"The Mists of Huntington..."

The first day of Fall slipped in silently under a dense layer of fog, which hovered over the landscape at West Neck Beach, covering everything like a ghostly blanket. Only faintly visible from the shore, the few remaining boats floated like shadows at their moorings, seemingly suspended in a great, soft cloud. The water lay eerily flat and calm, its mirror-like surface dully reflecting the soft grey blanket tamping it down. A vast stillness swallowed all sound, and the voices of the gulls that swooped over the still water were muffled as if from far away. The overall effect was magical and mystical and ultimately irresistible, and the water called to us like a Siren. We swam, Carole and I, north along the Causeway, past the anchored ghost ships and the fuzzy outlines of the floating dock, into an unrecognizable world...Swimming into nothingness, the boundary between water and sky obliterated, we felt weightless and disembodied, with only the faintly visible misty shoreline to our right to guide us and keep us from being swallowed by the fog. We made our way as far as the yellow sign, then reluctantly turned back toward home in the deepening fog....A strange pair of flip-flops had joined ours at the Pod-Sandal-Station, Nancy Aboff having followed in our wake (though we neither saw nor heard her until her return), and Bonnie Millen soon joined us on the Beach, ready to undertake her own solitary sojourn into the void. As we stood, contemplating the deep, silent peace that enveloped us, a pair of Great Blue Herons flew over our heads, beating their wings soundlessly over the surface of the water, then disappearing into the fog like Great Blue Ghosts....This first swim of Fall felt like a blessing, holding the promise of many more glorious swims to come....