Montauk, Kirk Park Beach to Atlantic Ave. Beach, Amagansett

 

(hastily taken photo in ocean swells)

Sea of stretch’d ground-swells,

Sea breathing broad and convulsive breathes,

Sea of the brine of life and unshovell’d yet always ready graves,

Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,

I am integral with you, I too am one phase and of all phases. 

I too am Paumanok …. (Walt Whitman, “Starting from Paumanok”) 

While paddling in open ocean, staying in the sweet spot between sand bars and beyond surf is a good life study. There is a shifting zone of swells outside shore that happens just before surf and yet is inside the outer bar. Even on a day like today, which was mild, a paddler will still ride up and down 2-ft swells but nothing good sea kayaks weren’t made for. It’s not tippy, but if you get motion sickness, it’s probably not a fun trip either. Yes, a good life study.

The IGA store in Montauk always seems to be busy. Restaurants, delis, and convenience stores are common, but grocery stores are rare. A young woman driving a stretch electric cart asked us if we wanted some organic fruit juices–it was the last day for this promotion. She said she was interning this summer for a marketing group, and her job was giving free rides along the beach areas in Montauk and handing out samples. Can’t say I’m learning a lot about marketing, but I got a sweet gig in Montauk for a summer, she mused.

Our trip today was only 10 miles or so, but our only experience on the open ocean was on rounding Montauk Point. The maritime weather report said it would be a mild day and low wind and swells. Yeah!

From Kirk Park Beach going west, Old Montauk Highway takes a southerly beach route from Montauk Highway. Most of the homes in that rise of land up to Hither Hills State Park have been around for a long time. One of my dear friends Susan Cohen, writer, professor, and model human (https://sites.google.com/site/susanacohenphd/), has a house in that neighborhood. She grew up in Montauk back when Mick Jagger came to town and trashed a hotel room; she still tells the lovely story of seeing her first bar fight when she was serving at a pub by Montauk Harbor in the 70s. She said she hid under a table and watched for flying glass. Susan has been one of my Long Island heroes since I came here four years ago (I’ve known her for over 25 years though), encouraging me to ride out the wave of discomfort and find a sweet spot for myself. She bought me a St. John’s-wort to plant in my yard to help me through the darkness of winters here.

Maria had found her stride in the Sea Lion kayak, and the mild wind and the blues between ocean and sky were not too different. Hither Hills State Park Campground marks the end of Susan’s neighborhood. The RVs and pop-up campers lined the beach for a half-mile or more and then after a series of resorts all the way to Napeague and Beach Hampton.

Out on the swells, menhaden popped the surface over and over and skimmed the water in schools thick and densely packed. I’m guessing the bluefish and striped bass are hunting them, and at other times and much further at sea, tuna, humpback whales, dolphins and a few other predators I’m not aware of. The schooling seems to be a protective action as individuals are easy prey; however, it is also allows for a more effective haul by humpback whales when lunge-feeding.

Speaking of high-volume feeding, The Lobster Roll was now almost directly north of us. It wasn’t visible from our ocean vantage point, but Maria noted she’s been going there since she was a little girl. It’s been a fixture here since the mid-sixties. I took her to The Lobster Roll for her birthday a few days earlier, and we had puffers for an appetizer before the requisite titular entree. Northern puffers used to be plentiful for for Long Island folks Maria’s age and were an easy meal often called “chicken of the sea” for its meaty texture and flavor. The waitress noted they’re making a comeback with fishermen and patrons alike (“On the East End, the Humble Blowfish Mounts a Comeback”). Reader, if you haven’t had puffers, you’re missing something in your gastronomical life!

 (photo by Maria Brown)

A note on mylar balloons! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. By now, we’d picked up, popped and stored away a few balloons. It was high school graduation week on Long Island and not surprisingly a few celebratory items had escaped and landed in the ocean. Mylar balloons often look like prey to marine animals, and they ingest them or get tangled up in the ribbons (“Hold on to Those Balloons: They Could End Up in the Ocean” ). Who knows if the graduates knew what happened to these fleeting/fleeing balloons of congratulations? However, if we approached such things with the same conviction we do our lobster rolls I’m guessing I’d find fewer getaways.

It was a Sunday and the beach at Atlantic Ave. in Amagansett was smattered with families. The surf was a bit higher than before, so Maria headed toward a landing with fewer people but still near our take-out. It was a rough landing; she made it to beach just fine, but as the next wave came in, she stood up next to the kayak. It was slammed into her shins and she went head over heels to the other side, landing awkwardly. The lifeguard and a couple of the adults came to her aid, and I was waiting for the crowd to disperse before trying my own landing.

Mine was equally elbowy and sketchy; I took on a lot of sand and water while being helped by the same folks. The lifeguard suggested we jump out of the kayaks in knee-high water next time. O…K…A…Y… I thought to myself that this plan too had its flaws. Maria ended up with two big bruised knots on her shins and I spat sand for an hour or so.

I pulled the kayaks up the beach near the parking lot and waited on Maria to get the car with the kayak racks. A nice warm bench sits near The Beach Hut, the close-by beach bistro, which was obviously a popular place.

The beach-goers seemed amused by our crash landings and as they left the beach came over to check on the kayaks and then me. Oh, no worries. Good learning moments, I chuckled. I’m not sure Maria would have had the same answer.

On the dunes near the bench, beach pea vine (Lathyrus japonicus) flowered in the grasses and bayberry. It was a searing purple in the late afternoon sun.

*****

A colleague and friend of mine Sharon Pochron told me I need to put more of me into these entries. She’s a great writer and I asked for her thoughts as she is the kind of writer, thinker and friend I aspire to be. Sharon said I needed more story, more emotion and trajectory.

She’s right I’m sure. Sharon is a damn good editor and reader. But what to say, I thought sitting on the beach, drying out, spitting sand, with the watchful purples of beach pea vine to my left. As I started this project, I wanted to find a myth of home-making here in Long Island. Whitman’s “Starting from Paumanok” is his myth of childhood and place bound in a spirit bundle/poem of memory, place, sinew, and home. Mine is the searing heat of a north-central Texas summer, spring fields of blue, red, yellows and oranges. Buzzards soaring in thermals and horny toads (now almost entirely gone from my home) spitting “tobacco juice” on your hand. The smell of manure in the field around the “cattle tank” where you cast a topwater Rapala lure in hopes of a black bass strike. Post oaks, elm groves, and muddy rivers winding their way through sycamore and burr oaks. I am integral with that place. It seeps into my dialect as well as word choice.

Maybe now, with lots of planned starts and stops of this paddling trip, the beginning of a cursory history of the places I’ve seen and read about, maybe with a few of the challenges and scrapes and bumbles and ecstasies too, seeing more and for the first time from a new vantage, maybe even as a more than middle-aged man, I’m on the way to finding a story, my story–immersed in this sea, this land, these communities.

That’s as personal as I can be to now. All else is fiction. Or I just don’t want to tell you.