Breaking and Exiting

I was on a foggy Long Island beach, the sun had set, and some civic-minded individual had locked the gate, trapping me inside a park that, as far as I could determine, did not at that moment contain any snowy owls.

I had been visiting my in-laws in Long Island — something I hadn’t done for two years, mostly because of COVID but also because my husband and I have been separated for a good part of the pandemic. Lately, we’ve been talking more; he came down to my Mom’s for Thanksgiving, and so I agreed to join him for New Year’s with his family. Negotiations regarding COVID safety precautions were entered into, as solemn as a staff-level summit on a U.N. peace treaty, and, ultimately, resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Tests were, miraculously and at the last minute, procured. 

I get along with my in laws. They were an engineer and a math teacher; almost everyone in the family has some kind of math or science background. I was an English major, the daughter of two English professors. Before we came to know and care about each other, I think we initially viewed each other with bemusement: how did *this creature* stumble into my life?

Michael was staying on for a little while with his folks, so I decided to return on New Year’s Day, hoping to avoid the traffic and busy rest stops on the Sunday before work started up again. But before heading out of town, I wanted to make a quick stop to look for a bird so mystical it seemed closer to the “file next to unicorns” category rather than the “find me next to the fried calamari place on the boardwalk”: the snowy owl.

Source: Harry Collins via iStock

Snowy owls live most of the year in the Arctic, but in the very depth of winter, they tend to migrate southward. Factors like strong breeding and a resulting pressure on food resources can determine how far south they venture. Scott Weidensaul, the co-founder of Project SNOWStorm, a snowy owl-tracking organization, predicts that the 2021-2022 season will be a good one for spotting the owls — they’ve already been spotted as far south as Richmond, VA and St. Louis, MO.

Long Island is a familiar winter haunt for snowy owls — they love to survey the landscape from the top of a sand dune. After consulting recent sightings on eBird, I had two choices: Fire Island, and Long Beach.

Fire Island creates a wonderful compilation of snowy owl pictures at the end of every season — they don’t like advertising the exact location of the birds while they’re present, for fear that people will “flush” them, or try to make them fly for the sake of pictures. I’d love to try going there some other time, but Long Beach was closer to the way home, and I noted that eBirders had seen up to two birds at a time there. (I had no intention, of course, of flushing the birds.)

It was extremely misty and drizzly when I arrived. I didn’t have my camera gear with me, and even if I had had any, I probably wouldn’t have taken it out of the care in that weather. The park where people had made their bird reports to eBird was called Point Lookout Park; I don’t know what it’s like in the summer, but in the dead of winter, it was behind a closed fence, with a neon flashing sign that said “Beach Closed for Repair.” 

Well, not entirely closed. 

Within the fence, there was a gate. Local dog walkers were walking in and out of the gate, nodding their “Happy New Years” to each other rather grimly with their sopping wet dogs. If the local dog walkers could go in, why couldn’t I, a dogless stranger, I wondered?*

I went in. I passed several enormous machines, like something out of Star Wars, presumably meant to bring in new sand to shore up the beach. (The Great Sand Shortage could be a topic for another time.)

I crossed the baseball diamond and found the pathway to the forbidden beach.

I was clearly far from the only person who had ventured out this way. Rather than the bracing salt scent of the ocean, the scent that hit me first was cheap beer — Budweiser, maybe, but possibly also Schlitz. There was the charred remains of a New Year’s Eve bonfire, a few driftwood logs, and a couple of bottles that had escaped whoever had been sober enough to attempt a cleanup. There were paw prints from multitudes of dogs. 

Picking around this, I walked, first behind the dunes, and then onto the beach. 

I realized I had no idea how to find a snowy owl. I looked up their habitat online. Apparently, they like open areas and fence posts. Great. I walked up and down the beach some more. No snowy owls appeared. 

I listened to the waves, and thought how I might miss this sound in the city.

I walked back behind the dunes. I found a new path that I was certain was where all the snowy owls were hiding, but it wasn’t, or maybe it was, but if so, they continued their hiding. Finally, it was dark, or nearly so, and I still needed to drive back to Washington, D.C.

I returned to the gate. It was locked.

It had the horseshoe type of gate latch, to which someone had added two holes through which a padlock could be fitted. Once the padlock was threaded through the holes, it was impossible to lift the horseshoe, making it impossible to open the gate.

If you were on the town beach community listserv or NextDoor, this gate and its lock had probably been discussed at great length. What time to lock the gate. Who locked the gate. What lock to use to secure the gate. And most importantly: who to call if there was an emergency and someone got locked into the park. I was not, unfortunately, on the town beach community NextDoor listserv.

My first thought was to call my husband, which would mean also calling my in laws. I dismissed this thought immediately. The amount of havoc I would cause, explaining that I was trapped in the rain in a park that I probably shouldn’t have been in in the first place … I would start shouting first. I would sleep under the monster trucks and drive home the next morning.

I noticed the fence was a chain link fence. Clearly, I would have to climb the fence, even though, naturally, the moment I got to the top of the fence, of course someone from one of the tony houses nearby would walk over and ask what I was doing. I would tear my favorite pink velour sweatpants. None of that could be helped. It’s what had to be done.

I approached the fence with every intention of climbing it, when I wondered — how strong is this horseshoe latch, anyway? Could I possibly bend it? And whether through the force of my shame or sheer desperation, the metal did bend into more of an open “u” shape, and I was able to push the gate open. I hastily shoved the horseshoe latch and gate back in place so as not to cause an eruption in NextDoor chatter, and made my getaway.

On the whole, not a bad start to the year.

Source: Maryjocapecod via iStock

No snowy owls, to be sure, but there were waves and mist and seaweed and strange calls. Here’s to new scents in the world, both bracing and beery; here’s to seeing problems afresh; here’s to arriving, somehow, by hook or by crook, in 2022.

*This section of today’s entry was brought to you, absolutely and 100%, by white privilege. During the entire time I was out there, not at all certain whether this was a private park or a public park that was closed or what, I had my eBird app on a hair trigger, ready to play snowy owl calls for anyone who questioned my presence. I was pretty sure I could get away with it — I look a lot like what I am, a white, middle-aged, lady librarian, bird-mad on a rainy beach — but if I had been a person of color, I couldn’t have been so sure, and might not have felt comfortable going to look at all.

---

The Steller’s sea eagle has been spotted once more, this time in Maine. (If you’re just joining us, it has been on quite a journey.) In the first flush, it seemed that the birders and fishermen were getting along; however, posts to the Maine Audubon group imply that the birders are starting to wear through their welcome. (“Please be mindful of the folks using this area for their livelihoods; give them the space needed and the right-of-way for accessing the wharf.”)

The esteemed Lisa Margonelli, author of Underbug (about which I’ve written here) wrote me via Twitter to say that the bird is a few miles from her house and that word on the street is that the electricity is out because one of the birders might have run into a power pole.

As someone who recently broke a piece of civic architecture (and then very quickly fixed it!), this is a good reminder to myself to try to be more aware & respectful of the local environment, people, and livelihoods going forward into 2022.