The Selkie, for lack of a better title

I like to snorkel. Hovering motionless over a world of waving seaweed and little fish flitting back and forth, it is probably the closest thing I will ever come to flying without the use of a parachute or hang glider. I also spend time floating with my hands behind my head, an ability I inherited from an uncle with an abnormally large lung capacity. He would lie back in the lake in front of his camp with a cigar clenched firmly between his teeth, as easily as if he were on an air mattress. He and my aunt had no children of their own, and with his Irish knack of telling stories and “inventing” the truth, he was a favorite of his nieces, nephews and any other kid who happened by for that matter. But that is another story.
Without a wetsuit, I stay in, until my core temperature reaches a critical point and then climb out on the rocks to sit in the sun. It all feels so natural. Perhaps it is a genetic memory from some bygone era when a webbed footed ancestor first left the sea to soak up the sun and avoid the fangs of some Precambrian sharkodont, or something like that. Or perhaps one of my early Scottish ancestors was a selkie, a mythical creature from Scotland and the surrounding islands, who was a seal while in the water and a man upon the land. I suspect there may have been more truth than myth to the story. My guess is, the creature was invented to explain the unexplained pregnancies in shore clinging communities, caused in actuality by some Norse sea raider, who came, had his way and then disappeared over the seas.
Today the clouds to the west and southwest were dark and foggy. Off shore was Hurricane Bill, too far to bring wind or rain, but he would be felt. While the wind was calm and the boats riding quietly at anchor, floating in the waters tucked away from the open ocean in Casco Bay, I could feel his pull. There was an almost imperceptible current that pulled at me as I tried to hover over a rock, watching the periwinkles cleaning algae, unaware of my presence.
At last the tide withdrew so I could no longer snorkel, the seaweed lay down on the rocks, and the shellfish closed up awaiting the return of the water. The plovers, chatting like a group of old men on the end of the point, removed to the rocks and sand to hunt for their meal. Hurricane Bill moved further off towards Nova Scotia, and I came up into the woods to resume my life on land. I put my webbed feet by the hose to wash off the salt water, and sat down to watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees in good, old Fenway.