Very Pacific

In my June 16 post ('Not So Pacific'), I was describing the difference between the wild ocean in central California near Bodega Bay, and the largely calm ocean that I see from my window or on a walk on the Sunshine Coast in B.C. The two pictures above are taken of the Sunshine Coast's Pacific Ocean: respectively from the Roberts Creek pier and from the promenade at Davis Bay, about five miles north of Roberts Creek. These are both south-facing beaches, and the mountains in the distance are the mountains of southern Vancouver Island, about 26 miles away, if you are a crow.

I guess there are a lot of different Pacific Oceans, depending upon where you are. On the island of Yap, in Micronesia, there was a surrounding reef that tempered that Pacific as it entered the transparent and turquoise lagoon (whose water temperature was usually in the 80-90 degree range because it was so close to the equator and because the lagoon was not very deep). In Santa Monica, near where I once lived on the ocean at Venice Beach, there are surfing waves but there aren't the kind of rock formations that central California boasts. To live on the ocean is, actually, to live on a very specific point at which the ocean meets the land. In that sense, there really is no single ocean, I guess; no one Pacific, no one Atlantic, probably not even one Mediterranean.