One quiet, moderately cold night when the mist hung so low over the water and beach that they were closed in, but at the same time illuminated by the moon, I saw the port and starboard light of a fishing boat that looked to be only a hundred yards or so away down the shore. I kept walking toward them with the illusion that the boat was moored close to the beach, but after a couple of miles the lights were still receding and I turned back. The tide was close in and sheets of foam pitched in and dragged back with a sound of rattling stones but in gentle rhythm. It was a quiet sea, and beyond the surf I could detect little strikes of light, the curling over and stirring of white and silver. Up through mists and wisps of cloud the moon appeared intermittently, riding above the water. The beach was covered with soft airs, its distances diffused in gray and pink and pearl, a mood of ambiguity. I felt that whatever I might hear or meet up with was out of my control, at the dispensation of the world in and beyond the atmosphere, having unknown connections light years away and joined with fish and moon and speeding globe. In this isolation, a familiar place turned inexact and mysterious, I felt I might sense all sorts of far nerve ends tingling out of the night behind the mist. We receive very little of what reaches us out of this tribal universe, whose messages light through us unseen and unheard until we, as individuals, are turned to the dust of the sky. Night or day, the sea and sea beach offer their changing spaces of light. One afternoon in January, halfway between hours of warmth and hours of cold, rain and snow, morning and evening, the sea off Nauset was racing green, spray tossing off the tops of the waves that simultaneously paused, curved up, and broke down in thunder. The whole sky was full of cloud featherings borne over before the wind and along the horizon out to sea were colors of lavender and gray, and pale-green openings like caves. The wide, steep beach was full of gloss, with a roll and fire of its own, and above it fringing the edge of the sandbanks the beach grass curved out and waved. I felt a resonance in the beach, a tremendously heavy and vibrant tone, the tonnage of sand and surf in harmony along with a low moan from the sea’s lungs. Small flocks of black ducks quivered over the water and then flew in to Nauset marsh. Then the heavier Canada geese beat in with stalwart wings, to thin out from their V formation to a long line as they wheeled in low against the wind and then regathered as they settled down on the marsh. Blackback gulls glided low across the outer line of the surf and sometimes their shadows appeared on the curving wall of a wave. Herring gulls soared in the heights and then beat forward on sinewy wings like flounders pulsing and beating through the water.