I closed my eyes and imagined blue dusk, an open ocean, a quiet unbroken communion between water and sky.
The first was Lago General Carrera, South America's second-biggest lake, whose unnatural-looking Persian green water, unbroken by flecks of white or even ripples, was both alluring and alienating.
But wandering albatrosses breed only once every two years, and much less has been known about where they spend their nonbreeding, or "sabbatical," year in the Southern Ocean, the great unbroken ring of water south of Africa, Australia and South America.
Modest streets in Mastic and Mastic Beach give way to roads through beach grass and unbroken views over the water.
When I lifted my head, I saw empty water and unbroken coast, with no signs of civilization except, in the distance, the beach at the end of the dead-end road across from my hotel, where my book awaited alongside a bowl of fresh mangoes and a refrigerator full of cold beer.
You step onto the block, and as you look into the even, unbroken surface of the water, the world falls away.
In the middle of the lobby under an atrium, they found a few survivors: fish in an unbroken tank, swimming through the water.
The beach stretches unbroken for 8 miles along water warm enough to swim in for two-thirds of the year.
