From a New York Times guest essay by Adam Nicolson headlined “How a few Days Sailing in the Aegean Changed My Mind About the Fundamental Nature of Things”:

Adam Nicolson is an English author who writes about history, landscape, great literature and the sea. His latest book is “How to Be: Life Lessons From the Early Greeks.”

A few years ago, my wife, Sarah, and I went on a sailing trip on the eastern Aegean. It was heaven: the two of us out at sea, charting a course between Greek islands and the coast of Turkey, taking turns helming the boat and dozing below, surrounded by all the glittering blue of the sea.