Question for coast dwellers -- do you feel weird when you're far from sea?

[Arugula Latte]

Since I was five, I've lived in places where I was always a reasonable drive (usually .5 to 2 hrs.) from a good beach.

Even if I didn't go to the ocean all the time, I always knew/know it's there if I need it, and I can hop in the car, make a relatively short drive, and sink my feet in sand and watch the waves break.

I notice when I've spent any amount of time in land-locked states (e.g. Colorado for a summer), I occasionally get these strong feelings of, I don't know, not panic, but a very intense feeling of I AM WAAAAY TOO FAR FROM THE OCEAN. When I was driving a certain road outside Denver, I used to hallucinate for a split second that the purple plains in the distance were actually the ocean.

Anyone else feel like this?

[Gormy Cuss]

1. Yes

The lack of a salt smell to the air is what I notice first. I grew up in Maine where there are few sand beaches but thousands of miles of rocky shoreline.

Last week I visited the Oregon Dunes area and southern coast. I think Port Orford was the pretty spot from the road but at the beach level there were many nice beaches and they were empty during the week.

Years ago I did process an Arizona landscape as ending in an ocean on the horizon, so I know what you mean about that Denver hallucination.

[Arugula Latte]

2. Yeah. The air is key.

I like sea-level air, with lots of oxygen from big trees in it, as well as a little bit of salt from the sea.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Actually, no, I haven't had that sort of feeling....

Of course, I prefer being near the ocean, but it doesn't bother me when I'm not.....


I always try to enjoy whatever attractive features I find near me wherever I am......


:shrug:

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. Yes, I do too.

Growing up in SF with both an ocean and a bay has spoiled me for any landlocked area of the country. It's a lot of things: the smell of the air, the sea breezes, the quality of the light from all that water. I too get a bit nervous being away from it. I have a friend who gets very anxious when looking out at the expanse of the ocean, but I love the sight of nothing but blue water for as far as the eye can see.

But what makes me really panic is going into flat areas of the country after living on/being surrounded by a big hill(s) all my life. When I visit parts of Texas that have zero landscape movement - just flat flat flat with town water towers in the distance -- it really freaks me out. I get very disturbed and profoundly unhappy. I think that being surrounded by hills is very nurturing on a psychic level.

[Arugula Latte]

5. I get that too.

I grew up in the Bay Area (lived in Walnut Creek, Berkeley, S.F.) so I can completely relate. It does spoil you.

One time, when I was driving across the country, we stopped in Kansas. I'll never forget the feeling of the the plains, but it was so incredibly flat, you could only see your immediate surroundings and not much of the horizon in the distance. I actually felt slightly claustrophobic amongst all that flatness and openness -- weird, huh?

I think I am more sensitive to this stuff than most people, though.

[El Fuego]

6. I do too

I've always lived on the coast, and when I go to land-locked places I feel totally disoriented. For one thing, you never have a good sense of direction in a land-locked city.

Here, if you head east you'll run into the ocean, and if you go west you are in the swamp with the gators. So you always know where you are. Most roads go either north/south or east/west. Inland, the roads go every which way.:crazy:

[El Supremo]

7. Arrr!

As long as I have me cutlass, I be fine.

[henslee]

8. Uh huh. I've always lived on a coast. Inland freaks me out. I'm sure

its inherited. I also dislike fresh water fish. Will only eat salt water.

[alarimer]

9. Yes

I look out my office window onto Corpus Christi Bay. But I also spend a lot of time on the water for work. So it is weird to go to some landlocked place.