Atlantic Ocean – Beesquared

It barely qualifies as a day at the beach. But the two hours that I spent at Fort Tilden on Tuesday achieved their purpose, which was to help me beat the heat wave that has enveloped the city.

The temperature at the former U.S. Army installation that’s now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area was about 7 degrees lower than temperatures here in Manhattan.

The water registered 77 degrees, which feels body temperature on a day like today. I bobbed twice in the swells for about 15 minutes at a time. About 50 feet away, a pair of lifeguards in red trunks, one male, one female, perched atop a chair eight feet high, their legs stretched out in the sun.

Between trips to the water, I snacked from a Ziploc of shelled peanuts that I had packed, and read an article in The New Yorker about the evolution of civic and private power in San Francisco across three generations of the author’s family.

On the drive to the ocean, I was reminded that traffic here in New York — even during the middle of a weekday — is a force to reckon with. On the drive home, my skin cool and salty, my t-shirt smelling like the ocean, I barely minded.

Upon arriving at Fort Tilden, I took a few wrong turns to the beach. Of course, I could feel the ocean from where I stood. It was just beyond the scrubby trees. But in the three years since I last visited the fort, the National Park Service had closed some paths and opened others.

I found my way thanks to a retiree from Amsterdam who pushed a bicycle (right?!) and pointed to a path where all one had to do was to turn right.

As we walked, she asked me what I thought of a suggestion by a friend of hers, an American who she said had retired to Spain. He asked if he could use her U.S. address as his own for purposes of claiming Social Security. She said she had some concerns about that, as she receives Social Security, too.

I suggested she trust her instinct.. We thanked each other, and each went our way.

The Atlantic Ocean always beckons me. It’s the ocean we visited on summer vacations as kids when my father piled us into the Oldsmobile for a drive across Pennsylvania to the shore. Throughout my life, a trip to the beach has meant plunging into the waves that roll into New Jersey, Delaware, New England, New York City and elsewhere along the East Coast. Until recently, I worked in a newsroom that offered sweeping views of New York Bay, where the Hudson empties into the Atlantic.

Thus it thrills me to visit the Atlantic from Africa, where my girlfriend and I swam recently at the beaches off Cape Town and drove along the road that skirts Chapman’s Peak, a mountain that ascends from the ocean to the city’s southwest. The 5.5-mile drive twists and tucks into the rise, suspended above sheer drops that tumble into the sea while the mountains tower above you.

Every mile or so we stopped the car and stepped out to gaze out at the blue expanse, which glistened in the sun. I pictured New York, roughly 7,900 miles away, and imagined what might be happening there and what it might be like to see all the way to the other side. Next time I’m at the beach in New York, I will imagine what might be happening here.