On a hot windless day in the middle of July, I paddled into Pellham Bay with David Fierman and Charley Stephenson.
It’s a place that David knows well, having grown up in the area.
He told us all the local lore, the various reputations of each yacht club, and the decades-old disputes between neighbors.
David said he’d ask his mom for details on that last one, but just seeing the architectural decisions, bayside pools, high stone fences, we could well imagine.
David pointed out historic locations for teenagers to get stoned,
and we discovered some new ones.
It’s weird, said David I spent so much time on the shore all around here growing up, but never in boats.
As we paddled further out into the bay we couldn’t get around the drifts of sea snot. I had to ask what it was on Instagram,
@rlyonstudio responded, “is that what’s choking harbors all around Turkey and the Mediterranean this summer?†(image from AlJezeera – Muhammed Enes Yıldırım/Anadolu)
I think he’s right, maybe this is just the beginning.
We found a break in the snot,
and dove in for a swim off Huckleberry Island.
Afterward we stopped over at a curious house,
“On sale for 13 million dollars,†said David.
The listing on zillow has some optimistic shots, but even at mid-tide, the island is barely above the water.
We could see signs of a slap dash renovation, growing over, and I thought about how the march of time seems faster out here next to the ocean, and then, of course, sea-level rise.
In the last few days smoke from fires out west has been visible in the sky here, making the sun and moon blood red on the horizon. (image from Reuters)
I thought that the eerie twilight caused by the smoke would dominate our experience,
but the sea snot ended up being a weirder and more tangible sign of climate change.
I guess I anticipated this day with David and Charley, driving out from Manhattan,
to feel something like that scene in Logan’s Run (1976), where they escape the city dome to find that the world outside has returned to a peaceful natural habitat.
They discover that their life clocks have no power over them.
Our experience of the bay was turning out to be just as exhilarating, as free,
but the water was maybe a little grosser than in the movie,
plus our life clocks were still ticking.
On our way back home it started to rain, the water seemed to clear a bit, and the wind behind the rain was crisp and cool.
Maybe we had spent the morning inside a certain vision of the future,
but one right before the dome instead of after.
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