“I believe a good story, plotted or plotless, rightly told, is satisfying as such and in itself. But here, ‘rightly told,’ is my conundrum or mystery.” (Ursula K Le Guinn, “The Narrative Gift as a Moral Conundrum” in No Time To Spare: Thinking about What Matters)
Sayville was once called the “oyster capital of the world.” The 19th and early 20th centuries in Sayville were dominated by the oyster industry, but the hurricane of 1938, pollution from duck farms, and overharvesting made the business untenable. https://patch.com/new-york/sayville/the-oyster-makes-its-mark-on-sayville-history
“Now it’s an oyster ghost town,” Chris Quartuccio, founder of Blue Island Oyster Company, said in 2017. “We’re trying to keep it alive.” https://psmag.com/environment/fighting-to-keep-an-oyster-ghost-town-alive. Chris and others on Long Island are in the process of re-establishing a viable oyster business and in the process, do the ocean waters and coastal lands around Long Island a favor too, by reducing nitrogen and slowing storm surges by re-establishing the oyster reefs.
I’m sure for those old enough to remember how Long Island was, the good fishing, open land and farms, lobsters, puffers/”chicken o’ the sea,” it must at times seem a ghost of what it was. I can say, even for me, the farther west I paddle, the more mcmansions and bulkheads I see, less wildlife and more nightlife. The wildlife is there, if more sparse, and I certainly hear recovery stories (bunker, alewives, and the whales that follow) along with the stories of loss, and not surprisingly, in both kinds of stories people are telling me how much they care about this/their place.
But for those of us old enough, these Long Island stories is no different than most of the country. My old hometown of Lewisville, Texas is now swallowed by Dallas sprawl. What was a rural town with marginal, undeveloped land is now awash in apartment complexes separated by dying or resurrected strip malls of whatever was or now is fashionable big box stores. In part I think of this as a generational complex, the older we get the more we wish there wasn’t change. Whether on Long Island or Texas, the last fifty years, though, has brought with it change that overwhelms any kind of nostalgia of the aging. We have gone from the remnant rural, agrarian, family-owned stores and small market economies when the Sears catalogue represented the exoticism of so many choices as we thumbed through the book-sized wonder of capitalism. To now, when cheaper cars and cheaper gas promise us a cheaper price and only a short drive to Walmart, Target, Costco, on and on. What we want to buy is now closer and easier to get than ever before. Yesterday, I bought 3 dozen, organic, brown-shelled eggs for only a few dollars, shipped all the way from Seattle. Something in the previous sentence is at the root of the problem, I’m guessing. Of course, the other part of it is how we changed our places by over-developing, over-harvesting and prizing our personal returns over what many of us now say we value.
A story:
When I first started college, I walked to a used bookstore across town. I rarely had money, but I always had time. It was owned by a graduate of the same English Department in which I studied. Don and I talked of poetry for hours in his small store. I would sit and read the books on the shelves if I couldn’t afford them. When I went to Knoxville for my graduate studies, I loitered the stacks at the local Barnes & Nobles; few, if any, of the local book stores remained. Now, I peruse Amazon and can have almost any book I want delivered in days to my doorstep. The other day, Amazon suggested I order Don’s book of poetry which he had written when he was a student in our English Department a decade before me.
There are no shores without history.
After rounding Green’s Point, I made a straight line across Nicholl Bay, which is also the Connetquot River. Connetquot State Park Preserve is a 3473 acre conservation area along the river. If you look on a map, it is the largest green spot on the south shore east of Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge and the Carmens River. It was a calm morning and a clear day and only a few boats sauntered about. The shoreline was dominated by a golf course and Hecksher State Park. Heckscher Park is one of Robert Moses’ success stories; from a modern perspective, most would say there aren’t many of those. The State of New York with the financial assistance of August Heckscher purchased the land for public use.
Rounding Nicholl Point I decided to pull in to the beach for a bit of breakfast. Up above, I could see the beach areas for Heckscher Park and farther West Islip and Bayshore. Putting back in I decided to hold close to the shore until I reached the shores of the Seatuck National Wildlife Refuge https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Seatuck/about.html and Seatuck Environmental Association https://www.seatuck.org/index.php. More on Seatuck at a later date. From Islip Beach and Bayberry Point, I knew it would be best to cut the Great Cove as fast as possible, watching all the while for the Bay Shore-Fire Island ferries and bay boats, which were becoming more common with every warm day.
I headed for the boardwalk at Bay Shore Manor park as quickly as I could. Out of my entire trip to now, this was the only time I had to deal with an a-hole boater. The guy made a point to steer his boat with 30 feet of the kayak, even as the two women on the boat yelled at him to not be an a-hole. I heard them; they were that close. If death stares count on the water, I got my point across, but he was long gone on the bay horizon and their complaints to him disappeared behind the engine noise. A-hole.
I pulled over on the beach at Gardiner’s State Park, near Thompson’s Creek. For a quick moment of reflection, and a little water. The wind was starting to kick up against me and the paddling became slower. Too, I was starting to feel a little achy and all, but I notched it up to the a-hole and the wind. Off in the distance I could see the Robert Moses Bridge. Too, I noticed how the dead eel grass covered the beach.
The beach was covered with eel grass at the wrack line. Maria says is normal and fine and occurs naturally after strong currents and major storm activity. However, after a big boating weekend (such as July 4th) more eel grass will wash up on the shore from all the boat disturbance; this much likely signals a problem with the loss of habitat for microscopic oysters and clams, as well as newly hatched fish.
I had to get a picture with my phone while paddling under the bridge. The water was really choppy, though, and I needed to keep my hands on the paddle.
After the bridge, I decided to end the day as soon as I could. The winds seemed now to conspire against me. So after Willet’s Point, I decided to land at West Islip Marina and Beach. I lifted my kayak onto my shoulder and walked past a young woman tanning herself and her phone. If one can look through another as though he/she isn’t carrying a sea kayak, she did. I was happy for her.
The lifeguard told me that kayakers are not allowed to land on the beach, as it causes too many problems during the swimming season. I promised him it was my last time to do so, and he laughed. He told me of his return from the Iraq war and using the GI bill to get his degree. He wants to become a history teacher, but it’s hard. There so many people with degrees and only so many jobs–teaching public school in New York is still a valued job, unlike much of the rest of the country. They are paid fairly. “You gotta know a guy to get in,” he said. Yeah, the only people I know are Texans, and that doesn’t go very far on Long Island. A lesson I’ve learned over and over.
I waited with the kayak, feeling shakier and warmer as the afternoon went on. Next trip, I’ll make sure I don’t use the beach. But … I do know a guy, now.