Wake and Wonder

We’re on a boat. It’s still dark, and the temperature is well below zero. The icy wind cuts into my face — the only part of my body not protected by layers of wool and down. Most of our group stays sheltered inside the cabin, wrapped in warmth and quiet conversation. I stand outside.

I love boats.
I love the sea.
I love the steady, hypnotic movement of a ship carving its way through open water.

The engine hums with power as we glide forward. The vessel moves fast, confident, against the cold. I stand at the stern, watching the wake unfold behind us. The water churns into shifting shapes — patterns forming and dissolving in seconds. I search for rhythm in it, for repetition, for something I can recognize. But there is none. The sea refuses to repeat itself.

I don’t speak. I don’t need to.
It’s just me, my thoughts, and the ocean.

There’s something about being at sea before sunrise. The world feels unfinished, like it hasn’t decided what it wants to become yet. Then slowly, almost shyly, the sky begins to change. A deep blue emerges behind the silhouette of a distant island. Then a faint glow. Then orange, soft and fragile, spreading quietly across the horizon.

I have my cameras with me. They hang ready at my side. But it’s still too dark to shoot.

And honestly — I don’t need to.

Some moments are meant to be lived, not captured. I let the colors seep into me instead. I store them on my own internal hard drive, somewhere deeper than memory. I feel the cold, the wind, the vibration of the engine beneath my feet. I hold the moment without trying to freeze it.

And the truth is — when you live something fully, intensely, almost fiercely — you don’t need proof that it happened.

As the light grows stronger and the island becomes clearer, I realize something simple but undeniable:

I need to get on boats more often.

Not for the photos.
Not for the destination.
But for this — the silence, the movement, the endless water, and the reminder that sometimes the most powerful moments are the ones you don’t try to capture at all.

photo taken with my iPhone
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