Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The older I get, the more I am convinced that one day, I want to live near the ocean. This feeling, which tends to come on harder in the summer, struck me again this weekend as I was down in Long Branch for a friend’s wedding.
Long Branch is no prize of a city, and seems to mirror other shore towns that were once beautiful retreats but have fallen into disrepair as the years catapult by.
But standing on the ninth floor of a high rise hotel overlooking the sea, I was again enthralled with watching the waves roll in as the fishing boats lined the farthest piece of the horizon. The salt curled off the water and permeated the air, and again I thought to myself, I could certainly live next to this.
It’s there every summer when I go out to Long Island on an annual shark-fishing trip, driving through the small coastal communities to the marinas filled with eager boats in the cold early morning, swaying as they face down the great expanse of the Atlantic.
When I was a young kid, I read all of the stories that began in “Treasure Island” fashion, stories that invariably began with a naïve boy running off to the seas and landing squarely in the middle of great adventure, pirates, and daring conquests.
When I got into my college years as an English major, I read all of the stories and essays of the early American Transcendentalists like Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed their stories, I could not identify with the writers themselves— Emerson seemed like a hopeless idealist, Thoreau struck me as a bit of a Nancy, and Hawthorne like a suicide case.
One writer stood out when my professor described him, however, and that was Herman Melville, the famous author of the novel “Moby Dick.”
Melville had left home at 21 for a great brawling lifestyle on the high seas, and his writings reflect his wandering spirit, which seems a sharp departure from the other writers of that time.
My professor described him as a man more inclined to a fight than to weep, more likely to jump on a outgoing ship than surround himself with the solitude of the woods.
It was his time on the ocean, I’d wager, that made him a little more hard, a little tougher than his compatriots; I don’t believe it possible to spend your life on the groaning deck of a wooden ship in the nineteenth century and not, at the very least, be sure of yourself.
Although it may be a good thing that life isn’t as hazardous now as it was in Melville’s time, I do believe it a shame that as people, we’ve lost touch with the ocean.
Back in Melville’s time, if you wanted to travel anywhere from America, a ship was the only way to do it.
Average people had to steel themselves to the possibility that these voyages were lengthy and dangerous, and the chances of some disaster happening were decent.
This has all changed with the airplane, which has allowed travelers to cross thousands of miles while feeling as if they never left their living room.
This is much different than being in an uncomfortably small vessel in the middle of the ocean, and feeling with every rocking wave the power that you don’t have over whether your life continues or not. It is sobering and humbling, and makes me further admire the seafaring men.
And as I stood on that balcony, cigarette smoke mixing with the salty air, I thought for a moment that I wouldn’t mind if I had been born back then, and that that kind life would have suited me better than this one.
It’s a fleeting thought, of course, one that might fade quickly after a day on the water. But I do still wonder.
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