One summer when I was about ten or eleven, my family went to the beach almost every few days.  And during that time I made a friend, a boy about my age, with brown hair and eyes and a gangly body.  My sister about fifteen/sixteen allowed me to amuse her with my energy for running into the waves, diving under the water and feeling the sand hit my face.  I would burst out of the water, take deep breaths and laugh loudly trying to entice her in.  The boy as I had noticed over time, would watch us.  Watch me.  He would swim on his own but always with an eye at my joy over the waves.  Eventually over the days that followed, he began to interact with me, and suddenly I had a friend.  I was young, but not too young to realize that this boy and I had a spark of friendship that perhaps wasn't just friendship.  But of course, that is just speculation now...It was then and there in the waves off the coast of Nova Scotia I settled my heart deep in the ocean.  On the drives home from the beachside that summer, I would daydream about the boy on the beach and the joy I had found there.

To this day, I always remember that boy and our summer beach days together.  I never saw him again, but I think of him fondly.  I remember the dimple in his cheek and the laugh he made when I did something lunatic crazy as I usually did.  

There is something sacred in it.

In the ocean I mean.

The way it moves and swells.  The way it mirrors the sky with all its blue, grey, green glory.  The salt lingers in the air and the waves sound like a song.  A song that changes in rhythm, melody and tune at any given moment.

For those of us privileged enough to be raised by it, we are given to moments of advantage that others do not have.  For our lands do not roll on forever the same.  No.  Our lands are vast and varied by the watery depth of the ocean influenced weather.    The rolling hills, the cliffs and the coves that capture land from sea is something that Nova Scotia is all too familiar with.  I couldn't live without this landscape...I may travel, and still my heart beat aches.  Where is the ocean?  Where is the sea?  Where is the salt in the air that brings my spirit alive again?

I once thought I could leave it all behind.  Heartbreak does that to you.  It makes you think starting over and forgetting would be the best thing... but I have found, that it would be the worst thing.  If you leave your roots behind you in effort to forget and move on, you are denying the honest soul in you. If you move, move with respect and honour to your past.  If you need to start over, start afresh and anew, but do not start without coming to terms with the roots that are deep in soil of the land and hearts you leave behind. 

The ocean is my heart.  It has captured every heartbreak and every sorrow, and it has also captured every good and wonderful thing I have come to know.  This is why I am a bird of the sea.  This is why my wings cannot be clipped for as long as I live and journey through life, I will always need to remember and be reminded of the truths that lie within the sea. 

Everything changes, nothing stays the same, and yet it all moves apart of one story that continues forever.  Nothing is for certain, but like the tides of the ocean, everything is brought in and out of life with a pull that has a purpose and reason.