Why do we seek the shore?  What draws us to the waters edge?  What’s the appeal of sand, sea? 18Th Century author Lord Byron wrote “There is a rapture on the lovely shore there is a society, where no one intrudes. By the deep sea and music on its roar, I love not man the less buy nature more.”

The coasts have long attracted human habitation.  Today over 60% of the world’s population lives within a narrow coastal belt reaching landward from the oceans edge.  The tranquil setting of a beach has a magnetic quality.  To many the shore symbolizes a paradise within reach after a place of idyllic beauty. 

The shore becomes an appropriate venue for rejuvenating and renewal of the spirit.  There you can cast off the stresses of daily life and embrace the calm of the shore.

It stands to reason that we seek the shore for fresh air.  The soothing sounds of waves and rolling rocks the sensation of sand on the foot feeling the sea spray carried off by the breeze to witness the turning of the tides.

Less obvious there suggests we go there to recall childhood memories, but it could also be said that where sand and sea meet is a timeless juncture that it offers consistency and balance in a sometimes unpredictable world. 

Perhaps we even identify the shore and its ability to transform from tempers to calm. From confusion to tranquility, within moments, history returns to the shore as seen in mythology.

The world’s elements were personified as divine beings and the sea was characterized as Neptune whose kingdom presided below the surface.  The oceans were sirens where a group of seaman moved by there sweet singing lured mariners to destruction on the rocks surrounding their islands.

In the telling of these tails, ancient historians, mythical meanings to the very real power of the seas.  Across time, artists have chosen romantic views of the shore as their theme and through artistic influence and styles of the moment have changed throughout the centuries.  The use of the shore as a subject has not.

Shakespeare dedicated an entire drama to observations of the sea in his famous play “Tempest”.  The literary works of great authors like Lord Byron, Shelley and Henry David Thoreau are scattered with references to the shore.

Lord Byron observed “Land marks the earth with ruins, it’s control stops with the shore.” In Victorian classics, Charles Dickens, Jane Austin writing the therapy found in heading south to take in the seaside and name one of the luxuries of the upper class to summer in brighten a bath or eve a broad in France.
Today these luxuries are not only reserved for the wealthy.  Most international destinations have gorgeous beaches and people seek the simplicity of the shore to escape the usual complication of everyday life. 

Tourism is one of the strongest global industries today and many coastal communities thrive on the opportunities of location.  The beach is a playground to every kind of traveler from sun worshipers to water sport enthusiasts.  Surfers go to the shore in pursuit of the perfect wave.  Others seek the simple exhilaration of swimming, of glimpsing marine life and immersing themselves in the unknown.

Beyond legend or chasing the almighty dollar to early Polynesians the shore represented more than the stuff of folklore.  To them the shore was and remains a source of life.  The simple lifestyle of the fisherman prevails in many island settings.

Beaches are widely recognized as the precious, irreplaceable part of the world.  Our coasts are perhaps a piece of white heaven  here on earth.  In words immortalized by our late president John F. Kennedy.  In 1962 he spoke of our commitment to the sea musing that we’ve “tied to the ocean, when we go back to the sea.  Whether it be to wail or watch it, we go back from whence we came.”



A statement made so much more poignant when over three decades later, the passing of his own son John F. Kennedy Jr., was to be in familiar waters off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

In life as in death the shore becomes a place of rest, sometimes extremely a sanctuary, not only to marine life but to human life as well.  The sea, the shore. Their meeting of two worlds drawn to one another even as we are drawn in a hit of unconscious attraction that reaches beyond time and soothes the soul.