Larger Than the Land

Headed for Surfside in the wet cold morning, we took Highway 17, a ribbon of asphalt from New York to Miami. Going fishing, we were on the road. Possibilities multiplied. We felt the pulse of the whole East Coast running up the dotted white line. Fifteen miles to the Surfside Pier— not far, but a fishing pier is a world away from wherever it begins and ends.

Due east of Highway 17, at the end of a long straight road, an organized gathering of timbers and steel continued into the ocean for a few hundred feet, onto which people climbed and walked over the water at an impressive altitude.

It gave you a thrill to walk on the pier. You felt larger than the land, looking north and south, along the curvature of North America.