Vast, boundless, expansive, open. Free as the Wind. The sea, the horizon; wind in our hair, salt on our skin, sun in the air.
In ancient times, people generally used the rising sun to identify East, and the setting sun to identify West, but for the other directions, when the stars were not visible, people used the winds to determine direction. The little letters on the compass star of our Internal Compass, the Cardinal Directions, originated from the description of Winds. The points on an older compass rose were frequently labeled by the initial Greek letters of eight principal winds (T, G, L, S, O, L, P, M), which gradually reduced to the 4 major winds and became our cardinal directions translated to NESW. Feel the wind. And antique Nautical Charts, the maps of the seas, are characterized by the presence of little compass roses and the crisscrossing of lines. The network of lines which emanate out from them are called Windrose lines, describing the movement of the wind, and making the blue expanse of the waters on the map come alive for me.
