I’m currently updating these columns to publish as a 2nd edition this year, as a handout for my autobiographical journaling participants. They can all relate.

By Mark McNease

While I’ve always been a river person much more than an ocean person, my fondness for large bodies of water remains. Humans seem to share this, or at least many of us. There’s something about water … Is it where we came from? Does it remind us of the first nine months of our lives? We’ll be going on another cruise soon, and my favorite part of it is always the sea  days. Someday I’ll be as the drop of water returning to an infinite vastness of it. Until then, I’ll be drawn to the streams and the lakes and the rivers and the oceans. 

BODIES OF WATER HOLD A fascination for many people, as well as providing an indescribable comfort. I grew up in an Indiana town with two rivers, and I live just a mile from the magnificent Delaware flowing slowly between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For me there has always been something about the movement of these vast waterways that felt like home, as if I really am a fish out of water longing to jump back in where I belong and swim away.

Oceans are like that, too, multiplied a million times. Oceans are adventures without end, journeys we can only take with our minds. Even if we sail out on them in boats or cruise ships, they’re so much bigger than we are that it makes us aware of our true size. Oceans and rivers, lakes, and even streams, cannot be argued with. They are the masters of us, not us of them, and their indifference is acute. An ocean doesn’t care what I think about world events or political developments, loves lost or triumphs enjoyed. Like its celestial counterpart spread across the night sky in a trillion tiny lights, it doesn’t even know I’m alive, reminding me that I needn’t be so consumed with own existence. I’m here. So what? I’ll twinkle like a star, leap like a fish in the shallows, break like a wave, and then I’ll go away. I think of that as peaceful, not sad.

Narration provided by Wondervox.

By Mark McNease 

September arrives once again. I wasn’t a summer person when I first wrote this, and at this point in my life I never will be. I prefer the option of putting a sweater on to taking another piece of clothing off—there’s only so much of that to remove. The cool air of a fast-approaching autumn feels good on my skin and on my mind. Waking up with the windows open and a comfortable breeze blowing in is like opening my eyes to a new and exciting day. And so it shall always remain.

I’M NOT A SUMMER PERSON, and when my time comes to buckle up and speed away from this crazy planet on whatever form of transportation the afterlife provides, I will depart having never liked the hot season. I tell myself it’s my Viking blood, although I can’t claim to have any. Ancestry holds no interest for me whatsoever—and I’m adopted, so whose ancestors would I research anyway?

I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice. For me it’s when we’re closest to the sun and farthest from a parka. When June arrives in earnest I know the humidity can’t be far behind, and with it the heat that amplifies its discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered what meteorologists mean when they offer the ‘feels like’ temperature, it’s the moisture, the dew point, that awful stickiness only a powerful air conditioner can neutralize, and only when you stay inside. Walk out the door on a hot, humid summer day, and that refreshing coolness is forgotten in an instant. Ovens are dryer, and at least you can make dinner with them. Speaking of ovens … don’t. When summer is blazing, my rule at home is no cooking that requires heat of any kind. It’s possibly the best thing about those record-setting hot temperature days.