From the time I was a kid, recently emigrated from Brooklyn to West Babylon, I have loved being on the water.
Whether Great South Bay or Jones Beach or the myriad rivers and coves that define the East Coast, the water represented freedom to roam the world and discover how much more of it there was beyond the horizon.
Sounds corny but true and it instilled restlessness that ignited wanderlust that led to an adventurous life of world travel that still inspires me to go wherever the water will take me, because it is all connected.
There is a brook that cuts through my home in Ohio. It flows into Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes which are the world’s biggest reservoir of fresh water and which are linked to the canal system that in summer brings visitors through New York State or New Hampshire to the Hudson River.
Go downstream passing Albany and West Point, make a left at the George Washington Bridge onto the Harlem River, through Hell Gate under the Triborough Bridge into the Long Island Sound. It is all connected.
Sailing around the world there are landmarks that evoke vivid history. The Gates of Hercules into the Mediterranean Sea, Africa to the right, on the left Spain, France, Italy, the Adriatic, Rome, Venice, ever east to Greece, Malta, Crete, Cyprus, Turkey, the Black Sea, besieged Ukraine, all connected.
It washes against tragic Gaza, embattled Israel and battered Lebanon. Follow it as it squeezes through the Suez Canal, the pyramids on the right, the Gulf of Aqaba on the left and in front, the perilous Red Sea.
The great Tigris and Euphrates Rivers have since sliced through the deserts of Iraq and Iran, and it is all connected to my babbling brook in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
The Indian Ocean, the immense Down Under continent of Australia and its Great Barrier Reef, and New Zealand all show the way to the Galapagos, Hawaii, the Panama Canal and now you’re back in the Atlantic and on the way home.
I think of this interconnected world whenever I see a navigable waterway. It conjures visions of limitless adventure and heartache. The water washes the shores of war and peace, tragedy and triumph.
I am thinking of Gaza and the suffering and the jubilation of hostages being released and guns falling silent. And of the Potomac River that connects to the Chesapeake and this week witnessed the terrible airplane/helicopter collision that spilled its victims into the chilly dark river that divides Virginia from Washington, D.C., and unites us in grief.
