses and manferns. But our dry schlerophyll forests, even though the trees are astonishing in size and scope, lack the true green density and lacy-ness of the northern hemisphere forests.
Perhaps it is all nature vs nuture. And yet, there's something deep in my soul in respect of the sea.
I don't blame you for ditching Netflix. It's pretty generic and plastic, isn't it. We tend to watch mostly Britbox, but catch the occasional movie via Apple-itunes. In truth though, we've now NOT been watching any TV for nearly 3 weeks, just as a trial. Golly it feels good!
Re the mermaid thing - legend sometimes reveals them to be very dangerous and spiteful creatures. Ouch!
You can be the anomaly of mermaidom! Also, that picture of you walking in the water is wonderful.
Thank you, Elizabeth. There's a wonderful, most often deserted beach that we can only get to by boat and we moored the boat and went ashore, walked to this particular beach and had the most wonderful day. My husband took the pic unbeknowns to me and TBH, it's my favourite. It sums up me in a nutshell.
When I met the Pacific Ocean for the first time I fell in love with it. We were living in Ohio at the time and about two years later we got the opportunity to move to California - the ocean is my favorite place to be. Actually babbling books are wonderful too. I'm just a water person at heart I think.
That’s probably right - some of us are water people, some are earth, some are fire, some are air…? I wonder how much comes through from our ancestors, how much relates to earliest memories, does astrology have any part in it at all?? But there always seems a place or space where we feel most at home.
If I go all Freudian, perhaps its the swooshing sound within the womb and then the fact that the first nine months of our lives are spent swimming in amniotic fluid. A private swimming pool!
There's something calming about water sounds, definitely. Whether it's brooks, rivers of the ocean. I have meditation tracks of each and they're very soothing.
I recognise that call of the sea, but I find the constant noise of it exhausting! My favourite places are the drive into Thredbo (alpine stillness) and the area around Birdsville (so much room to BREATHE!). Australia is so full of extraordinary places. I’m so thrilled that you live in your Best Place, with the sea right there as comforter and teacher. Another wonderful post. Thanks so much.
I love the roar of waves. But the days when it's just a little plop of tiny waves are the best - I can't swim in roaring waves anymore but give me a ploppy wave and I'm in!
I agree that alpine stillness is heaven. Husband and self used to rent a house in the highlands here in winter and the nights were as plush and dark as black velvet, the lack of sound almost eery but so beautiful.
I wrote a few blog posts several years ago that were inspired by Anne Morrow Lindbergh's writing - the idea of shedding our shells really spoke to me. I think water, the sea, sand, and so many other nature metaphors begin to resonate even more as we reach the second half of life.
Lindbergh is proving to be timeless. I suspect she will sit with Henry Beston by my bed into perpetuity.
I've appreciated natural metaphors forever though, especially when related to the sea. I can't remember a time in my life when they haven't opened up my soul. I just want to store some writings deep inside and savour them, like a mouth full of chocolate. I looked back through an old journal/scrap book the other day and I began it - writing sayings, words, aphorisms, cutting things from magazines and pasting them in - when I was in my late twenties. So glad I kept all those things.
I have always been a water baby, by the sea is my happy place, the place where i most feel like me and feel connected to those before me and the general life force. I live 8kms from the coast, and it's becoming too far. When i drive from my home up from the valley I reach the top and there she is, the Bass Straight, it feels like a huge exhale. Every time I'm surprised by my physical reaction. My second favourite place are the temperate rainforests of the west coast, beside rivers. I think I just like damp and wet, nature.
We haven't been watching tv now for a month or so and I LOVE it, taken a long time to get hubby onboard,
Oh Kate, I remember going down into a valley way behind Boat Harbour a few years ago and when we drove to a crest and the strait stretched before us in the distance, it was indeed rather magical. The promise of a very different sort of day to one amongst the trees. Mind you, the trees were lovely, and the rolling hills of the Shire (at least it felt like the Shire - at any moment I expected to see Bilbo.)
I agree with you so much about the temperate rainforests on the west/southwest. I do have a bucket list plan to travel to Corinna one day. That stairway off the river looks like one of the seven entries to the world of the fey.
As I write this by the way, no TV again. It's so good!
I am not the swimmer you are Prue but still, I do understand all this especially the Rilke quote and the calm feeling that mimics the rhythm of the waves - just like mindful breathing, over and over. I have lived by the (Irish) sea and I definitely miss that. You are blessed to have all those secret coves and deserted beaches to escape to - there's nothing else like it is there? P.S. Best sandcastle I have seen in a very long time!!! Grand Designs ...?
Ha! Image from Wikimedia Commons. I should have acknowledged.
My drippy-droppy castles are about to get a real test this week when we have the grandson for a couple of days. I find drippy-droppies so much better than bucket castles. You get the chance to build a really atmospheric place. Then grandson will spoil the ambience by using a toy bulldozer to build the moat. Sigh! He's not as much into the romance of it. More practical.
You are right about the mindful breathing. When I'm swimming it takes one breath only to get into rhythm. Just you, the breath and the water - it's honestly mesmeric. And if you open your eyes and see the world beneath, it's beautiful.
Oh Prue, such a beautiful homage to the sea - this post has soothed my soul. Absolutely beautiful. I don't have the affinity with water that you do, but gosh, I'll be thinking of you next time I'm at our local beach. xxx
As I think of you whenever I see a map, Rebecca, or a dropped shopping list. In the nicest possible way. You're actually opening my eyes to so much more in life.
Oh Prue, such a lovely thing to say. Thank you. xxx 😘