AS I WAS talking to an artist this week for an upcoming column, he said something I don't hear all that often.

Asked when he knew he wanted to make art his livelihood, he replied without a hint of hesitation: "From the day I was born."

Driving back from a long interview with this interesting, accomplished artist, I mulled over his response and realized how rare it is for someone to realize his true calling that young.

And even more rare is actually making it work as a career.

In some ways, I'm a lot like that artist.

Although I didn't spring forth into this world knowing newspapers would be my thing, telling stories was both a big part of my upbringing and something I was drawn to early.

Although my childhood memories are somewhat sketchy, an early school assignment has stuck with me--largely, I believe, because it was one of the first times I realized that telling a story was something with real value.

This particular assignment wasn't anything complex or difficult.

It was the first assignment I faced starting second grade, writing a story on something interesting that had happened over the summer break.

As a boy who'd fallen in love early with the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries in the Northern Neck, there was no hesitation about what I would write.

It involved a clear Saturday morning that summer, when my grandfather and I had gotten up before dawn and headed out to the bay in his boat, a converted Chesapeake Bay deadrise aptly named Sea Ranger.

Most of the day was spent fishing and watching the waves and clouds drift by.

But what excited me so and prompted the story was the sighting of a big ray, probably either a stingray or a cow-nosed ray.

My young eyes and the passage of time probably exaggerate the size of the graceful creature.

But it seemed to me in that moment, as we watched it pass under the boat, that the ray's gracefully rippling wings reached from one side of the boat to the other.