The watery part of the world

For a bit of a change, the Spousal Unit and I spent Thanksgiving week on the Florida Gulf Coast. It's been nice renewing my pretty shallow acquaintance with salt water. Among the things I've seen that aren't usually part of a West Virginia November are dolphins, an alligator, pelicans, lizards and any number of seabirds. It's been good to verify that saying of Melville's from Moby-Dick about the link between water and meditation:

Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

The salt mines of Appalachia await...