Montauk Redux

Another June, another trip to Montauk

where we amble down this path...

 to see this...

...so Frank can do this.

In our room at the Beach Plum, we find these:

...five pleated displays altogether in our room.  My point:  Some individual,

obviously one of the maids, is really into this particular craft.

Frank's counterpoint:  It's just management wanting those extra touches - all the maids do it.

Maybe, I say, but this person is definitely taking it over the top.

Would management mandate the intricate twelve-pleat kleenex design?

I don't think so!

Frank and I argue on. 

(Later in the blog I win the debate - watch for it.)

The locals are allowed to drive on the beach at dusk, a point of contention 

for many - the old townie vs. tourist thing.  It's led in the past to invading convoys of SUVs

vs. deep holes dug in the sand to bury them up to their axles.

But now it seems calmer, just a few SUVs a night, driven by dogs.

And now, let the Zen beach pics begin!

Wow!

The metaphorical implications are infinite.

Frank ambles off as I make profound abstract art in the sand.

Up the beach, people have formed a shelter/sculpture/shrine

from driftwood...

...and scallop shells.

The next day we go to a place called "The Walking Dunes"

meaning that the dunes themselves travel each year.

An innocent-looking path leads into them, but Frank and I get five feet in and turn around,

fleeing for our lives.  The path is narrow and on each side

are thousands of ticks waiting to devour our flesh and give us Lyme Disease,

and also vast stands of poison ivy flank the path.

A kind man, a teacher from the local middle school, directs us to another

entrance down the beach, note the green area between the darker foliage below.

(Frank made a painting of this scene the next day.)

We pass by fabulous sea weeds, but sadly note the un-sealike addition of

dog poo on the lower right. 

Obviously dogs drive on this beach, too.

These are the walking dunes. 

At first I thought they were called that because we're allowed to walk on them, unlike most

protected dunes near the beaches.

But it's not about us, it's about them, about the dunes

strutting their stuff, as it were.

Step by step, inch by inch they are burying an entire forest of trees.

Remember that nasty tick-ridden path?  On our way out of the Walking Dunes, we see

another teacher, this one with a nasty smug smile,
leading a group of middle-schoolers down that very poison-ivied path, 

telling them to watch for interactions between living things (like ticks and flesh?)

and warning them to stay in the middle, students!
Like it will be their fault when they come down with Lyme disease because they didn't
stay in the middle.

OMG!

internet photo

Which won't help anyway because the tick-laden grasses reach well into the path, 

and not only that, what happens when one of the students falls (or gets pushed)

 into the poison ivy?  (Not that any twelve-year-old would do such a thing, of course.)

This is a recipe for disaster, one that

the nice teacher wasn't able to prevent - 

he watches the group disappear with obvious dismay.

Middle school politics and one-upmanship at work here, it appears.

Wait until the rashes begin and the parents begin to call - 

the lesson in interactions between life forms will be well learned then!

And yes, the metaphorical Pied Piper implications resonate

with the recent win by Scott Walker in his recall election in Wisconsin where, funded by some of the most filthy rich men on the planet, he has run for dictator, oh, sorry, governor, and 

succeeded by a small margin.  

He will now feel empowered to lead everyone directly into disaster.

(Fortunately the Dems took one of the senate seats away from the Republicans, 

now giving them a majority in the Wisconsin senate.)

Back in our room, Frank is finally convinced of the

rightness of my views on obsessive pleating as our paper towels 

take the art to a new level.

Even the gulls are bemused.

Or just wanting food.

Later we visit Montauk Point where Frank scopes out a

place to paint.

while I look for the perfect egg-rock to continue with my dozen-egg-rock project.

This one is excellent.

Frank finds these, but I'm not doing speckled eggs, so they stay at the beach.

The heart rock comes with me, however.  I ask it if it wants to leave the beach, which

I hiave read is proper rock-picking etiquette, and it says yes.

The second day comes to a close with faint moonlight on the big waters.

We have come during the waxing moon, so have high hopes for some great moon shots.