Quote of the Day (Helen Czerski, on Being ‘Citizens of an Ocean World’)

“Marine heat waves and hot spots can have severe local effects, as ocean life struggles to survive the increasing temperatures or moves to find cooler water, disrupting the ecosystems in those places. But the bigger picture is that any change to the ocean engine will matter, because the way this engine hums dictates conditions for the rest of life on Earth. Living on a blue planet isn't about the color, lovely though it is. The ocean is the dominant feature of Earth, and we live in its shadow. This is about our identity as citizens of an ocean world, which is broadcast to the universe, written in blue light.”— British physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski, “The Shifting Flows of Our Overheating Oceans,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 2023

I took the image accompanying this post while on vacation in Hilton Head, S.C., in November 2014.

Quote of the Day (Rachel Carson, on What’s Found ‘In Every Curving Beach’)

“In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is a story of the earth.” ― American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist Rachel Carson (1907-1964), “Our Ever-Changing Shore,” Holiday Magazine, July 1958

The image accompanying this post was taken on a beach while I was on vacation in Hilton Head, S.C., in November 2014.

Quote of the Day (Lord Byron, on ‘The Glad Waters of the Dark Blue Sea’)

“O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,    
Our thoughts are boundless, and our souls as free,   
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home.” —English Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), The Corsair: A Tale (1814)

I took the image accompanying this post while on vacation in Hilton Head, SC, in November 2014.

Photo of the Day: ‘Rapture on the Lonely Shore’—Hilton Head, SC

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
   There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
   There is society where none intrudes,
   By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
   I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
   From these our interviews, in which I steal
   From all I may be, or have been before,
   To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.” — English Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812)

Lord Byron never visited America, let alone the shore of South Carolina. When I took this photo while on vacation in Hilton Head six years, the beach at that point in the day was not “lonely.” But I certainly felt the “rapture” he evoked in this passage as I pedaled my bike on the shoreline.

In these dying days of a year darkened by COVID-19, memory is the only way to experience vistas like this once taken for granted in the era of untrammeled travel. But memory—and the magical verses like these—remain, for all that, enormously powerful.

Let’s hope that, at some point in the new year, we will have once again the opportunity “to mingle with the Universe” without fear.