Anyone here who has never seen the sea?

[alcor972]

yes!...
I like how ro is describing the new york coastal environment...
ro must be good at describing nature...
in another thread on garden plants initiated by tight and juicy...tnj... I was already enjoying his descriptions concerning animals having a tendency to taste the cultivated plants before humans may even just have a little bit of them...
lol...
ro is good!...
and what eaglecowboy wrote is cool too...

 

[ronin001]

Thanks @alcor972

 

[kewlkid75]

I was in the Navy and I saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time and cried....yes i cried. I grew up in small town where all you saw all day was trees, old houses, farms, and dairy cattle. Seeing the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, the Caribbean Sea and the Persian Gulf was things i only read about in history books. To this day i still reminisce about those days.

 

[Tight_N_Juicy]

I'm 28 now, and have seen nothing but the middle of the high desert my whole life. The farthest I've traveled is to my neighboring states here in the Southwest US.

I'd love to see something other than dirt before I die.

 

[ActionBuddy]

^ At last!... We have heard someone answer the OP's title question...

I really hope you will be able to take a vacation to see the Pacific, Tight_N_Juicy!... You will be amazed, even if it is just at Santa Monica or Redondo Beach... But, do your heart and eyes a favor, and travel way north of there.

A/B

 

[ConanTheBarber]

I was six when I first saw the Pacific Ocean — probably off the Oregon coast, but it could also have been Northern California. There is now no one with a vivid memory to confirm this with.
I tried, at least as my memory has it, to explain to my sister that I felt something like awe, but she was having none of it. I was soft and weak, she screamed from every pore. Adolescent stuff, but they color everything.
That week or so seaside really gave me my first strong sense of being no more than a grain of sand, in the larger scheme. Hard to keep that perception, but each time it's been triggered I have felt a great sense of union and release.

 

[twoton]

I'm 28 now, and have seen nothing but the middle of the high desert my whole life. The farthest I've traveled is to my neighboring states here in the Southwest US.

I'd love to see something other than dirt before I die.

Ohhhh, you just gotta go sometime. Seriously. Make it a top priority.

 

[ActionBuddy]

... That week or so, seaside really gave me my first strong sense of being no more than a grain of sand, in the larger scheme. Hard to keep that perception, but each time it's been triggered I have felt a great sense of union and release.

I can't speak for her, but, I think that this experience of your's, Conan, might express the intent of Swoon's questions for us... as well as the awe that many of us have felt with our "first encounters" of an ocean... Oceans are LARGE... Personally speaking, I am in awe of the LARGE...

A/B

 

[ConanTheBarber]

I can't speak for her, but, I think that this experience of your's, Conan, might express the intent of the Swoon's questions for us... As well as the awe that many of us have felt with "first encounters" of an ocean.

A/B

I hoped that I answered her.
I was a prairie boy, and therefore used to the same sense of vast expanse that one experiences with special intensity when looking across any body of water with no visible opposite side.
I also made many visits to the Rocky Mountains in childhood, and they were vast in another, quite turbulent way.
But I was never ambushed by the feeling until I saw the sea.
Of course, I was waking up during that trip. My parents had considered me their much-loved but retarded child (a word we would not use today, and I mean no offence in recreating some of the explanations that I eventually received).
The first glimmer of any wit in me at all came when I saw the saguaro cacti in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.
The sea was still a week away.

 

[ActionBuddy]

I hoped that I answered her.
I was a prairie boy, and therefore used to the same sense of vast expanse that one experiences with special intensity when looking across any body of water with no visible opposite side... The first glimmer of any wit in me at all came when I saw the saguaro cacti in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona... The sea was still a week away.

Not too surprised that seeing the big "saguaros" stimulated your interest, Conan...

Nice comparison of the vastness of the Canadian prairies to the vastness of the oceans... Long may they both live!

A/B

 

[ConanTheBarber]

Not too surprised that seeing the big "saguaros" stimulated your interest, Conan...

Sometimes a saguaro is only a saquaro, A/B.
Still, I must acknowledge that some kind of interest was building. I was quite enchanted by the young boxer who used to lie out by the pool with his wife between bouts of hiiiiiiighly intense cardio work. That was at the Rincon Hotel in Tucson, Az.
Deeply tanned, abs forever, bristling with a young man's bluster, and kind, in that black-and-white-television way in which decency was expected of everyone — he was for me the very incarnation of the masculine ethos into which my whole being would inexorably meld as time passed.
If I knew anything, two years later, at eight — I knew that I would never find a suitable container in the bourgeois, the 'normal.'

Nice comparison of the vastness of the Canadian prairies to the vastness of the oceans... Long may they both live!

A/B

Yup.

 

[ActionBuddy]

Nice... Now, back to the sea.

Tagging on to the OP's questions, I am interested to know what sea or ocean people here have first seen?

A/B

 

[Tight_N_Juicy]

Ohhhh, you just gotta go sometime. Seriously. Make it a top priority.

Oh, it definitely is. My man wants to go visit some friends of his on the east coast sometime within the next couple years. I've got my fingers crossed that we get to go.

 

[ActionBuddy]

^ Oh... That "other" coast?... The one that sorta has little lame waves lapping at it, sometimes... And/or devastating hurricanes that wipe out historic towns along it... annually... OK, then... Enjoy! ...

With all of the toxic water pollution over there on the Eastern Seaboard, can you still find seashells on the beaches?... (Not like you would dare to eat them if the mollusk inside was still alive.)

A/B

Psst!: Hoping to stir up some West Coast vs. East Coast rivalry here... Don't tell!

 

[twoton]

^ Oh... That "other" coast?... The one that sorta has little lame waves lapping at it, sometimes... And/or devastating hurricanes that wipe out historic towns along it... annually... OK, then... Enjoy! ...

With all of the toxic water pollution over there on the Eastern Seaboard, can you still find seashells on the beaches?... (Not like you would dare to eat them if the mollusk inside was still alive.)

A/B

Psst!: Hoping to stir up some West Coast vs. East Coast rivalry here... Don't tell!

I'm sure the West Coast beaches are nice. Sometimes the water might even be warm enough to go in without a drysuit.

But to T_n_J, one of the things I've noticed about ocean water is that it looks different depending on where you are, so you can travel around and it gives you different looks. Along the East Coast it's mostly a steel blue color. Down in the Caribbean the water really is that bright turquoise you see in the travel brochures. Deep ocean water is the deepest bluest blue you can imagine.

 

[950483]

Oh, it definitely is. My man wants to go visit some friends of his on the east coast sometime within the next couple years. I've got my fingers crossed that we get to go.

Please will you resurrect this thread and tell us what it was like? Even if you're totally unimpressed. The smell of the sea, and the sea air are things that you can't experience without actually going. The same beach and the same sea can be completely different from day to day, so don't be put off going if the weather is less than ideal.

 

[alcor972]

I read that there are no hurricanes along the western coast of the us... because once they form in the central america monsoon airmass...they have a tendency to diverge from the lands... and go straight forward into the pacific ocean open waters...
nevertheless... there are almost every year more tropical cyclones generated on the pacific side of the americas than along their atlantic side...
saying that... I've already seen on satelitte images hurricanes or tropical storms from the eastern pacific making landfall on the western coasts of central america... from costa rica until the baja california, mexico... but not in the us... indeed...
please... does someone know if a hurricane has already reached california in the past?...
thank you...
and also... is it true that it never rains in california?...
lol
thanks!...

 

[pdxjoe]

What could be called a low category one hit Oregon and Washington in October of 1962. It went as far north as Canada and east to the central part of both states. So to answer your question they sometimes make landfall on the west coast of the US. I have seen it rain in California when I was there on holiday, it flooded the auto parking lot.

 

[185248]

There are many people, many more children who live in the Outback here who never have a chance to see our oceans. Even though we are the worlds largest Island it sounds kinda strange. Yet many in drought time 10 to 12 years of age have never seen or experienced rain either.

Families and organizations sponsor outback kids to visit our beaches...it is a little different to what it used to be because of the internet. But once upon a time it was an awe inspiring experience for the kids who had never the opportunity to visit their homelands shores.

Even for me, who has lived near the coast all my life, to see Mother Nature during a Cyclone, the power of the ocean is a sight to be seen. Huge waves crashing upon the rocks and beaches, so powerful it shakes the earth you stand upon. The surf spray and the foam covers everything.

 

[lapdog2001]

Growing up, and living a few miles from the ocean all my life, I have no recollection of the first time I saw open water.
But when your best local beaches look like this:

... and you travel to the Caribbean for the first time and see this:

... it is an amazing experience. The clarity of the water, it's warmth, the white sands ... simply gorgeous!