This summer has taken to repeating itself: I keep hearing Margaritaville on the radio and coming across that Isak Dinesen quote about salt water as the cure for anything and heading back into the Sound, twice again this week. This time it was with the interns, out on a oyster boat and then into the water to clam.

Clamming, it turns out, is the best thing: you go out barefoot to where the ground is just soft muck and kind of slide your feet around until you feel a shell. Then you hold your breath and sink right down, grabbing as many as you can before bobbing back up again like a cork, hair in your eyes, gleeful and triumphant. The clams were gorgeous, enormous, black and slick, filling my open palms. It felt more like a game than a harvest; only a jellyfish sting across the backs of my thighs convinced me that I did not need to stay there until I had won clamming by claiming all of the clams.  Our guide, Chris, was equally pleased with how we took to it: “you’re really farming now!” he kept saying, and I’d nod and smile and only half hear him, busy slipping back under to grab one more.