“Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. When plankton thrive, so does the rest of the food chain. In a campaign called Forests Are Lovers of the Sea, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.”

Jim Robbins

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“Why I miss the trolley cars. Because unlike everything and everybody else in the U.S. they did not swerve from their ancient path. And because as a boy (thousands of years ago) I went to Coney Island in a trolley car, and saw grass growing between the tracks and because it was an open trolley, with the conductor on the side hopping from row to row to collect his fares (his left arm holding the rail as he hopped) and because it seemed to me then (as does not happen now on the bus) that the other passengers were all my family, all Brooklyn. And because as we neared the sea, and could see its blue glare on the surface, everyone (at least in the back row) burst out singing.”

Alfred Kazin

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“Into the little port you cannot sail unwelcome at any hour of day or night.”

Emily Dickinson

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“It is getting warmer all the time and I have been swimming almost every morning—except for two marvelous stormy days. Today the sea is like pale blue satin, with a mauve haze—huge freighters and tankers coming in slowly through the haze, like ghosts—lovely.”

Elizabeth Bishop

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“Owing to my boat’s shape, she could not wear a tall mast without turning over and so her pocket-handkerchief-sized sail could only garner and harvest the tiniest cupfuls of wind; thus, for the most part, she was propelled from point to point with oars, and when we had a full crew on board—three dogs, an owl, and sometimes a pigeon—and were carrying a full cargo—some two dozen containers full of seawater and specimens—she was a back-aching load to push through the water.”

Gerald Durrell

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“In spring the almost enclosed sheet of water that separated Corfu from the mainland would be a pale and delicate blue, and then as spring settled into hot, crackling summer, it seemed to stain the still sea a deeper and more unreal color, which in some lights seemed like the violet blue of a rainbow, a blue that faded to a rich jade green in the shallows. In the evening when the sun sank, it was as if it were drawing a brush across the sea’s surface, streaking and blurring it to purples smudged with gold, silver, tangerine and pale pink.”

Gerald Durrell

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“CAUTION: As the buoys marking the shoals are often out of position, mariners are cautioned to be on their guard when navigating these shores.”

Anonymous

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“When are you sailing so I can meet you at the dock with champagne?”

Robert Lowell

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“Beginning a salad, was to him like stepping into sea water on a chilly day, and he had always to brace himself in order to attack the fortress of an apple.”

Vladimir Nabokov

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“Nowhere—not on these marshes or in the coves or out along the mudflats—is it a good idea to trivialize the power of the water.”

Susan Hand Shetterly

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“One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much. Physical shedding to begin with, which then mysteriously spreads into other fields. Clothes, first. Of course, one needs less in the sun. But one needs less anyway, one finds suddenly. One does not need a closet-full, only a small suitcase-full. And what a relief it is! Less taking up and down of hems, less mending, and—best of all—less worry about what to wear. One finds one is shedding not only clothes—but vanity.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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“Saw the limb of a rainbow footing itself on the sea at a small apparent distance from the shore, a thing of itself—no substrate cloud or even mist visible—but the distance glimmered through it as through a thin semi-transparent hoop.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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“I don’t consider myself a hero. I’m an ordinary girl who believed in her dream. You don’t have to be someone special or anything special to achieve something amazing. You’ve just got to have a dream, believe in it, and work hard.”

Jessica Watson

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