Sara Weston and Time Shae took the LIRR out to meet me in Babylon.
Our plan was to go back across the bay and explore Fire Island,
but the water was getting choppy.
My brother had called in the morning to say that a storm was rolling in across Long Island.
Maybe it would be better to stay on this side of the bay if it comes, I thought.
There seemed like plenty to explore on the north side anyway,
so we moved into the relative protection of Great Cove.
There is a large park on the western bank of Great Cove,
and we spotted some kind of structure out at the end of the dock.
A few days later, Sara found an article on duck hunting in the South Bay,
which certainly would explain these shotgun shells.
She also found some articles about a mysterious crab die-off in the region,
which could have accounted for the piles of hundreds of dead crabs on the dock.
She even found out what makes these interesting alterations to the shells we were finding all over the beach – Calcareous worm tubes.
This little guy remains one of the unsolved beach mysteries of the day – anyone know what it is?
It was wonderful walking along on this lonesome section of beach, only reachable by boat.
When we got back out on the water, the waves had grown and the wind was up.
I thought we should look for some place to drag the boat out of the water,
but I was hesitant to land on the private beach of one of the mansions that lined the coast of Bay Shore.
We saw a little section of park tucked between two homes,
and we made a final push toward shore.
We stashed the boat as best we could,
and walked into the community of Lawrence Lake.
“Look,” said Tim,
“stone lions.”
We did find one house for sale,
and Sara left her number on the real estate’s answering machine.
We ate a few well deserved slices of pizza and watched a television show about the dead sea scrolls.
and then I waited for Jeff to come get me in his truck.
It seemed like we got off the water just in time, and I went home to Brooklyn to wait out the storm.
Later that night, Jeff and I watched Tarkovski’s ‘Stalker’. “I am like the Stalker.” I thought.
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