Strolling Atlantis

I took the title of this post from an old Billy Joel song "Downeaster Alexa" which tells the tale of a struggling boat in the dying New England fishing industry. Living by the ocean has given me a new appreciation for an entire culture that I've encountered only a few times during my life. This culture lives on the whims of a cruel and beautiful mistress: the sea. My uncles, who were in the Australian Merchant Marine, used to pull into the Port of Philadelphia on an annual basis when I was a child. It was such a great thrill to go down to the port and see the big container ships, the screaming seagulls overhead, and hear the rugged men curse and laugh at each other, the ships, U.S. Customs or the howling wind. My handsome uncles with their thick Scottish accents and luxurious beards would roll off the ships for a night, telling tales of rogue waves, vicious typhoons, and the enticing call of the sea. I often think of them when I see the oil rig workers early in the morning, going up the pier to catch "The Patrick," a trawler which carries them out to the distant offshore rigs, or when I see fishermen on the pier at night, many of them hailing from islands far off in the South Pacific. What is it that drives people to work and live in this type of environment? It's not money (unless you are fishing for Alaska king crab or have climbed up the oil rig hierarchy), fame, or an easy life. I believe it's the adventure, the next horizon, the thrill of the catch (no matter how big or small), the camaraderie, the smell and taste of the sea, the crash of the surf, and the unpredictability of a watery siren who beckons one day and rejects the next.