Why dogs and beaches go so well together in the Hamptons.
By Adam Green
There is a Zen koan in which the ninth-century Chinese master Yunmen says to his disciples, “I don’t want to know how things were 15 days ago, but tell me—what about 15 days from now?” He immediately answers himself: “Every day is a good day.” On its face, this is a ridiculous statement. Anyone who has been sentient in recent times with a stable internet connection or been obliged to sit through the movie Wicked could tell you that. I was born with a tendency to melancholy, and my superpower is the ability to complain about almost anything, no matter how trivial. So, accepting life as it is, much less finding joy and equanimity in each 24 hours of it, doesn’t come naturally. And yet, I can confirm that, yes, every day is a good day—as long as, at some point, I get to take my dog Grace for a walk on the beach. That may not be precisely what Master Yunmen was getting at, but it’s the best I can do.
My family and I have the great privilege of living year-round in Water Mill, a short drive to any number of local beaches, with some of the most spectacular stretches of swimmable surf and walkable coastline and wide expanses of snowy sand in the world. It’s my good fortune, too, to have Grace as my companion—a lithe and leggy terrier mix, scruffy and large of heart, who embodies her name as she gallops along the shore after a rubber ball, barrels into a scattering flock of terns, bolts toward the dunes to chase down an enticing sniff, rolls frantically on a dead fish, or just trots alongside me, looking up every so often to catch my eye. Whatever the season or the weather, whatever slings and arrows I have suffered or expect to suffer, I can always herd Grace into the car, head to Gibson beach in Sagaponack, and let nature’s mutable beauty and Grace’s mad joy put me right.
For Grace and me, the daily rhythm of our hour on the beach reaffirms that we’re still a team and lets her know that I’m still her guy.
There are, of course, many pragmatic reasons to walk on the beach with one’s dog. The first is the simple pleasure of moving one’s human body in nature—something I would rarely do were it not for Grace, particularly through the depths of a cold, dark winter—and its associated health benefits. Though CrossFit, yoga, and (pre-fatherhood) surfing have long been my chosen forms of exercise, walking with Grace makes getting my daily 10,000 steps a simple proposition. The beach also comes with its own parallel social life, for both species, based more on the vagaries of canine compatibility than human preference. Still, I find it deeply satisfying to watch Grace run in high-speed circles with one of her pals—an auburn boxer named Roxie, a black-and-white mutt also named Roxie, a fearsome Norfolk terrier named Sally—while I trade local gossip with their owners. For the most part, these friendships, though amiable, never make it past the parking lot, with a few notable exceptions. An eminent novelist in his 80s and his wife (plus their French bulldog, Grischa, a densely built rubber ball thief) started inviting my wife Katie and me over for dinner at the continental hour of 8:30 after we got to know each other on the sands of Gibson. And we owe our close, continuing bond to the couple with whom we bubbled during the height of Covid to the hours that Olive, their high-spirited lagotto romagnolo, and Grace spent chewing each other’s faces when they first met.
In the end, though, the time that Grace and I spend together on the beach has nothing to do with life hacks and everything to do with connection. When I adopted Grace some eight years ago, I was a single guy, with few responsibilities beyond looking after our pack of two; now, I’m married, and Katie and I have a 3-and-half-year-old daughter named Helen, who, as tends to be the way with children, especially toddlers, lays claim to most of our time, attention, and energy, and happily so. For Grace and me, the daily rhythm of our hour on the beach reaffirms that we’re still a team and lets her know that I’m still her guy. It also reminds me that, when I let go of my brooding concerns long enough to pay attention to the moment and all that it contains—the shifting of the tides and winds, the changing light that transforms the beachscape, the comings and goings of sea birds, the ebullience of a little dog using every last ounce of herself as she tears along the water’s edge, ears flying in the breeze—then every day really is a good day. After a lifetime of self-absorption, it’s a huge relief to discover that I may be part of the fabric of the world but I’m not the main character in its story. It’s also good training for parenthood, which requires putting another creature’s well-being above one’s own moods and an ongoing acceptance that one’s life is not, in fact, one’s own, or at least not entirely. Now that our daughter, Helen, is old enough to join Grace and me on our beach outings, I can take joy in her joy as I watch her realize this koan for herself.
Adam Green, a contributor to Vogue and The New Yorker who is writing a memoir, lives with his family in Water Mill.
