CHAPPAQUIDDICK ISLAND, Mass. - Native Americans called the bay Katama.
Those of us who are attempting to fish it this season are calling it our Bay of Ignorance.
My family spends the last two weeks of August up here off the island of Martha's Vineyard, reading, eating, watching old movies and fishing.
We recalibrate our internal clocks to a slower time, one more in tune with what the weather and tides provide than with what the mainland insists upon. Pulse rates fall. Laughter comes more easily. And, I swear, gray hairs disappear.
Luckily, our next-door neighbors - the folks on the other side of the poison ivy patch - are similarly inclined. A good thing because they have modern conveniences - like a kitchen with functioning appliances - and we do not.
The whole bunch of us, our friend, John, and our neighbors, Bev and Esther and their daughters Alex and Zoey, fish and clam Katama and fish the ocean side, across the barrier beach about a quarter-mile away.
Our efforts earn us more than just dinner.
We watch great blue heron and egrets stalk the small salt pond attached to the bay as we paddle kayaks along the shoreline. We are rewarded with sunrises streaked in gold and sunsets the color of raspberry ice. While standing waist deep in Katama, we can look down to see tiny crabs scuttle along the bottom and schools of small bait fish dart around our legs. Overhead, a mother osprey has been teaching her young how to ride the invisible currents as they scout for fish.
But over the past two seasons, nature has been playing tricks on us. The barrier beach has sprung a leak that lets the Atlantic Ocean into Katama. Last year, it was a football field-size hole. This year, it's three or four times that wide.
Water now gushes in a straight shot from the ocean though Katama to Edgartown Harbor, where it clashes with the tide coming in from Vineyard Sound, which separates the islands from Cape Cod. Pleasure craft are having trouble negotiating the clashing currents and dodging new sandbars that are developing.
The dunes on the barrier beach that separate Katama from the Atlantic have been scoured down flat, taking away the cover for plovers and oyster catchers and making the ocean feel a whole lot closer to our low-slung fishing shack.
Last season, I hailed the breach as a good thing. Although tide charts were useless, the fresh ocean water was flushing out decades of mud and silt, leaving Katama cleaner and the clams and mussels saltier.
