Left on a vast plain, we humans instinctively look, at a minimum, for the horizon to place ourselves relative to the sun’s path. The slab sides of mountains are immaterial as our eyes trace the ridges, which are but lines where the ground and the sky meet.
I think the reason East Hamptoners drive to the beach to look at the water has a lot to do with checking these boundaries. On many days, the beach and the water look as if they are one. The tide goes out, the tide comes in. Gulls stand around; gulls fly a bit then stand around some more. But even on the dullest days, those of us with time to spare linger.
Shore dwellers have an abundance of edges to enjoy. The beach itself is the greatest of them, in a very real sense a division between the two halves of the earth. The East Hampton Village Green has more in common with Antarctic wastes than it does the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean a stone’s throw from shore.
It is interesting to ponder the fishes for which edges derive from temperature rather than something seen. Beaches and reefs make for fuzzy delineations. Above the water, the sky is for most a mystery. In the deepest parts of the ocean, thermal lines are stacked one above another, from the cold and lightless abyss all the way up to the warm and aerated surface. There are vertical lines between hot and cold in the ocean; the edge of the Gulf Stream is said to be like a wall.
How we depend on edges is underscored by how out of sorts we feel when there are none, I think. An overcast day that obscures the horizon may get us down because we lose our equilibrium and cannot satisfy a deep-seated imperative to know where we are.
Rainy-day blues are about more than getting our shoes wet when we run to the car. I believe we are drawn to the edges of things. We want to curl up under a blanket until the edges reappear once more.