Mosquitos

The day was a long cascade of light. The glaring beach shimmered away into heat and seemed to be made out of light; the waves rolled huge and burning to shore, foam gleaming in a white heat; light curved the far reaches of the shore and the beach itself seemed to drift up into light, wavering in the heat. We could not put on sunscreen fast enough and soon we were both scorched in random blotches. The only shade was in the water and so we spent much of the day there, pummeled and salted by the crushing surf and carried up on the rolling swells of green sea-light and spilling foam. As the sun set behind the dunes the air cooled and the hot glare diminished into cooling pastels that collected in the tidal pools. It was a short reprieve from the intensity for as soon as it was dark the mosquitos arose up out of the dunes like a biblical plague. They divebombed our ears and flew at our eyes so that it became hard to see. Soon we could not breath without breathing in mosquitos. We retreated into the tent while the hoards of mosquitos flew at the screen in a continual drone. We had heard that it was buggy in the Long Island dunes but we could not have imagined how buggy. “Forest!” Q said later on in the night, “I’ve seen three shooting stars!” She left the tent to lie on the sand in her sleeping bag to better see the sky, and never mind the bugs. Lulled by the hush and crash of the continual waves I slept soundly and noticed no mosquitos, but as the dawn arose once more from the ocean, the light glared again, becoming immediately hot as the sun cleared the planet. Above me, clinging to the inside of the tent screen were at least thirty mosquitos each carrying a glittering diamond of blood.

Fire Island Dune Wilderness, July 2022