Villages

It is too big, too awful, too otherworldly to comprehend without being surrounded by it. Standing at Ground Zero, breathing the mingled rot of burning chemicals, cooked plastics, and the unspeakable, I realize why it will take months if not years before we can begin to rebuild.

Every day since terror found its targets in New York and Washington and was intercepted by heroism in Pennsylvania, worship services here have drawn hundreds of people, some in business dress, some in beach sandals, parents carrying infants, a few elderly in wheelchairs, and almost all with tears welling.

The gate in the high fence that surrounds the Montauk Coast Guard Station was shut tight on Tuesday morning -- the station's people and the crew of the 87-foot cutter Ridley on high alert like all of this nation's military. Without radio and television, the closed fence would have been about the only indication that something terrible had happened 118 miles to the west.