Gradually you can see who the die-hard fisherman are, for their boats are among the last to retreat to dry ground. Other than those, the rest of the boats that linger on do so out of neglect or pre-occupation with other pursuits. Perhaps it’s just too difficult to pull out the boat that laid in it’s dock slip all summer, patiently waiting, but never used. Anticipation hates to concede to reality.

Then there are the workboats that remain. A little rougher in appearance perhaps, than their summer fair-weather companions, they are the work horses of the bay. A weathered few tend these boats, the entrepreneurs brazen enough to think they can draw their livelihood from the shallow waters of the bay.

This is perhaps the best part of their year, the buffer between summer with it’s tourists and personal watercraft, and the stark solitude and biting winds of the dead of winter. Not that spring isn’t good too, with the gradual greening of the meadow grasses and the switch of the wind to the southerly, but the bay water is warmer in the fall, hanging on to the stored up sunshine of summer now past. Come to think of it, there really isn’t a bad season on the bay, just different.

But here we are in November, another one. Duck season is open, or at least duck hunting season is open, though the ducks don’t darken the sky as they must have a generation or two ago. Years back, the Madeiras and Tallmans and their kindred spirits dared to depend on this bay and it’s rivers three as a means of making a living. Would anyone today expect to see a boat make its’ way across the bay, loaded with produce from the farms up along the Great Egg Harbor River? Navigate the inland waterways to the Atlantic City Market to sell it’s cargo? A depression-era bayman peddling black ducks a dollar the pair? Fowl and shellfish populations have since yielded to power boats and developed wetlands, perhaps to over-harvesting too.

But here it is November. The setting sun casting the long shadow of the beach pavilion out onto the water. Bluer-than-blue sky above, reflecting on shimmering silver-blue water, a lone sail boat off in the distance, stealing a last ride on autumns wind, an outboard runabout full speed toward the draw bridge, laying a rolling wake to mark it’s run.

The boat-made waves stretch out and flatten as they reach the pavilion, the gentle lapping against the pilings the only sound that remains.

Fifty yards out, having made a graceful arc before catching the falling tide, three floating flowers turn toward the inlet, but seem to hug the shore side of the channel.

Bobbing and sinking lower in the water they brush past the pilings of Hyde's Pier. On one old piling perches an ebony bird...a loon I suppose. It spreads it’s wings and holds them out for the longest while, perhaps to catch the fading sunshine of this November day.

It seems a fitting salute to a setting sun, a beautiful close to a warm November day...someone’s birthday.

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