Blow the Man Down

 -- By Tom Phillips 

    Come all you young sailors who follow the sea ..
    Way, hey, blow the man down---
    Please pay attention and listen to me, 
    Give me some time to blow the man down.

Midway through a two-week vacation on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, this sea chantey is stuck in my head, along with the crash of waves on the ocean beach across the road.  The waves are strong and steady -- kicked up by Tropical storm Henri, hundreds of miles out to sea in the Atlantic.  And they are crashing much nearer to our door than just a few years ago, when the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the shoreline and rebuilt the beach, vastly multiplying its height and width. That was the official response to the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Sandy, which overwhelmed the island in 2012.    

When we showed up for our annual vacation the following summer, the battered pathways through the dunes were festooned with American flags and signs declaring New Jersey "Stronger than the Storm."  This bore the trademark of then-governor Chris Christie, pumping himself up for a presidential run.  That ended quickly, but the illusion of supernatural powers endured. 

Since the floods of 2012, billions of dollars have been spent on new beachfront homes.  The local mayor -- a real estate developer -- boasts that his customers are now venture capitalists and hedge fund managers.  And indeed, I listened to one high-powered bicyclist out for his morning exercise, yakking on his mobile phone to a conference call of investors.  Apparently they're in it for the short term, comforted by federally-subsidized flood insurance which protects their investments.   

It doesn't protect their houses. Henri won't get us -- it's passing by at a safe distance.  But with rising seas and monster storms already baked into our future, eventually the sea will bury this sliver of sand and everything on it. 

Vacationing in such a place -- even as a renter -- is a peculiar experience.  Do you identify with the foolishness of :"stronger than the storm," or do you prepare to mourn the loss of a fragile barrier island?       

My answer is neither -- I'm with the ocean.  Just "give me some time to blow the man down." 

I welcome the victory of the sea, even though it's the end of my vacationland. In time the waves will be rolling over a drowned island and breaking onto the mainland, driving its inhabitants inland, just as the first European settlers claimed the shoreline and drove indigenous people into the western wilderness.  The Lenape, who camped on this island for thousands of summers, ended their trail of tears on a reservation in Oklahoma.  Where we we English wind up?  

 -- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips