The feeling was breathtaking; gazing out beyond the sea. The distant waves like silent thunder rolled seamlessly into the ever darkening clouds, whose texture was that of loose swan feathers, their color drained like cold stone. Oh, and the air! The wind that rushed through in over the shoreline only brought in the sounds of lonely gulls and the endlessly crashing waves over the not so distant bar. I could almost feel the refreshing winter sting of the ocean spray were it not for the dew covered car window that separated me from this majestic, old world.

The hills behind us sat hunched ever so low with their long unruly beards like an extension of the sea. A hazy, yet defined sea. I could barely make out the colors of the grass, of the trees, and the water. The hills were a harsh and sage like tone, with the sea a near absolute darkness reflecting the stone cold sky where ever it wasn’t. I could live in this, these winter storms, the ones that were always colder than you remember them being the year before. The ones where when the sun finally broke through those suffocating clouds the land would glisten with the sparkles of the dew drops and the colors would become bright and utterly ethereal. When the sea would stop just at the horizon, when you know that those ships could finally see their way home.