Friendly and alive in ways the ocean is not? Try a morning in the sound.

The immense power of water. A friend of mine delights in telling me it is because our bodies are mostly water, that we are drawn to it for life. I laugh, but I remember our mornings in the straits.

There is a spot, just before the sun comes over the shore, where the dim light allows you to see the changing of the guard. The nocturnals make their run for the trees or to the deep, while the gulls begin their morning rounds of raiding the tidepools of any stragglers. Through the morning mist, steam spouts from the blowholes of the whales.

River or no, it's a lucky person who gets to see morning.