For the sea as a whole, the alternation of day and night, the passage of the seasons,
the
procession of the years, are lost in its vastness, obliterated in its own changeless eternity. But
the surface waters are different. The face of the sea is always changing. Crossed by colors,
lights, and moving shadows, sparkling in the sun, mysterious in the twilight, its aspects and its
moods vary hour by hour. The surface waters move with the tides, stir to the breath of the
winds, and rise and fall to the endless, hurrying forms of the waves. Most of all, they change
with the advance of the seasons. Spring moves over the temperate lands of our Northern
Hemisphere in a tide of new life, of pushing green shoots and unfolding buds, all its mysteries
and meanings symbolized in the northward migration of the birds, the awakening of sluggish
amphibian life as the chorus of frogs rises again from the wet lands, the different sound of the
wind which stirs the young leaves where a month ago it rattled the bare branches. These things
we associate with the land, and it is easy to suppose that at sea there could be no such
feeling of advancing spring. But the signs are there, and seen with understanding eye, they
bring the same magical sense of awakening.
from The Sea Around Us: RACHEL CARSON