Ocean Love

By Maggie Romuld

Maggie is on CaNOE’s first Board of Directors. You can read more about Maggie and all of the board here!

“What is it about the ocean that makes us love it so much?”

I love the ocean because my mother loves the ocean, and her mother before her. I was handed a legacy of wave watching, tide-pool hopping, and dinghy-rowing.

A few weeks ago I had to wait while friends were preparing their sailboat. Without even thinking I stretched out on the dock and hung over its edge to see what was making its home on the pilings. I’ve been doing that for fifty years. Even in my land-locked days, I was compelled to travel to shorelines, any shoreline, to feed my addiction for wave watching. (Maybe that’s why I became a river scientist; a prairie solution to ocean withdrawal?)

Do I know why I love the ocean? No. I just know that I can’t live without it. The smells, the sounds, sand giving way, beach pebbles shifting under my weight. All my mother wanted for her 87th birthday was a few days of beachcombing at Long Beach. Bad knees from a life of nursing and hiking, she still managed to hobble out to the edge so she could see that all was right in the world. Seagulls still called, crabs still scurried, and waves still dropped their treasures before pulling away.

Apparently Jacque Cousteau was right;” The sea, once it casts its spell, (does) hold one in its net forever.”