Friday, May 30, 1969 

I think I can now understand more about what feels wrong in my life. It is a fairly simple thing. Writing is not a full-time job for me. For me to be creative requires a certain mood. I can never sit down and schedule my work unless something has already started. Even then, if I’m not inspired by that small spark of something, that germinal idea of what to say, nothing comes of it. 

Yesterday, I did not go to the Manhattan office to pick up my paycheck. That money feels more like a chain that keeps me tied to New York City. Zita and I decided to try hiking on Fire Island. I asked my brother Billy if he wanted to go. That led me to ask my partner Gary if he wanted to go. Everybody jumped at the idea of doing something different, though it was really the idyllic dream of getting back to nature that we jumped at. We forgot, for a time, the realities of hiking through the sand, the constant sunshine, no respite or shade. Fire Island is simply a sandbar by the sea –– a primary dune of sand and secondary dunes covered with brush, reeds, and wild, low growth. It is on Long Island’s south shore.

It took us all day to get organized to leave, patiently waiting for everyone to get their gear and arrive. We got to the island at about four PM. It was the hottest day of the year. The temperature was in the high nineties and the sun hotly burned our backs. 

We stripped to the waist, donned our packs, and began the long sandy trek. Zita struck out in the lead followed by me, then Gary, then Billy, and his wife, Bonnie. As time passed, the line became very thin and strung out. I dawdled a bit to wait for the others to catch up, but Billy and Bonnie were way behind and Zita kept forging ahead. Gary caught up momentarily but then lagged again while I hurried to catch up with Zita. 

We stopped at the bloated carcass of a headless seal, stared for a brief moment, then passed it by. When Gary finally caught up with us, Billy and Bonnie were nowhere to be seen.

A fine mist hung over the sea and the sun busily melted it away. We speculated about where Billy was. Gary thought he was upset because we were so far ahead. I thought that was probably true, but I guessed his bedroll was too heavy and this was too much work for his taste.

Two lonely figures popped up on the horizon, then faded away again. Guessing that it was Billy and Bonnie, I finally turned back to get them only to find that he had returned to the car to drop off his bedroll, intending to hitch back to the city. “It was an ugly thing to do,” he said, because his bedroll kept falling apart and it was really work to hike in the sand. Besides, he felt that the day had started with hassles. He knew more were coming and would rather retreat back to the city. There had been too many arguments about delays and the “hurry-up-we’ll-never-get-there’s” had put an uptight bag around the sunshine. 

I felt disappointed that everyone was not in the best of spirits. A feeling of time washed over me and hung heavy in my heart. The changes in my life were splitting both Billy and I apart. Billy became a symbol of the yesterday that never returns and the desolate beach a symbol of the future that we always trudge towards. 

There truly was nothing there but sand and sea. 

Suddenly two ideas sprang into my head. Two different visions of life were becoming apparent: Billy’s idea that this trip was all a gross absurdity and hard work and his desire to return to the comfort of lying about clashed with my idea that only through constant effort and movement could I find anything worthy of being the focus of my attention. There was nothing but sand and sea, yet there surely was something to be wrought from it. Optimism has always been my goal.

When I returned, Zita came walking down the beach to meet me. We met up with Gary and went back to the dune to smoke where there was no wind. 

The heavy packs soon became stones on our backs. Raised in and accustomed to a subjective opulence, we had no real idea about what is superfluous to carry when every ounce counts. We had no mental conception of the bare minimum necessary for survival. The result was a heavy pack filled with too much food and heavy-weight versions of supplies that could and should have been lighter if we had known anything about hiking at all. However, no matter what one does or does not carry, walking in the sun and through the sand is never effortless. It was as if the earth would not hold my weight. As we crossed the spongy sand bars, I sank in up to my ankles.

The sea was forming a brand-new sand bar. A fledgling bay about a foot deep lay behind the waves, a refugee from yesterday’s tide. The village lay ahead of us. Fire Island villages have no roads to speak of, but rely on paths and concrete walkways that constantly are covered over with drifting sand. Only four-wheel drive vehicles can navigate, so the villagers use either Jeeps or boats to get around. It is an odd colony of summer homes and a few rugged naturalists who live in the windswept ravages of an Atlantic winter. Gary talked in his double-thought manner about how the villagers would react to our trudging through with packs on our backs. He speculated as to whether we would be stared at, asked to leave, or perhaps boiled in hot oil and eaten by a pre-pork generation. 

Zita and I attempted to quell his fancy with realism, but to no avail. His double-think was contagious. Soon, I found myself feeling like an intruder in a private domain. 

A Jeep pulled out onto the sand and entered the concrete path where we were now walking. Four men jumped out, as though on a signal, bent toward each of the four wheels, and then hopped back in the Jeep. They were disconnecting the four-wheel drive. They seemed to stare at us rather disturbingly as they passed. 

Of course, nothing happened in the village. There was no mad ghoul in the lighthouse. In a way, it seemed a shame, but living nightmares are never pleasant. We bought some cold drinks at the village store. I got some tobacco for my pipe and dropped the burden of the packs for a moment. 

We could not make it very far before darkness fell. Two villages come together and the area is inhabited for a two-mile strip, so we had to curve around a dune in an area that seemed more deserted than the others. After darkness fell, it was silent except for Jeeps running up and down the beach now and then. The moon was full and hung over the sea.  

I found myself wondering if my conception of the Moon had changed now that man had circled it. Only a week ago, a ship had descended to within nine miles of the surface. I remembered the intense excitement of the Christmas Eve broadcast a few months ago when the first live television pictures of the Moon’s surface were broadcast to Earth. One in four of our Earth’s inhabitants sat mentally suspended before their television sets, their breath held short, commonly involved in the moment. Yet, with all we have learned of the Moon, my conception of it remains the same as I have always had. It is the most romantic light in the night sky. The mountains were darker than the valleys. The craters I saw on television were like science-fiction movies that had no bearing on the living luxury of the night sky. 

I tried to imagine how Earth looked from the Moon. The pictures they beamed back to the planet lacked depth and comparison to the familiar sky. I tried to picture the Earth as large as a Sunday dinner dish hanging in space, colored with the now familiar blue and swaddled in unbelievably thick swirls of abstract cloud formations. 

Though it was still light, the moon still hung like a distant quarter over the rolling liquid matter of the sea. I had Zita open her mouth so I could peer at the moon like a large chunk of Gouda cheese about to be devoured. I got my camera and shot a picture of her mouth attempting to devour the cheese moon.

Zita was tired. She wanted to return to the car and leave before the sun went down, but we decided to spend at least the night on the dunes and think about it in the morning.  

In the morning, I saw things her way. We returned to the car.