The ocean makes me uneasy.  Maybe it’s because I’m  from Kansas.  So, why do I love to read tales of dangerous fishing expeditions and solo efforts to navigate small sailboats around the world?

By P. Nixon

This little stack of books has been with me for years.  A couple of times I have tried putting one of the worn paperbacks in the giveaway box in the basement, but they always migrate back upstairs.

Movies, too.   Last year it was The Life of Pi–a boy stranded in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker on board.  This year I had to see All is Lost–an old man patching a hole in his wrecked yacht in the middle of the Indian Ocean with no radio connections.  I couldn’t believe how long it took him to get out the sextant.

Tomorrow morning I will board a flight for Hawaii.  By the time the jet lifts off and turns west, I will be rereading Dove–a sixteen-year-old boy’s journey around the world in a twenty-four-foot sloop.  It will help take my mind off all of those miles of ocean below me.