I closed my book and tossed it aside. It landed in the sand with a thump. No matter how many times I try, I just can’t get past the first fifty pages of ‘Moby Dick’. That far in and it could simply be: ‘A man walks into a bar’.

I looked over to my dozing bride then up to see something on the ocean horizon. We were supposed to be alone on this beach. Weird.

As the object came closer, it looked like a fishing boat with some strange apparatus on the front. I watched as it dropped anchor in the shoals about thirty yards away. The tide was out so I had plenty of time to assess the stranger as he approached, clad in a waxed leather slicker and sou’wester.

He came up to me and offered a large hand.

“Call me Ishmael,” he said.

Photo by lincoln-log