Montauk Rocks

I don't care what my weather app said this morning, it didn't feel like it was in the 40's. A gusty breeze made it feel positively arctic. There is only one reliable weather forecaster in Montauk, and that's Vinny, over at Liar's Saloon, who long ago devised an infallible system.

Eat your heart out, Al Roker. Vinny nails the forecast, day in, day out.

Which brings me to the topic of this post: Montauk rocks. (H/t to documentarian Richard Siberry and my cousin, Cheryl)

If you've ever walked down to the cliffs as the tide was rumbling in over the rocks, well, then, you've heard what locals call a rock concert.

I don't know what is it about rocks that compels people to stack them like pancakes, but cairns like the one here are as common a sight along the beach in Montauk as they are universally. What do they signify? There are almost as many answers as there are fish in the sea.  They're landmarks, trail markers, religious shrines. In Asia and the Pacific, they think they stop the dead from rising. Here, I think it's safe to say, the totems are purely decorative. Or a result of sunstroke.

From the Scottish for "man-made stack of stones," this cairn is a long way from home

I can tell you it's almost impossible to spend any time in Montauk and resist the impulse to collect rocks.  

My personal favorites: striped...

and petrified valentines

Rocks are a big thing out here, both literally and figuratively.  The environmental organization, Concerned Citizens of Montauk (CCOM), has partnered with the Long Island Mineral and Geology Society (LIMAGS)) to explore the geology of the area. On a walk they sponsored on Earth Day last April, group leaders worked their way from the bluffs down to the cobble beaches, answering questions about the rocks and boulders that retreating glaciers left in Montauk at the end of the last ice age about 18,000 years ago. Before the Montauketts, Carl Fisher and the tourists arrived. The volume of water locked into the glaciers, they said, stood ten stories deep at what is now Montauk's shore. To put that in perspective, the white office building Fisher constructed in the center of town - by Montauk standards, a skyscraper - is only six stories. The glacier extended to the North Pole and reduced sea levels 300 feet below what they are today.

My sister-in-law, Amy, and yours truly perch on one mother of a rock