Where else in the world could one be less than 20 kilometres distant from an eminently civilised town of more than 40,000 permanent residents (plus a large number of tourists) , and enjoy the pictured experience?
My beloved and I are not visible in the featured image.
It does, however, show all other humans present at Muttonbird Beach during the late afternoon “golden hour” on 21 March 2021.
To reach this glorious, safe-swimming spot, on a perfect “beach day”, we drove for less than 30 minutes, on good roads…
Not all of Muttonbird Beach is “safe”, but the section pictured above – in the lee of Shelter Island – is not at all “treacherous”, unless the ocean is highly agitated.
Most visitors mistake Shelter Island for Muttonbird Island.
A little to the left of my photo’s field of view, the much smaller Muttonbird Island is just east of Shelter Island.
Click here for info on and photos of just some of the Albany region’s wonderful beaches; many of them do not offer “safe” swimming.
Musical bonus
Biloxi is a particularly lovely “beach song”.
One of very few things I share with both Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello: a deep admiration for Jesse Winchester (1944-2014), as a great songwriter.
Biloxi is in Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast, less than 100 kilometres east of New Orleans.
Winchester wrote Biloxi a little more than 55 years ago, as a deeply homesick “Southerner”, living in exile in Canada.
(Winchester had declined to be conscripted to fight in Vietnam. Courtesy of President Carter, he was later able to return to the USA as a free person. He retained Canadian citizenship)
He gave this performance in the Netherlands in 2011:
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