This stretch of water, out at the mouth of Penobscot Bay, is on the inner edge of the Gulf of Maine, which basically means North Atlantic. Cold, wholly unforgiving water, with challenge and danger ever close at hand.

The bay doesn’t often look like this as there’s usually abundant evidence of energy in action....birds, wind, waves, tide, fish, boats, and so on.

I was alone on RAVEN this day, steaming along to the sou’east, in open water with nothing to concern me...nothing to hit and she was running fine.

Up on the fly-bridge I let my mind wander and immediately became more open to that precise space and time. I had no choice, really....I shut her down and just gave myself up to the wonder of the beauty and quiet.

Yet in that quietude it was the sublime immensity of the present energy that humbled me; vast solar power firing down into the meteorological moment above me, as billions of gallons of water streamed into the bay on the moon-driven tide running under me.

The awe of being reminded, once again, that we are infinitesimal.