Our Terminal Moraine

We live a few miles from the south shore of Long Island. We’ve also lived by the north shore, and they feel like vastly different places. South shore is sandy, north shore is rocky. South shore is flat (some dunes), north shore has cliffs and peaks, many going right up to the water. It’s all because of how the island came to be, geologically speaking.

The entire island was formed during the ending of the ice age. As glaciers melted and glided slowly south, they pushed piles of sand (“glacial garbage”) ahead of them. When the ice melted altogether, they left behind a ridge of rocks and sand surrounded by water called a terminal moraine. Voila! Long Island was born.

A small body of water is to the north (“the Sound”). The Atlantic Ocean is to the south and east. Estuaries snake through the inland, ponds and lakes manage to dot the landscape despite some seriously overdeveloped real estate from Brooklyn to Montauk. (Those inland bodies of water do support wildlife, but these days, the fish are not fit for human consumption.) When humans arrived (much MUCH later - who we identify as Native Americans), the land was ideal for survival, and so it became home to these early native people. (There’s a fabulous museum in Glen Cove, NY that explains it all - Garvies Point Museum and Preserve (linked here). A must see if you’re in the area.)

We do not go to the beach as often as we think we will when we’re cursing the cold of winter and longing for summer. This morning, finally, we took a ride to our favorite south shore beach. The air was comfortably warm ahead of another heat wave coming in a few days. The water was cool; a relief from the frigid temperatures of June. There was a strong and steady breeze coming off the water and we could smell the salt. We walked and collected clam shells (I will use them to mix paint colors in my studio). We stayed for a couple of hours - the crowd builds around lunch time, so we flee. As always, we brought away with us a sense of relief and renewal, and the conviction that we HAVE to do this more often. ‘We’re SO close!’ we cry aloud in the car, yet for some reason, we get trapped by inertia; the will to pry ourselves out of our house and away from our daily routines too often eludes us. Maybe this summer will be different.