Gimme Shelter

Shelter Island has always meant escape to me—it’s in the name. Nestled soundly between the two forks of Long Island, the low-key cousin of the Hamptons is a beach-and-cottage summer paradise and casual refuge from the cuttingly sticky and hazy NYC summers. Something changed this year, and “The Island” became a true, needed shelter rather than a relaxing flight. 

Quarantine pushed a lot of us out of the city. The chaos of early-covid NYC became a shuffle and dispersal of friends and family. In the spring of 2020, “shelter” became literal, and my longtime mystified dream of a vacation island morphed into rattled gratitude for my rare place of lucky solace in this explosive year. 

For the first time, I was on the island by necessity. I had all the time in the world to grow a new, sober understanding of the area. Spacious beach skies became foreboding horizons trailing off into that infinity of uncertainty and suffering back home. Quaint shops matured from their roles in joyful memories of summers with friends—they became ports in storms rather than charming visits, each of the few businesses on the island serving its own, newly stoic role reliably. 

These images represent a reshaped appreciation for a place where I sometimes lived but never saw as home until it was the only safe one left. 

Where before I saw only the glow of free, shimmering summer, I see beauty in function—the function of safety, of isolation, of shelter.