This day, with the sun glistening off the snow, is all the more beautiful because of the storm we’ve been through, a storm that was as punishing as the forecasters had said.

    The night of it, as I was reading by the fire, listening to the wind and the flue as it clanked in the chimney, there was a resounding crack that called me and Henry, who was splayed out on the other couch, to attention. I ran upstairs to see if a tree had hit the roof, and ran down and peered out the back. Nothing there. He continued to look quizzical, but I told him everything seemed to be all right as I resumed my vigil. It’s hard to sleep amid such wild uncertainty.

    The next morning it was very clear what had happened: two gnarled, thick limbs with many branches had come within inches of crushing our Prius. That and the snow — every bit as deep as they’d said, and very wet — summoned up my wellspring of self-reliance, which is to say that I threw myself, once again, upon the mercy of the Lelands, Bill and Danny, who kindly sawed the limbs loose from their embrace of our car, assured me the Cablevision wire the limbs had taken down was harmless, and scooped out enough of the driveway as to give me hope that I’d be able to dislodge the cars in time.

    Perhaps it’s a fear of death, but I can’t stand being snowed in. When, finally, I am able to get out onto the roads, going nowhere in particular in search of nothing in particular — and besides, One-Stop and the General Store were closed — there’s a feeling of triumph. Dare you see the sportswriter at the white heat. . . ?

    But who am I kidding. The Lelands sprung me — once again.

    With them, it’s all for one, one for all, the best of the American way.

   The Great Backyard Bird Count observation period ended Monday, and as I have since 2007, I tried to do my part. The count is run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society and helps researchers get a three-day snapshot of bird populations in North America and, to some degree, around the world.

    So far this time around, birders have submitted more than 100,000 sighting lists, tallying almost 3,000 species. Suffolk birdwatchers have logged 128 species; Victoria Bustamante, whose fine nature photographs can be seen occasionally with Larry Penny’s column in this newspaper, observed 30.

    This year I put in a bit of an effort, though at best I have only average skills at telling one passerine from another. Between the relentless north wind and family responsibilities, I was only able to sneak in a little time with the binoculars.

    The high point for me was at Sagg Pond on Sunday afternoon, where I counted 65 ruddy ducks bobbing in the lee of the bridge. Around them swam a few hooded mergansers, a dozen red-breasted mergansers, seven mute swans, and four mallards.

    Ruddy ducks were a species unfamiliar to me, but paging through a birding app on my iPhone, their identification was clear. They are charming, stubby little things, and the males have tails that jut up at a jaunty angle. Paint them yellow and they’d look for all the world like bathtub rubber ducks.

    Monday morning at Lazy Point, where during counts in other years I had observed rafts of common goldeneye, the 30-knot wind made it too difficult to see much. I logged 120 gulls of undetermined species. At Pond o’ Pines, I was able to see a good number of black duck, one bufflehead, and 14 red-breasted mergansers, the males preening, scooting around, and showing off their spiked crests.

    It will be interesting to get the results once they are aggregated and posted online at birdsource.org/gbbc. As of Tuesday, more than 2.2 million birds in all were counted — an astonishing effort, if you ask me.

   Complaining when it snows is strong evidence that you are growing older. What? You don’t look forward to how enchanting the landscape looks in fresh snow? What? You don’t get excited about a chance to watch kids, especially your grandchildren, sled down a hill? What? You’d rather sit by the fire than help make a snowman or a bowl of real snow dripping with chocolate syrup?

    I am beginning to understand why some folks, after they retire, become snowbirds or, even more drastically, actually move permanently to places like Florida.

    There are, of course, part-time winter havens down south for a few lucky locals who are able to close up shop and take off as soon as the ground freezes. Montaukers, in particular, are known for extended winter breaks in Puerto Rico or Tortola or Costa Rica (although they typically get back in time for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, which heralds spring in the heart — even if it technically takes place when it is still winter according to the calendar). I’m a little jealous, to be sure, even though I am getting away, too, this year. The thing is that I am foolishly going in the other direction: north to Nova Scotia, which is even colder than it is here, and besides has had more snow.

    With a month of winter still to go, I find myself worrying about my four-legged neighbors. Watching from my window, I’ve seen our resident doe and her now-teenage offspring nosing into the snow to find whatever food may be underneath. I can’t imagine they find much. Witnessing their foraging has softened my previously hardhearted attitude toward the deer. I had intended to put wire fencing around our backyard camellias, for example, so that they could not continue to decimate the lower branches. But now I am almost glad I haven’t gotten around to it: In this deep winter of their discontent they are able to at least treat themselves to a few occasional glossy leaves (storm winds having knocked the camellias partway to the ground). The deer also have so have pulled one of the leafless rhododendrons out by its roots; I should be loading up the hunting rifle, but find it hard to blame them.

    It is difficult to guess what climate change will bring for us here at home. Of course, it is a dystopian nightmare that the Arctic ice is melting, and that the habitat of polar bears is diminishing. But on a personal level, I have to admit that I have not been sorry to welcome Carolina wrens — which usually would not stray so far north — to our birdfeeders. We are told that climate change is already causing storms and hurricanes to be more extreme and dangerous. But does it mean we will see less snow in the future? Or will bad winter storms bring even more?

    They tell me that in Nova Scotia, where I am due to arrive in a few weeks, the weather of the past few weeks has been extreme, indeed, bringing blizzard upon blizzard, hurricane-force winds, and snow drifts of positively Victorian proportions. I imagine a Currier and Ives scene.

    Still and all, I do persist in believing that life in the north temperate zone, where we delight in the changing of the seasons, can’t be beat. Who doesn’t love a bright, sunny day with a good, hard frost, when the ponds freeze for ice-skating or ice-boating? But who am I kidding. The kids can tell me all about it when they come in for warm tea and cookies by the fire with grandma.

   Sometimes my mind wanders. In completing the often dreary task of typing up notes from another local government meeting, a kind of careless dyslexia sets in. “Dogs on the beach” is transcribed as “Gods on the beach.” “On” is typed “Om.” And so on.

    To a semi-recent arrival — albeit one with some roots here — the debate over whether and how much to allow man’s best friend on village beaches while that man’s so-called ruling class frequents said shores can seem like so much ado about very little.

    On the other hand, imbroglio du jour lays bare debates, as the mayor eloquently stated, about how individuals conduct themselves as an inherent element of the community.

    Nov. 12, 2010, midday: By Lord Sri Krishna’s grace, the overnight train I had boarded at Kochi, one frantic early-morning rush for the very last ticket issued a foreigner later, arrived at Goa. Hours late — quite naturally — I was grateful to disembark and brave an hourlong taxi ride and its presumably — based on hard experience — unscrupulous driver.

    And there did await the paradise of Palolem Beach.

    Had I been a Portuguese sailor in the 16th century, I am sure that, having set eyes upon it, I would never leave such a place. The mile-long crescent beach a natural refuge, here the Arabian Sea is tranquil. Dolphins gambol offshore, guitar strings are plucked by the cottages adjacent to Monkey Island, where electricity had not yet been restored and, I later learned, would never be. It is a place of deep mental restoration and spiritual regeneration.

    The locals are devout, their reverence sincere. I attempt twice-daily transcendental meditation, with uneven results, but listening to George Harrison’s “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” on the shore at sunrise brings actual God realization, or at least something close to it.

    And yet. It is still India, and its desperately filthy and overcrowded cities are never too far away. In Delhi, for example, packs of feral dogs spend their days foraging through ever-present garbage, urinating and defecating everywhere, and making feral puppies. They are aggressive, and bite and terrorize residents.

    Eleven hundred and eighty-seven miles away, on an otherwise pristine beach — even the cows stand pensively, contemplating eternity — the situation is similar. Here, at least, elderly women traverse the beach in the mornings, scooping offending matter with sections of cardboard.

    I was lucky: I didn’t step in anything distasteful, was chased by three snarling dogs only once, and wasn’t bitten. But it was unnerving, and I cursed the maddeningly primitive state of things in India, particularly its human inhabitants’ behavior and the chaos that is the inevitable consequence.

    Where do we draw the line? Who “owns” the beach, and do they own the breeze, too? The sunlight glistening on the ocean? Do nonhumans have any rights, or are we lord of everything our ego-driven minds covet?

    I don’t know the answer, and anyway, I have to keep writing.

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.

When someone proposed at a recent meeting of The East Hampton Star’s editorial staff that I might like to write about my 28-year marriage, I said, somewhat derisively, “You’ve got to be kidding.” And everyone laughed.

Actually, I hadn’t heard what the subject was to be; it’s my generic response to anything that has to do with one of our supplements.

And now that I’ve sat down to think about it, and about what goes into a good marriage — what makes it work, as it were — I’m still dubious. I don’t know that you can deconstruct it, that you can speak of marriage as if it were a Lego set.

I know one thing, having been married twice: It’s a crapshoot. That you have succeeded the second time (I’ve read that most second-timers don’t) has a lot to do with luck, though experience teaches you what to want.

I don’t know. . . . There’s a certain way she smells, the way she feels, the warm curve of her neck, the way she looks, especially with her high, intelligent forehead and perfectly shaped nose in profile . . . her true blue eyes. . . . I could go on in this vein, but perhaps that’s enough, this being a family newspaper.

No, no, one more thing. We all think when we’re younger that “the excitement,” as Frank McCourt referred to it, is the be-all and end-all. And yes, of course it is delightful and mysterious — and thus, to my mind, not to be analyzed overmuch — but I tell you, those of you who might tend to doubt that old people can be lovers, there’s great delight in merely touching. There’s a thrill in just that.

And then there’s delight in just being with the one you love. That’s the mental part and, frankly, a very important part when you’re speaking of a love and friendship that lasts.

Of course, it’s not always bliss. There will be disconnections, misunderstandings, slights, pouting, and full-throated recriminations of Vesuvian proportions even among those who most hours of the day ride the same wave length. But the storms, whose origins often can be traced to the archipelagos of childhood, pass — if you want them to. And with perspective, you’ll probably laugh about them some day.

I have my late father and stepmother to thank for this next: that if you love someone you will let that person do what he or she wants to do. Constraint, whether overt or covert, will not further love’s course. Resentments will build and love will ultimately die. Reform is not the answer. Think of your spice (plural for spouse), let them be, and love will flower.

I wrote a poem about that early on in our marriage:

I know this about love

that you must always be willing to let it go

that it is delicate, like a bird,

who, if you are worthy,

will alight, and re-alight,

that it is a most wonderful

feeling

disarming, not expecting, commingling

alight and re-alight

we live from day to day

no longer hopeful, wistful, resigned

sure

yet surprised

who would have expected it?

we laugh about that, and many

other things

Which brings me to the most important thing: Laughter is the straw that stirs the drink, at least in our experience. Mirth is frequently my preferred response to the human condition, yet it can lighten and refresh the spirits of kindred souls.

And keep in mind, as Dante, who had a great love, said (it’s on my bulletin board): “How brief a blaze a woman’s love will yield if not relit by frequent touch and sight.”

I intend not to let that blaze go out.

And remember: If you want your marriage to have legs, keep on your toes.

—

In the Quakers’ Grove

In the winter of 1984, Jack Graves, who is The Star’s senior writer and editor by far, having joined the staff in October of 1967, and who had been a bachelor for six years following a divorce, met a new member of the production department at her typesetting machine. Her name was Mary Anderson — and the rest is history.

Mary was leery of an office romance. Besides, she thought his advances would cease once he learned that she had 4-year-old twins.

Nevertheless, he invited them all to dinner at a small house he had rented on Floyd Street. The twins trashed the place, but he didn’t care. She did, however, and duly admonished them, after which she said, “Thank God I don’t want to date him!”

Yet they remained friends through thick and thin throughout the following year, and, in the end, his invincible surmise proved true and love blossomed.

Jack and Mary married themselves at the Quakers’ grove on Shelter Island, in March, 1985, the twins, Johnna and Georgie, cooing “kiss the bride” as M & Ms — which served in place of communion wafers — dribbled down the sides of their grinning mouths. The late Shep Frood made it official in their back yard on August 22 of that year.

   Lulu, an old cat, is still resident in my late mother-in-law’s sunny house, and we’re dutifully paying calls to feed her, though Mary worries that she might be lonely.

    It was unlikely, said Jane Callan. Cats aren’t like people. “Their number one question is ‘Who’s feeding me?’ Number two is ‘Do I have a soft, warm place to lie on?’ You might be number three. If you see to their food and comfort, you might be privileged enough to be tolerated.”

    “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were like cats and didn’t give a damn about one another,” I said, tongue-in-cheek, to one of our daughters and her husband, who were to head back this afternoon to California following a brief visit.

    “Mary feels so much,” I said during our tender farewell. “She’s always saying she wants to be more like me, somewhat less attached. . . . I wish I were more like her. Anyway,” I said with a smile, “you can’t say you’ll not be happy to see blue skies again. And, even though I hate doing it, don’t forget to text.”

    When, later, I told our doctor, who had asked how Mary was faring following her mother’s death, that we’d had a large gathering at my brother-in-law’s house, “an Irish wake,” over the weekend, he said, “Ah, a celebratory thing. . . . That’s one thing the Irish got right.”

    My brother-in-law said at the gathering that his mother and he had spent a lot of time together in cars when he was a kid — traveling back and forth in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” fashion between the coasts. Thus, at 9, he was pressed into duty as his mother’s navigator — foreshadowing his later career as co-owner of a metropolitan area delivery service.

    “I was her navigator,” he said. “And,” he added — speaking for himself, for his siblings, and for others in the room — “she was my compass.”

   It is difficult to imagine that a building as substantial as the Montauk Bathing Casino, which once stood on the ocean beach, was gone within 30 years of its opening. The sprawling set of buildings and covered pavilions was part of Carl Fisher’s Montauk Beach Development Company’s grand plan to build a sparkling summer resort at the far eastern tip of Long Island.

    I recently stumbled across an advertising brochure the company put out in 1929 among some of The Star’s many old files. It described an elaborate facility with a 150-foot-long saltwater swimming pool, which overlooked a 1,600-foot-long boardwalk — wide enough for two cars to pass. What happened to the boardwalk and if it ever really was built to all of its promised length, I have not been able to discover, but photographs of the casino, or pavilion as it is sometimes described, show it was quite an attraction.

    Shaded cabanas lined the beach on the roughly seven-acre site, which was toward the east end of downtown Montauk. Behind the cabanas, in later photographs in our archives, you can see at least a second swimming pool and a sheltered sandy play area. An awning displays the place’s later name, the Surf Club. In a photograph, probably taken by the late Dave Edwardes, a couple sits pool-side in the afternoon sun, the woman gesturing, making a point perhaps, the man tilting his head as if he is but half-listening.

     In 1967 the site was the subject of an East Hampton Town Hall controversy over whether to allow multiple residences there. In an echo of today’s Montauk disputes, homeowners nearby feared that the development would harm their interests, even though town planners said that allowing the retail zoning to persist could result in more intense use of the parcel, with buildings up to four stories high.

    The final chapter for the Montauk Beach Casino came in August 1969, when it was razed by the Fire Department in a training exercise. It had been partially destroyed by fire the prior spring, and the then Montauk Improvement Corporation’s directors had decided to “make a complete job of it,” The Star reported.

   Things were certainly simpler back in the days when it was good old Eames Taxi or bust. My husband and I had an experience on the weekend with a cabbie who acted like he was auditioning for the Robert De Niro part in “Taxi Driver.”

    There are so many cab companies in town these days that I don’t even know which one was involved. If I had paid attention to the service’s name or phone number, I might have complained, but I hadn’t and I didn’t. Instead, I thought, “I’ll write a column!”

    We were coming home from the city on Sunday night, post-blizzard. The Jitney had made good time, even though the bus had to use the Sunrise Highway a good part of the way, what with the Long Island Expressway still being littered with snowbound vehicles, and indeed being closed east of Exit 57. We pulled in smoothly at the Huntting Inn, five minutes before the scheduled arrival time. (Jitney drivers, in my book, generally deserve nothing but praise.)

    Normally, we would walk the extremely short distance from the Jitney stop to our house, but we were coming off four days in the city where my husband had recuperated from outpatient surgery. Each of us carried a tote bag, and I was dragging our bulky, heavy suitcase, in which we had consolidated our belongings. Our car, left in the Reutershan parking lot, was buried under a mountain of snow. Even though it’s only a five-minute stroll to our front door under normal circumstances, on this dark and icy night we had no choice but to get into a cab.

    If you keep up with the news in these parts, you know that the East Hampton Town Board has been trying to come up with an effective law for licensing taxis. After Sunday night’s misadventure, I am convinced some sort of more diligent oversight is indeed overdue.

    When someone approached us to offer his services as we stepped off the bus, I gladly said yes. He picked up my heavy suitcase and forged swiftly up Main Street to his vehicle, which was quite far away. I chased after him, maneuvering the patchy snow and ice, as Chris waited at the stop for us to come back and pick him up.

    The taxi driver was already in his seat when I made it to the van, and he didn’t look up as I awkwardly navigated my way up and around snow banks and struggled to pull open the heavy sliding door. When I said I couldn’t get the door closed again, he was forced to turn around and acknowledge my presence. We went to fetch Chris, who just managed to make it from the snowy curb to the car. As he opened the front passenger door, the driver told him to get in back.

    The driver knew where Edwards Lane was, but for whatever reason was reluctant to leave us in front of our house, instead wanting to go around to the back, which would have meant a considerably longer trudge through the mounds of snow. When we asked how much the fare was, he answered, “Eight dollars,” then quickly recanted, saying, “No, twelve.”

    Chris climbed out of the car first, and as I got out, the driver started to pull away. “The suitcase!” I shouted, banging on a window. So he got out, carried it around to where I was standing, and dumped it unceremoniously into about eight inches of snow.

    After pushing open the partially frozen front door and getting inside, we felt like we had been attacking the summit of K2 — on the back of an abused and resentful sherpa — not paying a premium for a short taxi ride.

    The morose, strange, and indeed even hostile behavior of the taxi driver toward two — let’s just say it — senior citizens on an slippery winter’s night was inexplicable. Unless, I thought, he was stoned. Or jonesing for a fix. Or possibly just too simpleminded to notice the struggles of others. (There is, of course, a third explanation: That the driver had simply had a long, hard weekend ferrying people through the storm, and he was overtired.)

    Whatever the case, I’m glad I’m not among those trying to decide how to write a local law to make sure that fees are fair and predictable, that taxi drivers are competent, and that they aren’t climbing behind the wheel while under the influence of some substance or other.

    But if I see that taxi driver again on a dark night, he should watch out, or I might go De Niro on him.

    You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?

   I’m not a big fan of heart-shaped jewelry. I find it juvenile, so I wasn’t too upset when a heart-linked gold bracelet my husband gave me one year for Valentine’s Day went missing while I was wearing it. I might wear my heart on my sleeve but never around my neck, on my wrist, or ring finger.

    As is my luck, a friend of my daughter’s found it about eight months later on a wooded path I used to get to the cliffs at Camp Hero in Montauk. It was a bit crushed but still wearable. Nonetheless, I threw it in my jewelry box along with the other odd bits of gold jewelry that I owned. Hearts, gold or silver, stay tucked away. If it’s a heart-shaped box filled with chocolate-covered nuts, it will also stay tucked away, hidden actually, so I can savor them whenever one of my frequent chocolate cravings kick in.

    Once the price of gold soared, I started looking at my trinkets in a whole new light, wondering what they may be worth if I sold them. Winter in Montauk will do that to you. Now, I’ve become obsessed and have started studying almost everything I touch for its resale value.

    Since the experts have said we need more green and black tea in our lives, I’ve started drinking diet Snapple. As I sip from the bottle, I learn a lot from the little tidbits of information inside the Snapple caps, but what I really think about is if the bottle will be worth money in 50 years.

    I’ve learned that brain waves can power an electric train, which might be useful to the people who live near the Montauk train station who complain about the constant hum of the idling engines, especially in the summer months. Imagine if they could use their brain waves to move the trains about 5,000 feet west? Ready, all together now, concentrate and move that annoying train.

    But I digress. My husband and I recently sold a signed piece of art that the artist had given to us for Christmas one year. The piece was buried in a book in the space under my bookshelves, with a bunch of assorted candles, surf magazines my son has been featured in, old VCR tapes, and books. We sold it for a few thousand dollars and later learned on the Internet that it was worth about 10 times more than that.

    It makes we wonder what else we can sell. (Yes, it’s that bad out here in Montauk in winter.) I look at everything now with dollar signs in my eyes. Will the glass bottle with the swan-like S engraved on it be worth thousands of dollars someday the way old glass Coke bottles are?

    My children wonder why I save so much and I blame it on my mother, who saved nothing. When I returned home to City Island in the Bronx for a visit after my first summer in Montauk, I found my bedroom stripped of everything I owned and was told it had all been thrown away. She also read my diary that was hidden under my mattress, but that’s another column!

    I had some really cool stuff from my hippie days that included long, granny dresses, John Lennon-style sunglasses, a fake fur coat that I wore with my long bell-bottom jeans and a long black cape. I would sell it all on eBay for a chunk of change if I still had it.

    I’ve never been a wheeler-dealer. I left that up to my brother, who attempted to sell my little blue sailboat right out from under me when we were teens. Her name was Bluegirl and even though I had no sails or proper rigging for it, my girlfriends and I would row it out on the water to sunbathe in. My mother stopped the sale, but Bluegirl was eventually lost in a storm.

    It always surprises me when I read in the paper that something sold for quite a bit of money, something that most of us would think useless. A painting that was purchased at a yard sale that sells for $10,000 is everyone’s dream. I have an old wall clock, floral metal trays bought from estate sales, and a complete set of Waverly novels that were written in the 1800s that I’m holding on to so they’re worth even more when I decide to sell.

    I am currently negotiating with a New York City dealer on a book owned by my sister that was written by Theodore Roosevelt and is autographed by him. It’s all about big game hunting, which he took great pleasure in. But it’s disturbing how he describes killing wild animals. I told my sister that if it sells I expect a commission or at the very least a dinner at Gosman’s restaurant when it opens.

    My recent sale of the artist’s piece and the price I saw it could have gone for has made me greedy and I’m saving even more stuff. My daughters really give me a hard time. “You never use it,” they claim, while telling me to throw out perfectly good stuff.

    What they don’t know is that my grandmother’s elaborately embossed punch bowl from Germany that I was lucky enough to receive after her death will one day be their inheritance. I think it’s worth a lot of money, but then again I’m eyeing Snapple bottles and crushed bracelets, so what do I know?

    If I decide to sell the punch bowl sooner, I’ll be moving to an island somewhere warm and will leave the house and all the junk in it to them. That will be their inheritance, and I’ll get even for the mean things they’ve said to me over the years.

   Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   We are in flux. Though we’d love to hold on to those whom we love, it can’t be done. That much of them lives on in us is the most we can hope for. The body is gone, though the spirit, to the extent that it was transmitted to us and to the extent that we received it, remains, and, in the end, it is only the spirit that is real, I think; as real as the grass, the trees, the rocks, the hills, and the sea.

    “It comes in waves,” Mary said of her mourning in the days following the death of her mother, as apt an allusion as can be imagined. The waves are high-pitched, though, frankly, I told her, I thought it would be worse, that when the time came she would slump to the floor in grief. “Well, I am on the floor,” she said, “inside.”

    Meanwhile, she has been working at living. There are duties with which her mother entrusted her that she must carry out. These take up quite a bit of her time. And then there is work itself, which I’ve found in such times to be a blessing. And then there is the family, the older, younger, and youngest generations.

    “How’s she doing?” Kathy, who each week recreates our newspaper, asked.

    “She’s carrying on, better than I thought she would,” I said.

    “We’ve got no choice,” Kathy said sympathetically.

    The kids’ reactions have been striking. Our daughter Emily’s 6-year-old son, Jack, said, when told, “Grandma equals Infinity.”

    I remember Emily, at just about the same age, saying, when I told her that her grandfather, my father, had died, “I feel like a broken umbrella.”

    And Ella, our daughter Georgie’s 4-year-old daughter, said to Mary as they went into her bedroom one recent night, “Nana’s in the stars now. . . . Come, let’s look!”