Sonny Brogan's Set

Sections of the scene look nearly black-and-white. Sun-bleached clam shells cracked open by seabirds litter the flat surface of a dock long out of commission. Gently undulating silvery water laps against the dock’s supports. A chill wind blows, and I zip my jacket up to my chin.

The tree has a snout. It could be a creature bellied up to the cantina in the Mos Eisley spaceport, or one of Tolkien’s Ents. It stands at the edge of a marsh, and leafy green English Ivy climbs its trunk. It’s late winter, and this tree doesn’t have any leaves of its own. It wears the ivy like a fashion statement. Tan-colored reeds grow up out of the marsh and sway in the wind.

To the north across Huntington Harbor a squat concrete lighthouse stands on the end of a sandy outcropping. Scrub trees stand beside it naked. The sky is grey, smothered in cloud.

Magnum homes weigh heavy on the land that slopes down to the water off to the west. Their modern trimmings contrast the boathouse’s old age.

The Coindre Hall Boat House still stands between the marsh and Huntington Harbor. Originally built with the stylings of a French chateau, and finished in time to flourish during America’s Roaring Twenties, it is the former plaything of former magnates, long since dead. Now it crumbles at the corners. It performs no current function as a structure in use, but it’s compelling to some as a ruin. The snow that blanketed the ground here recently has melted, but the cold remains.