Enchanted Island

I may have been a bit hasty in summoning the Fall. Mother Nature and the Universe, the original power couple, did their best to prove me wrong this weekend, and they succeeded.

An unexpected, last minute invitation arrived on Friday around Noon; it's acceptance found me on a sunset ferry headed to the most enchanting NY beach destination I've ever seen. Fair Harbor, Fire Island. It's only an hour and change by train and thirty minutes by boat, but the lull of the motor and the sound of the wake gurgling behind earn you oceans and light years worth of mental and spiritual distance.


We arrived just after dusk, edging up to a dock full of families complete with barking dogs and children swinging from monkey bars, all in seafaring garb. The entire island seemed to be lit with tea lights, awaiting our arrival. The same pinewood slates that first accepted our footsteps on the dock carried us throughout the entire town. There are no cars allowed in Fair Harbor, only feet and beach bikes. The weathered boardwalk, elevated three feet above the sand and dirt, serves as the road, running through the main square, winding down each narrow, residential street and inevitably terminating, splendidly, at the waters edge. Fair Harbor can't be more than .5 miles wide and so every street laps the beach on both ends, the rumbling ocean on the South side, the calm, tepid bay on the North. All under a canopy of unruly green foliage and otherwise unobstructed sky.




All of this contributed to the feeling of pleasant disorientation that came over me on our slow walk home in the dark on Friday night. Winding down road after road I was too romanced by the miniature bungalows, the well manicured beach lawns and the sounds and smells of families abandoning their hobbies and negotiating themselves around dinner tables for communal meals to know where I was going or how to get back. And I didn't want to.



Fire Island is decidedly less quaffed and self-aware than the Hamptons, it almost has a blue collar twang at times. But I was told by my host, an insider for some 20 years, not to be fooled. Some of the heaviest, headiest hitters in media, the arts and publishing have hid out there for decades. You can be putting air into your tires next to the most seasoned literary agent or impresario and, unlike the other island (Manhattan), it'd take you a great deal of impolite digging or internet research to find out just who. You have to go with the flow, take off your city cap and truly engage. And that's exactly why they are there. To take a break, be themselves, go beyond rote professional discourse. The relationships and connections made on the island are genuine and run deep. That, to me, was very attractive.


Around day 3 Fall was a distant memory, a far off future. I had forgotten how undeniably refreshing and unmistakably Summer it is to take a shower outdoors (!), iced coffee in hand, the smell of sea salt and charcoal mixing above. How much more beautiful my skin is when golden and naturally exfoliated by the persistent pounding of the waves. How lusciously lazy it can feel to wake up early in bed, stumble 50 yards and finish the nights slumber on the beach. How nurturing it is, for both giver and recipient, to spend all afternoon shopping for and preparing a big meal on the grill. Hmm.

These are all Summer niceties, Summer luxuries that I may have dismissed a little too quickly, that I will certainly need more of before I can truly embrace the Fall. Next weekend, perhaps:)

all photos courtesy of Erin Robinson