I feel like Balboa

Seeing the Pacific again always seems like arriving some place, getting to the end. I never feel that way about the Atlantic. Partly, no doubt, this is an ethnocentric tribal memory--the Atlantic has always been there, if you assume you are starting in Europe. After all these centuries, the Pacific is still new. It is also the case that one approaches the Pacific so often from above, from high cliffs that look out far to sea. In almost every case, you walk up to the Atlantic.