I told myself it it got up over sixty degrees, I’d go swimming.

Well, not swimming, but, you know, I’d go in the water. Yes, all the way in.

Friday, which was February 24th, it got up over sixty.

I’m not going to lie to you and say the water was particularly warm, but the tide was low and the beach was empty. There were a half dozen seagulls divebombing the sandbar, cracking open scallops and clams and feasting on the creatures inside.

Strange, that a creature that spends its life on the ocean floor, has one moment where it is suspended high above the beach. If those scallops opened their shells, they’d get one last peek with their hundreds of blue eyes at the sea below before they tumbled down.

I thought there would be at least a few people on the beach, taking advantage of this unbelievable day. But school vacation started this past Friday, and the island is more empty than usual. Almost everyone goes away, either someplace warm like Florida or St. Croix or Jamaica, or in search of good skiing in Vermont or New Hampshire.

A few of us stay behind, to walk the dogs that have been left at home.

The water was cold, real cold, and the tide so low I had to walk far out to where the water was deep enough to sink down into.

I wonder if a day this warm in February will stand out in my memory as the years go by, or if it is just the first in an endless summer.

Provincetown, December 23, 2016

I know a lot of people will tell you that 2016 was a terrible year, and of course, there were indeed some terrible things that happened (some of which we will not fully realize the terror of until this coming year).

It was also just a year, with highs and lows like any other.

2016 was the year I first traveled out of the country, the year I got to watch the Nantucket New School students talk to an astronaut live from the International Space Station, and the year I ran a half marathon (yeah, I’m surprised too, dear reader).

It was a year many people I care about got married, got engaged, got pregnant, and had children.

It was the year the last of my grandparents died, and countless of our collective heroes.

It was a year where so many of us rose and up pledged that we would not let anyone trample on the rights of others. I hope we remember this in the years to come.

I am grateful for the past year, for all I have written, and for all who have taken the moment to read.

Onward…

Eastward Look cottage in Siasconset.

I used to live in Tom Nevers, at the eastern end of the island. The light breaks first in the village of Siasconset, one of the easternmost points in the United States. Depending on the time of year, Siasconset is the first place to be touched by the sun’s rays. Lubec, ME (which is the easternmost point in the continental US) is the other.

Early morning on the first day of the new millennium, I was wrapped in blankets with my sister and parents, standing by the lighthouse in ‘Sconset, waiting with dozens of other onlookers for the winter sun. The local astronomer was on the phone with the folks in Lubec. I imagined them standing there, further north, probably colder than I was.

The same lighthouse that watched over the rocky shoals now watched over us. It kept a steady rhythm, flashing every seven-and-a-half seconds.

On summer’s longest days, the day is ushered in around five in the morning. The hours of daylight are abundant. It is easy to wake up, the sun coaxing you out of bed and begging you to play.

In March of this year, I began running in earnest. Well, I began running. The earnestness may have come later. There was a lot of self doubt to slog through, in addition to bad shoes and uneven roads. I never quite experienced that dissociated high that I have heard others who run talk about. But after a number of months, running no longer became something I hated.

I bring up running because in early October, I ran a half marathon. It still seems like a dream. I was only able to run a handful of miles today, chasing the sun as it dipped below the horizon and was swallowed up by the sea. This Sunday, and the demise of Daylight Savings Time for another year, brings with it the start of our winter darkness.

The half was not easy. I was lucky to have a few friends to run with in the weeks leading up to the race, and one who flew up to run with me. For the last few miles, I ran (in the pouring rain) behind a woman whose shirt read “We don’t need machines…we are machines.” I was feeling a bit like the Tin Man instead of a well-oiled machine at that point, but I appreciated the thought.

The race is over; the pace has slowed. I still wake up with the sun, but we both rise much later these days.

A little later than in years past, but I did take my first dip yesterday.

Sure, it was in the sound and not the ocean, but I’m pretty sure that counts.

There is something incredibly powerful about that first dip. A sort of baptism, maybe. The salt and the cold shrinking every pore of your body, making you acutely aware of the water’s power.

I shallow dove into the water while two teenagers in sweatshirts looked on. They must have thought I was crazy.

But the water was so inviting, the evening sun sparkling in the west. The length of beach empty except the teenagers, strolling with their cameras, hoping to capture the beauty of the moment.

I considered waiting a little longer, another month, maybe before diving in. Or waiting until the wind and the tiny grains of sand relented.

But I thought of the long winter (which wasn’t as painful this year as years past), and the sound of the wind rattling the windows in the old house I’d been living in. I thought of the same beach in summer, packed full of umbrellas and beach chairs and children and dogs and tourists and the din of their chatter.

And I dove in.

It’s snowing.

Not right now, but it will be soon.

I had almost convinced myself, after an incredibly mild December, that winter might never arrive. Christmas Eve’s remarkable warmth dared me to take a dip in the pond near my parent’s house. I made it to the water’s edge, dressed only in a swimsuit. It was surreal to stretch out on the bank, the trees stripped bare, a lone canoe lazily crossing the widest part of the pond. Like Christmas in July, but the other way around.

The water, too cold, betrayed this summer fantasy.

Back on Nantucket, in late October, I went to my regular beach after work one exceptionally warm afternoon. I hadn’t expected to swim until I saw one of the 80-year-old women I know from hanging out at the beach. She’d just been in the water. Now she was leaning against the sun-drenched wooden wall that separates our public beach from the neighboring private club.

It was cold, she said, but it’s one hell of a long winter ahead of us.

I hope you’re ready for the snow.