Global warming recently gifted us with a February Sunday that despite my terror of impending death by slow singe, I can only describe as delightfully balmy. As we pulled back the curtains to discover the day, we spontaneously decided to visit Fishers' Island. We did not read any Yelp reviews and thus, I can only offer this as a guide for those who also find themselves driving to New London to catch the 1130a ferry. For starters, there is no street parking in New London. (Well, maybe there is, but there are no signs and no cars, so leave your car in a paid lot.) Make sure you go towards the dock with a line consisting of one truck full of bricks driven by a teenager. Be careful not to go to the neighboring dock because you will end up in Martha's Vineyard, smiling and listening to Carley Simon with Sasha Obama serving you lobster. When you go to the boat, three men in orange suits who have watched you sprint across the train tracks will ask you for your ticket. They will wait until after you have meticulously searched for it and proudly found it on your phone, to instruct you to go get a paper ticket from the boathouse. Within the boathouse someone will ask you if you bought a ticket and decline to give you a paper ticket, but mysteriously the orange-suited men on the boat will then nod and let you pass. This is how your voyage begins. Fishers' Island is about 9 miles long and 1 mile wide and is approximately two miles off the coast of Connecticut. 236 people live there year round, but in the summer time, the number grows by 1,000%. When you first arrive you are greeted by the sea, a neat row of turn-of-the century homes with trees of the same generation. It is not so much a town, as it is a movie set for "Americana: the documentary." As you walk, you take photos of a duck pond and an immaculate, yet abandoned, golf course with tiny flags that seem to celebrate your arrival. You find yourself saying, "I just love that we are the only people here." These words will haunt you later. The walk from the dock to the center of "town" isn't a long one, but you won't get there until just ten minutes past the closing time of the general store. The only museum on the island is only open for one hour and you've missed that too. The liquor store is open for two hours and don't even think about it. You've also missed the closing of the ice cream shop by approximately five months. With four hours left before the next ferry, you can almost hear the sea lapping and laughing to itself, "come back and look at me." Now it is starting to get cold. The island carves out coves and each tree is standing brave against a blowing wind. You can only think of the funeral of your grandmother's sister last week and out of a fear being the very last standing religious person on the planet, you turn to your partner and say, "my future kids will need to go to Mass and learn all the kneeling, praying and standing bits because . . . because." As your partner just nods, not only do you realize that 2,000 years of tradition are going to end with you because of your inability to find an ending to that sentence, but your hypothetical children are going to be very, very confused. You might start to cry a little, but just then you will see two Adirondack chairs painted like sherbet and because no one is around (and because they are painted like sherbet), you will sit as your partner produces cheese and crackers and more cheese and more cheese and you will think, "maybe I was just hungry." The only open building on the island is the boathouse. The waiting room is unlocked and it is warm inside. I don't recommend going here. There are a few comfortable chairs, but they face a locked door labeled "bathroom" which despite your death stare will not laser it open. If you don't also have a partner to feed to you chocolate and ask you distracting questions at this critical moment, things could get messy. That night was the night of the Academy Awards and Emma Stone won as Andrew Garfield gave her a standing ovation. There are so many things I don't understand about this world and one of those things is how Spiderman and his heroine broke up, despite his naming her "the number one person I would want to be on a deserted island with." Fishers Island in February is the closest thing to a deserted island this hot planet has and if you have someone you want to be with, go. read more

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