With all due apologies to the readers and myself, I had to skip a mile of the circumnavigation for the plovers. I didn’t want to carry the kayaks back out to Jessup’s Neck and then paddle around. After the take-out at Elizabeth Morton, the next easy access to the bay is at Noyac Bay Ave. next to the Northampton Colony Yacht Club. After August 31, I will go back and complete this short leg of the trip. Promise. Otherwise, it’s only a partial story.
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Parking at Noyac Bay Ave. is a heated discussion and limited during the summer months. This kind of debate is typical and growing on the forks these days. As summer weekenders escape the city, they clog parking and access to the beaches and ocean; homeowners on the forks want to limit parking and access at some level. “Parking On Noyac Bay Avenue A Heated Subject at Southampton Town Hall”
Some changes have been made recently in front of some of the homes allowing more parking, but the area near the boat dock and the Northampton Colony Yacht Club is still restricted. 
This battle that will play itself out over and over on the forks, especially the south fork. Where do all those folks coming out for the weekend park? Why should homeowners have to deal with clogged access to the bay/ocean from visitors? Not surprisingly, many of the restrictions apply only during the summer months and peak times. Folks aren’t quite as worried about over-parking during a February nor’easter. However, access and ownership is an ongoing debate: “That’s Enough: The Battle to Save Our Access to the Beaches”
The put-in was perfect and easy, but parking would be a concern. Lucky for us (Maria Brown was with me), Alberto and his crew were working on the yacht club’s parking lot. They were taking out any weeds that had not paid their dues, and new gravel was going to be installed. We asked if there was any way to leave one of our cars there and pick it up later, and explained our goal. I likely added a bit of hyperbole about research and gave him my card from SBU. Alberto made a call to the person in charge and got approval. He asked us to leave him a key to my car, so he could move it when the gravel truck arrived. He said he’d leave it where it is after the gravel was laid down.
A note on trust: we left Alberto the key to my car, a little bit of money for his efforts, and many thanks. I offered up a little spanglish about our trip, and Alberto was patient and kind, responding mostly in English. It struck me how if this trip is to be completed that I will need to give in to many more acts of trust: trust offered to folks I just met. I don’t want to be naive, but I will need to let go of some of my typical distance and isolation.
The paddle out and around Pine Neck/Noyac was smooth and fast. Maria was trying her new/used kayak for the first time on this trip, a 17′ Seaward Navigator.
(her Navigator is the front kayak)
Maria is a GIS specialist (she likes maps), bat naturalist (having traveled often in the americas for research), certified wetlands scientist, board member to more than a few Long Island environmental groups, Sayville High School science research teacher (heck, there is even a Maria Brown Day in Sayville! Maria Brown Day). She has more energy than a basket of bees (as my dad would have said). Paddling with her is an added resource for me as her knowledge of Long Island natural history is substantive, and her connection to and caring/activism for this place is strong and lengthy. Maria was born here, but it would be better to say, she is born of here. Unlike me, she needs no myth-making; she’s home.
It’s short lake-like paddle to Foster Memorial Town Beach. It’s named after Clifford Foster who left it to Southampton upon his death. The Foster family has clearly had an impact on farming and land preservation in the area: Clifford Foster Remembered. A nice group of families with kids and dogs, as well as leadlines for both, dotted the beach. We headed for the midpoint of the strip of land as that was the shortest portage. Noyac-Long Beach Road is busy, but the drivers seemed to notice the struggle of carrying 17-ft kayaks across a busy two-lane and slowed down for our convenience and safety.
We tried to avoid trudging through the grass and bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) to avoid disturbing critters and attracting ticks. Maria noted that for a narrow salt marsh it had wonderful zonation–a word non-scientists would never use but just means differing elevation and where low and high water is. The high marsh area had lots of spartina or salt hay which used to be used as insolation in some of the house. The next zone was spike grass and glasswort, which turns bright red in early autumn/late summer from losing its chlorophyl. The last zone into water is the salt marsh cordgrass with lots of mussels attached at the base with lots of snails and fiddler crab holes. These together function like a sponge collecting water and surge. If lost, more destruction will happen. An egret dawdled along the shore. A sandy path made its way to the water. A little neck of water allowed us to head northeast into the area, just west of the Main St. Bridge for Sag Harbor.
Sag Harbor redefines the adjective “quaint” when it comes to Long Island towns. Its history is in whaling because its harbor was deep. Even a nice windmill sits near the water next to Long Wharf. Though it was never a working windmill, it seems to have been good for tourism.
(photo by Maria Brown)
It was also home to John Steinbeck the last 13 years of his life (1955-1968) and the starting point for his book Travels with Charley. I’m a fan of more than a few of Steinbeck’s books–his collaboration with biologist Ed Ricketts The Log from the Sea of Cortez has been a model for my academic pursuits and Travels with Charley for the sheer beauty of travel writing and reflection. Sag Harbor Hills also has an interesting history of being a community for working class African-Americans after WWII, which now seems, like many communities on the south fork, to be undergoing challenges and changes: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/nyregion/new-neighbors-unsettle-black-enclave-sag-harbor-hills.html.
We weaved our kayaks between all the anchored boats and headed for the opening between the two long, rock storm barriers. A west-to-east wind had kicked up a bit, but nothing to be too worried about, so we headed toward what is called Barcelona Point. A sailing school had pairs of teenagers in their small sailboats out in the water practicing their tacts and giggling all the while. Barcelona Point is the northern point of the Linda Gronlund Memorial Nature Preserve (https://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/81070.html).
A little farther east is Northwest Harbor and Augie’s Beach, but our goal was Charlie’s Beach. We had left Maria’s car in the circle near the neighborhood above the East Hampton permit parking only area. One of the owners suggested to us it wouldn’t be a problem to leave it there. I left a note on the dashboard about my project; I figured if nothing else it might confuse an officer long enough to forget about a ticket.
Charlie’s Beach is really a local place–a couple who were paddle boarding, otherwise, more dogs than owners. I talked with one older couple who had been bringing their shepherd mix here for the last 11 years. She doesn’t go as fast or long as she used to. But hell, neither do we, they laughed. I still mourn my dog Sunny, 20 months after having her put down from old age (14.5 in calendar years).
Steinbeck describes his dog Charley early on in Travels with Charley: In Search of America: “Charley is a good friend and traveling companion, and would rather travel about than anything he can imagine. If he occurs at length in this account, it is because he contributed much to the trip.” I’ve already noticed the lesser-known beaches are the bonding places of people and dogs. The dogs can run and splash, fetch and fart, and be all manner of happiness a dog might imagine with open beach, water, and time. I’m guessing people bond with their dogs in their backyards as readily as a beach, but there must be something exotic in it for the pup, or in some cases, very, very familiar.