A Hurricane Like All Others

Excuse the hint of glee you detected in the check out line as you scrambled for flashlights and double D batteries at the hardware store. It is small compensation in dubious times that finds the native among us mildly entertained as the newly initiated prepared for a hurricane to rake eastern Long Island. By all official accounts you should be scurrying about like a rabbit in search of its tail in preparation for the big blow.

Yet see the steady, determined stride of the farmer and fisherman among you (though they tend crops and seabeds of a different ilk these days) as they emerge from beneath the yoke of modern times, lean toward their ancestral pride and stand firmly. For these, Irene is a long awaited adversary that will be likened to the brethren before her, heralded for her width and girth and deep barreled breath as she washes leeward.

For there remain some among us who can tell the tale as their own of the water that rose to divide Montauk from the mainland and the wind that toppled the spire from its protestant perch above the Old Whalers pew. New Englanders are a salty crew and Bonackers I dare, the most crusty of the lot, stalwart and determined to hold fast to a shifting dune and muddy clam bed.

As the great equalizer approaches, with her 800 mile reach and 130 mile per hour howl, undaunted by designer show houses and black American Express cards, it is the farmer and fisherman among us who fear the least. For they know that after this beastly blow a calm returns to the sea and a vitality to the field born of this baptismal rite, having washed free the veil of modern conventions. It is the pilgrim that lives lightly on the soil that weathers the most severe of storms.

All the while, deep in the furrows of Sagaponack and beneath the eel grasses of Accabonac, Peconic, Noyac and Nappeague, lives the birthright of The Shinnecock, The Montaukette and The Amagansett, laid claim by the Gardiners, the Lesters, the Millers, the Hildreths, the Halseys and the many named among us who remain invisibly beside you at hardware store, flashlights in hand.