On Thursday morning Adam Payne and I headed out to Ruffle Bar in Sheepshead Bay.
“This is the place where that kid from the ‘This American Life’ story was stranded.” I told him.
Brett Martin did a story a few years ago about a kid who was shipwrecked and stranded out here – within sight of the Empire State Building.(listen to it)
The wind was really whipping across the bay.
We ended up much further North than we wanted.
But the water was calm on the leeward side of the island,
and we pulled up on the deserted beach.
Adam went out into the water to look for crabs.
He preserves them as part of an art project.
It is a collection of things he finds.
He catalogs them all and makes cases and cabinets for them.
“Two baby Stripped Bass.” he said.
Manhattan was failntly visible, miles away.
The beach was filled with plastic and wrecked boats,
and those few species who flourish in our trash.
Shoals of tiny fish moved along in the warm water near the shore. Their little bellies flashed now and then as one of them turned in the sunlight.
Adam explained that the ones who flash their bellies are infected with a particular parasite that changes its behavior slightly.
The parasite has developed a way to attract predators to the fish. It will begin its next life cycle in the stomach of a hunting bird.
I would have never known something like that – just looking into the water, thinking about it.
He reads a lot about science and I asked him once -why find out for sure?
Most people I know think that unchecked speculation just as interesting.
He told me that maybe he mistrusts speculation because he grew up in a Mormon family.
Now he likes to make sure everything that he is told is supported by other facts.
I like looking up close at all the crabs and fish and bugs,
but secretly I was glad he didn’t bring any jars big enough for these guys.
We packed up and headed to the next island.
It was a low green swamp that didn’t seem to have a name on any map.
A google satalite image of the island showed that the tide had cut rivers through the grass,
but from the water level it was hard to find our way into the interior.
Adam pulled the boat into a little river.
I paddled us along slowly,
while he looked for bugs.
The grass was filled with murkey pools.
It reminded me of that place In the Lord of the Rings that Frodo ends up on his walk to Mordor.
“Don’t look into the pools!” I think.
But the pools are filled with fiddler crabs.
“I’ve never seen them in the wild before” said Adam.
“Only in pet stores.”
The creek opened back out to the bay,
and we paddled back to Ruffle Bar.
Adam decided to walk around the leeward side of the island,
and I took the boat along the windward side.
There is a sandy peninsula at the Southern tip.
The sand there is made of tiny purple shells.
Horshoe crabs were coming up to mate in the shallow water.
I saw the shells of dead ones lying on the bank.
The wind had come up and I could see whitecaps in the channel that we had to cross to get back.
It was easier to push the boat along than row.
As I waded through the water,
I thought of all the things Adam was collecting: little pinching things that my feet must be touching.
Adam appeared around the Southwest tip.
Our plan was to push the boat as far South as we could and head across the wind for Barren Island.
“What are the biggest waves you have ever been out in with this boat?” asked Adam.
“Well, these are pretty big.” I said.
But our little boat floated right over them.
We were blown far North of the boat ramp,
and we walked back to it along the shore.
Here is Adam’s box and some of the things that he collected on our trip:
-Marie Lorenz
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