On Wednesday, August 27th at 1 p.m., I parked a rented Nissan Altima at a lot in Jones Beach State Park—Field 6, by the East Bathhouse.

All that I knew about the place, I'd learned from books. I knew that the park had been brought into existence on the previously desolate sandbar through ingenuity and massive human effort. I knew that its centerpiece was the pair of marvelous bathhouses, East and West, built of Barbizon brick and Ohio sandstone a century ago, echoing in their designs the long horizontal lines of the beach. And between them, I knew that there stood a tall campanile modeled after that of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. (I had also seen it briefly on the drive over.)

Above the parking lot, the sky loomed vast and blue. A small herd of clouds, fluffy and sheep-like, flocked over from the foothills of Appalachia to the west where they were born long ago. Now the wind pushed them inexorably seaward, until they denatured into smoky wisps above the open water.

I discovered to my disappointment that the East Bathhouse was in the middle of major renovations. The venerable structure was obscured by chain-link fencing and signage extolling the virtues of the remodel (mainly that they were adding a swimming pool.) In the meantime, they had set up small portable units as offices, tan and brown in imitation of the colors of the beach, but with the telltale sheen of cheap plastic.

There was still hope! The West Bathhouse was supposedly operational, only a mile away along the boardwalk, so I started in that direction. The wooden path was set back a ways from the beach, and it was oddly quiet without the cries of seagulls. Here the salt air had a lingering odor of swampiness. On the right, I passed a ziplining adventure park, which a flapping vinyl banner declared to be part of "WildPlay® Element Parks." Next to it was a putt-putt course with little seahorses and a miniature bell tower. And interspersed along the walkway were those indestructible picnic tables omnipresent on high-school campuses.

Everything new seemed banal, even ugly. I began to walk faster, hoping to sooner reach the West Bathhouse, which would be stately and grand, because it was built in the past.

When I arrived, I saw that the building was indeed quite noble and dignified, and the courtyard contained an impressive swimming pool with trees planted all around. But I couldn't help noting that even this place was somewhat polluted by modernity. In the interior of the bathhouse, there was a shop hawking cheap swimwear; above the side entrance were blocky light-up letters proclaiming "GATSBY." And at the end of the day, a building of any era is only a building–there was nothing incredibly magical about the Jones Beach West Bathhouse.

On my way back to the parking lot, I passed a lone monarch butterfly vainly beating its way westward, but the ocean wind pushed it back, and it stayed fluttering in place.

There is nothing for you that way, I wanted to tell it.

The monarch ignored me and continued fighting valiantly against the wind. For some reason, the sight put me in a strange and philosophical mood.

Even if you made it past the bathhouse, I thought, to the further past, past Long Beach and the Rockaways and over the Bay, chasing sunsets toward some imagined yesterday... if you followed those drifting clouds upwind to their origin, all you would find is the mixing of two regions of air, a purely scientific phenomenon. And if you were to dip your wings into one, little monarch, they would come away with only a faint hint of wetness. And then the ceaseless wind would dry you off and blow you eastward again.