The Last Warm Days on the Bay

Ask the people who have spent their whole lives on the Southern coast for the best time to be on the water, and they will not say summer.

They will say now. October.

These last warm days on the bay, after the crowds have gone home and before the cold sets in, are a secret the locals have kept for generations. I am going to let you in on it.

The water is still warm. It spent all summer soaking up heat, and water holds its warmth long after the air lets go, so in October the bay is still comfortable, still swimmable, still holding the whole memory of the summer in it. But the air above it has turned. The heavy suffocating mugginess of July and August has broken, and the air has gone cool and clear and clean.

So you get the rare combination the coast offers only a few weeks a year. Warm water under cool dry air. Swim in the warm, dry off in the cool. It is about as pleasant as being outdoors ever gets.

And the crowds are gone. The summer people have packed up and driven home. The kids are back in school. The beaches and the boat ramps that were shoulder to shoulder in July have emptied out, and the coast has been handed back to the people who live there and the few who know to come. You can find a whole stretch of beach to yourself. Put a boat in at a ramp with no line. The coast in October belongs to you in a way it never quite does in the crowded heart of summer.

The light has changed too. It does everywhere in fall, but over the water it does something especially fine. The low golden sun lays a long soft light across the bay that turns the whole world the color of honey in the late afternoon, and the evenings stretch out gold and calm and still. An October evening on the bay, warm water under you and cool air around you and that honeyed light going long across the surface, is one of the most beautiful things the Southern coast has to give. And hardly anybody is out there to see it.

The fishing is often at its best, too, as the fall stirs everything up and the fish feed hard before the cold. The dolphins work the bay. The birds are busy. And there is a particular quality to the quiet now that the jet-ski roar and the summer noise are gone, a stillness broken only by water and wind and birds, that lets you hear the coast being itself again.

The old-timers know all this. Watch who is out on a fine October day and it is the locals, the retirees, the ones who have been doing this fifty years and have no intention of wasting the best weeks of the year sitting inside. They cluster at the good spots. They nod to one another. They have the coast to themselves and they know exactly what they have, and they are not inclined to make a big noise about it and bring the crowds back.

Because here is the small sad wisdom underneath all this loveliness.

It does not last. These are the last warm days, and every one of them is borrowed. The water is warm now, but it cools a little every day, and soon enough the cold comes down, the bay turns gray, and the boats come out of the water for the winter. That is exactly what makes these October days so precious. They are the coast’s long golden goodbye to the warm season, and everyone out on the water knows it, and it lends a sweetness to every single one.

So if you are anywhere near the Southern coast this October, do not let these days slip by. Do not wait for a summer that is already over. Get down to the bay on the next fine day, put a boat in or just stand on the shore, feel the warm water and the cool air and the honeyed light, and understand that you are in the middle of the best-kept secret on the whole coast. The last warm days. Borrowed and golden and going fast. Spend them while you have them.

The South, shared.