It’s summer again. The season of open suitcases and hurried bookings. Of conversations about long-planned destinations, last-minute flights, and distant adventures. “Where are you going this year?” friends ask. And for a moment, I feel like a strange person. Because what I long for most is simply to stay. To walk barefoot to the beach here in Jūrmala. To see the sea and hug the pines. To rest in the rhythm of this place that is my home for 13 years.

Before my life slowed down, I traveled often – for work and for fun. I interviewed artists, designers, and thinkers in Berlin, Moscow, Venice, Kassel, Munich, Helsinki, and London. I filled notebooks in cafes and wandered unfamiliar streets with my camera and pen. It was exciting until it wasn’t. I still remember a trip that marked the beginning of the change.

I was in Amsterdam, alone, to interview the designer Marcel Wanders. A work assignment that once would have thrilled me. But that evening at the hotel, I lay in bed in crisp white linen, with an ache that had nothing to do with travel weariness.

I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be home. With my husband Emīls. With our four-year-old son, Kristians. We already lived in Jūrmala by then – but I hadn’t truly landed there yet. I was still half in the world of deadlines and airports, always preparing to leave again.

That night, I took out my notebook and quietly drew a house. A home I wanted to inhabit, not just live in. I didn’t know it yet, but something was beginning to root.

Soon after Amsterdam, I took Kristians to Barcelona for a week of vacation to visit my sister Katrīna. We wandered the streets, but I felt lost. Unmoored. Searching for something I couldn’t find in the shops or architecture or avenues. I realised I was looking for something that wasn’t there. It was back home by the sea.

A few months later, I boarded a plane for the last time. I was already pregnant with Niklāvs then, flying to Stockholm on one of my final assignments – to interview the great artist Antony Gormley. As we took off, a yellow butterfly boarded the plane with me. It fluttered alongside me across the Baltic Sea and flew out again in Sweden, as if it too had something to finish. I haven’t flown since.

Maybe, without bruising myself through so many airports, I wouldn’t have found that quiet glow inside me that wanted to stay and go deep. That wanted to find a home by the sea – where a one-of-a-kind library might be born.

And maybe the strangest part of all this is that the Sea Library – the one I’ve built, the one I care for – is filled with books about travel. About sailing around the world, walking across countries, exploring wild places by foot or by boat. Most of the stories I read, collect, and share are full of movement. Of wind, water, and faraway islands.

And here I am. The Sea Librarian. Gathering tales of the world, while staying in one place. I love when friends arrive with pebbles, twigs and gifts from distant shores and share their adventures. Yes, it feels like a contradiction. And yet, maybe that’s the truth of libraries themselves: they hold the whole world, without going anywhere. (Except for mobile libraries on camels, donkeys, buses and boats. I adore mobile libraries and people who do that.)

For more than ten years now, we haven’t gone farther than the Baltic states – visiting Estonia and Lithuania, with highlights like the outstanding Maritime Museum at a Seaplane Harbour in Tallinn and the dreamy Curonian Spit with neverending and wandering sand dunes near Palanga. Not because we couldn’t – but because we began choosing differently.

When the Sea Library opened in 2018, everything fell into place. It was as if all the scattered parts of my longing gathered in one room filled with books and art and light. I didn’t need to chase anything anymore. I was home.

Now, we travel differently. We take the train to the other coast, to the summer house where my boys’ great-grandparents used to live. With them gone, the place needs love. We go to neighboring towns. We explore nearby forests. We laugh, walk, cycle, eat ice cream, swim. These are quiet journeys, but meaningful to me.

And yes, there’s still a dream. To see a whale. To stand beside my husband and sons on a distant coast and witness that breath rise from the deep blue, proof of something sublime. We’re slowly saving for that kind of adventure – not chasing it, but keeping it in the heart. At the same time, I know: it could remain a dream. And that would be alright too.

Because maybe the most radical thing we can do in this age is not to go. To stay. To watch. To wonder. To leave the planet to itself.

The idea of degrowth found me gently. Not as a strict philosophy, but as a silent chant. Less rush, more depth. Fewer things, greater care. Less movement, more meaning.

It’s not about shrinking life, but deepening it. About choosing beauty and connection over accumulation and speed. The Sea Library, my rose and peony garden, sailor’s bookmarks woven from the colors of books – these are small acts, but they feel like a quiet kind of revolution.

Though I rarely leave Latvia, or even this peninsula between the river and the sea, I don’t feel isolated. It’s quite the opposite. The Sea Library connects me with readers, writers, and dreamers all around the world. I send letters, receive postcards, exchange books and ideas. The net is invisible but strong.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever – Jacques Yves Cousteau

It’s a different way of belonging – not global in the loud sense, but oceanic. Deep, vast, and full of unseen currents.

Yet sometimes I wonder. Am I taking something away from my boys by not showing them the world while they’re growing up? By not taking trips each school holiday to places with palm trees and pools? But then I remember that the journeys we do have are ours. We’re together. And I believe that’s the most important foundation they will ever carry – the sense of belonging, of presence and home.

And there’s a different kind of joy in their lives, I believe. A different kind of achievement.

To climb a tree all the way to the top.
To hold your breath under the sea.
To master football with your friends.
To find mushrooms and berries in the forest.
To learn the names of birds and flowers.
To watch a good movie together every night.
To go to the city to buy a new vinyl record and dance to it.
To see the northern lights from our garden.
To watch shooting stars in the black August skies.

It may not be a passport full of stamps, but it’s a life full of wonder. A boyhood grounded in the real and the close and the beautiful.

At the same time, of course, I may say yes to wonderful opportunities that arise. A close friend lives in San Francisco, and I’d love to see him someday. My eldest son dreams of exploring some European cities, and next summer, we might go – perhaps by car, taking Nemo with us. There are so many beautiful ways to travel consciously. Trains cross all of Europe if you begin from a bigger city. And it’s not only about green living or making hard rules. It’s more of a mindset. A way of being in the world. Where having a cup of coffee by the river, watching the sunrise with ducks, swans, and beavers, feels worthwhile.

I know I’m lucky. We had this place to move to. This old house, full of cracks and character, needing care. I’m grateful every day that one full moon many years ago, we were brave enough to make this decision. To root ourselves in a place and begin again. But it also makes me think – how many times in life are we not brave enough? And never arrive at the place we truly need to be. Sometimes, the bravest journey is the one that brings you home.

So yes, it’s summer. And no, I’m not going anywhere right now.

I’ll be here, by the sea – watching my sons run into the waves, weaving bookmarks in the evenings, walking with our border collie along the river. I’ll be writing letters. Growing flowers. Re-reading books with pages softened by hands of the Sea Library readers.

Maybe I seem strange. But I’ve never felt more steady.

This is my map now: Jūrmala, the Sea Library, and the wide, wide world – arriving gently by train, post, and tide.

Thank you for being a part of it, dear friend. I would love to hear your travel stories. From near and far.

Yours,

Anna

Sea Librarian

beachbooksblog@gmail.com