Why We Should Broaden Our Definition of Wilderness to Include the Ocean

The summer after earning my undergraduate degree, I led ragged crews of Boy Scouts sailing in the Florida Keys. From farm towns, suburbs, and inner city blocks, they all landed in the wet heat of Florida National High Adventure Sea Base with a nervous hope of touching the open ocean for the first time. Those young men became stewards of the ocean, and the impact was stirring. Ten years later, these trips inspired me to create This Is Water, a program of international community centered sailing expeditions.

Down in the Keys, we all packed into an 80-foot, ketch-rigged schooner named Calypso Gypsy (known as the world’s largest fiberglass sailboat in the 1970s) with more questions than skills. For a week, the sea took the scouts' schedules, their certainty, and the small performances of who they thought they were before they met the ocean. When we came back to shore these men stood differently, spoke slower, and looked me in the eye. Something in them had grown—not larger or louder, but steadier. Over the years I watched those same young men choose difficult roads, move to distant countries, start families, serve their communities, and carry grief without hiding. I like to think that this came to pass, at least in part, because they once entered an arena large enough for them to truly discover themselves.

We live in a culture designed to avoid discomfort. We chase constant stimulation and fill every pause with the noise of digital notifications, daily rituals, and self-talk. On the ocean, boredom and unease are not inconveniences, they are our teachers, and they command more attention than those we find on land.

The ocean's sheer size has profound effects that aren't as apparent in other wilderness settings. Only in the open ocean can you find yourself surrounded by an unbroken horizon line, or swallowed by the depthless black of a new moon on an overcast night. The ocean can make us feel deeply in ways that can be unsettling and expose habits and assumptions about ourselves that eventually lead to revelation.

In his acclaimed commencement speech to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace explains the effect:

We are always in water, and indeed we are, submerged in currents of culture, routine, and expectation that shape our awareness. Rarely do we stop to notice, consider or inhabit the conditions that move us. The ocean makes these forces visible, tangible, inescapable, asking us to recognize the water we swim in, both literal and metaphorical.

Based on that principle, how we attend to water shapes how we attend to life. We are the ingredients in this great soup!

Recently, I reflected on these truths while drifting offshore in the Sea of Cortez, the youngest major body of water on Earth. Formed less than five million years ago when the Baja Peninsula separated from the mainland, the Sea of Cortez is a crucible for clarity, cleanliness, and life as we could know it. Here, I witnessed the ocean functioning as a mirror for life. We looked to the south towards currents beyond reach, and at the same time, our habits, desires, and impulses all rose to the surface. This is where the work begins.

Our group's vessels for this expedition were a modern 52-foot mohohull cruiser and a twin keel 54-foot catamaran, two vessels to provide a variation of sailing exposure. With 22 humans living in close quarters, there is a constant negotiation for room. On a boat, everything has a home. We are in a finite vessel exploring an infinite space and can carry only so much. There may be no clearer reflection of being human. The winch is in the bow stand. The cabinets organize our dry food. The radio and maps are always at the chart table. Even the memories of previous expeditions jockey for space.

During these voyages, individuals encounter an arc of challenges that cannot be escaped. They must navigate uncertainty, release control, and confront limitations. Those who come expecting mastery must instead learn malleability, and in doing so they discover their courage, passion, and flexibility. It is from this work that the core ethos of my practice emerges: exploring the wildness inside through the wilderness outside.

Many people struggle to find a sense of purpose. They feel adrift and disconnected. One of the greatest lessons I learned from my mentor Tim Corcoran, the founder of Headwaters Outdoor School, is that caring for the earth can be your purpose. The act of tending to nature, even in small ways, sharpens perception, improves health, and deepens empathy—an effect reflected in Wallace J. Nichols’s Blue Mind Theory, which links time near water to reduced stress and greater emotional capacity. These are all qualities that can enrich our relationships, our professional lives, and our communities. Caring for the planet is the rising tide that lifts all ships and in that act of service, we often discover what matters to us most. Conservation, by extension, is not merely an ethical choice but a profound way to create meaning for ourselves while benefiting others and the broader systems of life on which we all depend.

By intentionally entering a place like the ocean, we’re forced to reconcile with our lack of attention, respect, and patience. In exchange, we learn to embrace the discomfort that comes with being fully present, we redefine what it means to experience wildness, and experience what it means to live with intention. By doing so, we gain a valuable perspective that terrestrial landscapes rarely offer: unbounded scale, complete mystery, and a living rhythm that models our interior lives. We find the courage to accept that which we cannot control and to engage deeply with that we do not know. The ocean, in this reframing, becomes not only a wilderness of space but a wilderness of the mind, heart, and spirit—a place where acceptance, purpose, and identity converge.

Now, close your eyes and imagine wilderness.