By Brandon McWilliams
Why do I always seem to return to the sea?
Every time I pick up my pen, salt water pours out, soaks the page
Wave, wind, tide
Darkwater and kelp
They call and call, like gulls circling the catch.
How can I describe it?
When I was young, we would take trips north, up the coast. The view from the backseat of our silver station wagon was mundanity; highway walls, stores shaped like children’s blocks, dry brown hills for a small forever.
We’d eventually cross some magical threshold where the dead hills turn green and clusters of oaks flow through the valleys like quiet rivers.
I love those green hills, the small spires of lichen-jeweled rock reminding that this land has deep bones. The little bakery that felt like our very own secret. Wildflowers.
But always, there was an energy just over the next set of gentle peaks - something looming.
As we drove and drove down snake roads, the ocean would reach out its long fingers until, finally, the smell.
Salt, spice, decay, life.
It wrapped me in a gentle fist, dragging ever closer until we’d crest a final hill and there it was
inviting, inevitable, intimately familiar, and always, always new.
Everyone describes the ocean as a body.
This feels right.
It has heft, weight, and unity. What you look at when gazing out on the rollers sweeping to shore is not just water. It's a being.
People personify mountains because they are old and they are large and they are impressive.
They say the mountain is wise, that it is angry, that it is calm.
The sea is more. Always more.
It can't be contained by simple words.
It has birthed countless mountains and swallowed just as many.
The only true thing to say about the ocean is that it exists.
It doesn't owe anything more.
Sometimes I think about the myth of the sirens, of a song so sweet it draws sailors to their doom, to forget their homes and lives in the pursuit of something primordial.
In the myths, it is the call of beautiful nymphs that draw sailors, but I don’t know. That doesn’t feel right.
If I were on a ship and the siren’s call wafted over us, I think I’d be left with the crash of surf in my ears, the puff of whale breath, the bark of seals.
Maybe the siren’s call already has hold of me.
The ocean can sing for itself.
Brandon McWilliams is a writer and science communicator based in Seattle, WA where they read a lot of books and think about climate hope. Their work has appeared in outlets like Fast Flesh, Lucky Jefferson, and Hidden Compass. They also get really excited about moss.