The Scent of the Sea
I walked east along the rocky beach from Ditch Plain into the Montauk moorlands on Friday. The day before I’d learned a new word, “brumous.” It describes a heavy mist, a good word for Friday, for this place and time of year.
You know those ads for perfume or cologne that come in fancy magazines like Vanity Fair, a page with a fold in it? You peal back the fold and the fragrance is released. I’m going to write a book, a mystery, with a scent sealed on the pages that when peeled back reveal important plot twists, a woman’s irresistible mantrap, the wet tweed of her murderer.
Friday was the day before April’s new moon. The tide was extremely low. The sea was peeled back to reveal the rock reef, and release the sweet smell of new growth weed, mostly the bladder wrack that covers them like an army green blanket.
I walked out onto the reef peering into tidal pools that were missing the thousands of little black snails called rosettes. I wonder if they were killed by the invasion of near-shore ice over the winter. I stood on the rocks 60 yards seaward from the beach looking back at the doomed headland. I was standing at a place that had once been the beach, stretching east and west, 50 years ago when I first made the walk — a place that lays time as bare as the rocks.
Back on the sand I found fresh deer tracks heading east in the same direction I was headed. I looked up and saw two nearly obscured by fog watching me before high-tailing it. I followed, past the huge glacial erratic that surfers know as Big Rock, a rock that my young daughter called Big Panda because its lower half was black, its top capped with white cormorant guano.
The fog grew thicker. I lost sight of deer, but their tracks told me they were not far ahead. I was looking down, absently searching for examples of Montauk’s perfectly wave-rounded granite when a rough growl stopped my right foot from stepping onto a gray seal. He would probably have bitten me, and I wouldn’t have blamed him, or her. Dumb biped. She was upset, growled, shifted her position, looked toward the sea, then back at me as though to say, “Look, the tide is low. It’s a long crawl back to the water. I was waiting for it to come to me. Give me a break.”
I commiserated, spoke to her in a calming tone like you would an excited dog. We locked eyes for a minute or two, she decided I wasn’t a threat, and rested her chin on the sand. “First, the nosy deer, now you. I’m going back to sleep,” she said.
I continued on to my favorite cove, sat on a patch of red garnet sand, and watched the two deer climb up the bluff through a stand of phragmites into the shad and holly where a pond had been before the ocean drank it. I skated there once.
On the way back west, I walked out onto the reef again, this time looking for fishing lures that had been cast last fall, held fast to the seaweed’s “holdfast” roots, and abandoned with a curse.
The casting began last Wednesday, but not the catching as far as I know. April 15 is the start of the state’s striped bass season. I doubt the fish recognized it this year. The ocean remains a cold 41 degrees as of this writing.
On the other hand, a friend described seeing a white cascade of gannets diving on a school of what? Alewives, mackerel, is it too early for squid? Odd to see gannets this early, so they must be hungry for prey that striped bass and bluefish will also find appetizing.
Good news for those competing in the Montauk SurfMasters spring shootout. It officially begins on May 15. The “shootout” (come on guys, isn’t there a better name? Has the beach turned into the O.K. Corral?). How ’bout spring cast-out, or spring fling-a-thing?
This year, the fling-a-ling is a seven-week tournament ending on July 4. A week was added to take advantage of the big moon in July. The entry fee is $100 for adults, free for kids. An awards barbecue is planned for July 12. More information can be gotten from the Montauk SurfMasters website.