Neptune Avenue heading east, Deal, NJ.
I am lucky enough to live so close to the ocean that on some mornings sea mist tumbles down the streets. It rolls past houses and cars until the sun gets higher, sending iridescent streaks of light through it and, eventually, burns it all away.
Other days are just solid fog, no sun, and it lingers. These are the days when I tuck my point-and-shoot into my pocket and walk straight to the beach.
Bench overlooking the jetty, Allenhurst, NJ.
Days like this, there is no horizon. No ‘you are here: X’ to pinpoint you on Earth’s map. With nearly every reliable view I count on gone, the landscape eerie, the seascape all but vanished, I might as well have been snatched up and plunked down onto another planet.
Fisherman on the jetty, Allenhurst.
Or it’s as if I am in a 1950s B movie.
Jetty and waves, but no horizon.
But I don’t find it terrifying; I find it the opposite of terrifying. To stand on the beach and be utterly disoriented, not to see anything beyond 20 feet in any direction, is fascinating. I grew up here and could walk this beach blindfold—and am. I’m wearing Harry’s loose and misty invisibility cloak, and it extends for miles up the windswept coast.
Wait wait wait…or is it less a cloak than another veil the universe sent me?
If so, it’s the wildest ever. Sold.
Dune and fog.
To get my bearings, I look down and see what the waves and weather have produced.
Skate (a type of ray) egg case.
High tide patterns on the powdery dark lagoon sand.
Taking the veil home with me. Here it is clinging to my black wool pea coat. It’s nice to be enveloped now and again.
Afterward it’s warm-up time. I know, it’s late in the season for hot chocolate.
No, it isn’t.
