I was in college when I took an Oceanography class. I'm not sure what I thought we were going to be learning about (I suppose I was hoping whales, the gentle giants of the sea). Instead we learned about the thousands of creatures that dwell in the deep floors of the ocean; other worldly monsters surviving in the darkness. They have fangs and naturally glow with their own light, have translucent skin and are capable of destroying things much larger than their own size. Otherwise known as, me never going into the ocean ever again.
Yet, this only means that my fascination with the ocean intensifies. There's the remnants of the life that people have made around the sea; destroyed wooden fences, long forgotten lighthouses where the lone lighthouse keeper once dwelled. There's a beautiful stillness that comes with standing on a beach; the perverse reality of the landscape, looking out over the vastness of the water, dreaming of what could be lurking down below, or even what could be waiting for you on the other side.
