Long Island – First impressions.
It’s hot.
Oct 06, 2022 – 7:20a The Back porch of the beach house; Clarence Town, Long Island Bahamas. Today starts with perfection. I have just rustled from an incredible nights sleep. It’s phenomenal. I am lounging on the back deck of the beach house. Feet up as a cool winter wind makes it both the ideal temperature and more importantly ,mosquito free! A hundred feet from me, the surf continues its unending assault on our beach. With one thrust, ti scrapes away sand and grass, with the next, it funds that same space mercilessly. Leaving tiny treasures in its wake for us to find. Sometimes a sand dollar or spiral shell... others, a bottle cap or rubber duck! Our well-apportioned humble cottage, a beautiful island turquoise-blue faces the open Atlantic. The Caribbean technically starts on the southern side of the island here. Here, the water is deeper and bluer. Much more violent compared to those serene cerulean waters just a half-mile's walk from here. There are many sharks, but no islands of note between us and Greenland and, I suppose, Nova Scotia. If one ignores the countless barrier islands along the eastern seaboard of the US. The permit is, the big cruise lines travel by, far out to sea beyond the horizon line, so far away that the only way we know they are out there is when small plastic detritus washes up here many weeks after they have dumped their garbage over board. A terrible practice for sure. My companions this morning are a beer-bottle I emptied my first day here and filled with sand, a water bottle that Angie did the same too. Two worn out spiral shells, a tiny sea-urchin skeleton and very curious little chic-a-dee. We see the tiny birds each day. They cheep-cheep in a tiny voice one coudl easily mistake for a frog or even an insect. To my left, what sounds liek a cicada begins his trill. And, as always, the Three Sentinals stand guard right where teh grass stops and the sand starts. They are three-sister palms of medium largeness. They wave tirelessly like their friend, the ocean. One curves distinctly while the others grow mostly straight. The caretaker here, Carlos has painted the bottom 5’ or so. One Orange, the next yellow and the curvy one blue. All a brilliant and outstanding color. The yellow tree has starfish and shells painted on it. Blue got graffiti of the cottage name (the Beach House) But orange, teh smallest of the three got only color. I suppose her small diameter made her unfit for the would-be taboo-artist to label her as he did her sturdier sisters. Now, I leave my morning reverie to sally-forth to Clarence Town! The bakery has just opened and we have post-cards to mail. BRB! Greetings! We trekked to the post office, arrived to o early and so we walked to Erica’s bakery and menagerie. Nothing baked yet. :–( So, we hit the manager part of Erica’s. Angie won the final sale of TP in stock. Now e hold the prize! Going back to the post-office bore similar results, still no joy!!. :–( We di manage to get on the walk at the salt pond. I would like to find the tide schedule and visit at high-tide as it is likely teh sea-life is far more abundant. Possibly even some turtles. So we sat the docks and drew for a while. Sharks Be here.
October 07, 2022 Last day. I awoke @ pre-dawn as is the ritual here in LDC. The commute is long (40m) so we learned to get up between 530 & 6 to prepare. It reminds me a lot Bethel, only with way more mosquitoes and sweat. There is a 30m recording of crashing surf from my sunrise observations. Though he lived 1000 miles from here, I am quite confident Mayfield Parrish saw the same sunrises and sets in New England. One need only look at one of the cyan, orange and pink masterpieces to get a suggestion of just how beautifully stunning the morning and evenings are. Mesmerizing is a good description.
October 25, 2022 – 1120a We await out final minutes in our bungalow as Sara comes to collect us for our long drive to Stella Maris international. It is the tiniest airport I’ve ever been to.