Tired and grown weary of my life, I fell asleep before a fire one night and dreamed a vision of such wonder that I shall never forget it.

In my vision, I found myself on a paved path, surrounded by an immense garden. It grew up lush and tall around me and I felt that I must be very small and insignificant in this place. Bees buzzed around me, busy at the many fragrant blooms which grew in the garden. In waking, I knew the proper names of these flowers, but here in this misty world of dreams they had no names. They simply were. The colors placed before me were richer than any laid out on an artist's palette, so vibrant and alive that their beauty made me weep. And though I loved this garden, I knew I could not stay.

Tearing myself away from the wonder in which I had stood enraptured, I stepped boldly and surely forward, began my journey down the path. It seemed I walked for hours or days, perhaps, before I noticed a change in the world around me. Here the garden thinned out and became a wild grassland, blades swaying in the wind and singing a mournful song aloud for all to here. Again the beauty moved me, and again, I could not stay. I walked onward.

The air around me became dryer, and dust had settled across the path. I shed my shoes and stepped forward, marveling in it's softness. The sun shone fiercely and I realized I had left the grassland behind. Desert lay all around me. Dune after dune piled up toward the horizon like sea swells. The air was full of the hissing of the sand grains. The sun beat down, parching me. The sand scalded my feet. I pressed onward, many times losing the path in the sand to wander for miles lost in the desert, only to find my path again. The wind whispered around me, wiping clean the tracks I'd left behind. My world be came static and unchanging. How long this lasted, I do not know. I could not stop. This land of sun and sand was not for me. I moved steadily forward.

Slowly, after what could have been many months, the world changed again. Sharp salt tang invaded the air, and the cry of gulls far out on some lonely ocean reached my ear. Waves roared onto a beach. I reached the summit of one tall dune and there before me was the wide blue ocean, sparkling in a morning light. Behind me lay the expansive desert and beyond that the grasslands and the green of the garden from whence I'd come.

One last long look I took of this sight, then descended the dune and stood at the edge of the ocean. The cool waves licked at my feet as I stared into the depths. The music of the sea sang to me and I could feel my heart swell in answer. Stepping forward into the water's soothing embrace, I smile. This was my place. The ocean was for me.