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Originally Posted by bfisher
I discovered the Earthsea books at the same time as I found the Lord of the Rings. I loved both of them, but they had quite different takes on the nature of right vs wrong. I think Le Guin's was more nuanced.
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When I discovered the Earthsea books, I was working in a small coastal village where the normal way to get in and out was by boat. It was very interesting to me to in some ways live in the same environment as Ged. The villagers would often talk about going down the reach. They would take their boat across the harbour, rather than walking. They were as much at home on the sea as on land.
Le Guin created a marvelous world. I used to love looking at the islands in the maps of my old paperbacks. That's one of the few downsides to me about having gone totally digital - the maps just aren't as easy to read on a device.
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Amen Brother.
When I was young, very young, I spent wonderful times on the coast of SC at my grandparents, on the saltwater Wadmalaw River, the inland coastal waterway to Charleston Harbor. In fact my first choice for College was the NROTC, but life took a turn and I ended up in the Army.
I spent great summers on the water. Picture a small boy in a large open row boat with rough men (including my father and uncle) out on the open sea beyond the sight of land, shrimping from that open boat, and me mainly trying to keep my bare toes out of the way of big crabs scuttling around on the bottom of the boat. On calm water you could pull your feet up on the seat, but in the open sea, working the nets, etc, there is so much pitch and yaw that you have to use your feet on the bottom of the boat to brace to keep from being slid and tossed around to possible disaster.
I consider the loss of my youthful shark, whale, and the like tooth collection gathered over many years of scouring the saltwater river flats, marshes, dunes and bars to be one of the great misfortunes of my life. One that I have never had the heart to replace.