I was walking along Nantucket’s north shore, the calmer waters of Nantucket Sound stretching out nearly thirty miles to the mainland. In the summer, this part of the island is busy with people: dog walkers and joggers in the early hours, families swim in the shallows in the late afternoon. At night, teenagers gather around illegal bonfires. Some of the residents have hired their own private security to put an end to the proliferation of pallet fires held on Steps Beach.
Most of this seems impossible to imagine now, that it will once again be warm enough for swimming and bonfires. But we are crawling slowly towards the solstice, which always arrives at exactly the right time.
It was a particularly warm day—almost sixty degrees—so when I saw a sunbather on the sand in front of the Cliffside Beach Club, I wasn’t surprised. This club is one of a very few stretches of private beach along Nantucket’s coastline. On summer mornings, college students rake the beach clean, removing any errant seaweed. Sometimes, a Jeep with chains snaking off the back will drive along the beach, leaving behind a uniform surface that reminds me of freshly-mown lawns. Next come the famous blue, green, and canary yellow beach umbrellas, tilting slightly into the wind. People say it is a little bit of San Tropez on Nantucket.
I don’t know. I’ve never been to San Tropez and I’ve only walked past the beach club.
It’s been pretty mild so far, on this other side of summer, with only a few days of real wind to write home about. The beach club is boarded up and sand fencing surrounds the buildings. Despite the mild weather, the wind coming off Nantucket Sound sculpts the beach into new arrangements. Tall drifts of sand, piled high like new-fallen snow, surround the shingled buildings.
The sunbather is stretched out on the private beach, taking up space as if proving a point. As I get closer, I see that this figure is not human, nor is he alive. He is a large gray seal, dead for a few days. Some creatures have made quick work of the eyes; he stares back at me from empty sockets. All around the seal are gulls’ footprints, evidence of an avian crime scene. The Marine Mammal Alliance, the island’s stranding team, has already been here. After they collect data on the dead individual, they mark the seal with an orange spray-painted X. The seal will stay where he washed ashore, and nature will take its course.
On an island that is so controlled, and to a degree, sanitized (every August, people call the DPW complaining about the smell of seaweed), it is somewhat surprising that this seal is allowed to remain. Even people must leave Nantucket after they die—however temporarily, one last round-trip across the Sound on the slow boat—as we have no funeral home here anymore.
But the seal will be here all winter, slipping away into a different form before our eyes. Six months from now, when the days are impossibly long, sunbathers will lay out their towels on this very spot, unaware they share this island with so many ghosts.
