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.

*****

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.

Today’s paddle would be a relatively short one with the goal being Pine Creek Harbor in Noyak, all told about 7 miles and nothing in open water.

Scott and I put in around 930 AM at the canal and headed toward Cow Neck Point. The water was a mirror at times and others a mild ripple. Meschutt Beach was barely occupied–now and then a wandering human being led by a dog. Memorial Day (May 28 in 2018) is considered the season for the east end of Long Island to be occupied again. Summer houses are opened and aired out, boats are de-winterized and put back into water. Vineyards, breweries, farm stands, and local restaurants rejoice. Winter is over. Let the tourist money find its nesting ground.

Bluefish strolled just under the surface but nearly as many as yesterday.

After Cold Spring inlet, there is a mighty golf course on the ridge. Scott reminded me the US Open was going to played not far from here soon (Shinnecock Hills Golf Course). Ah, we nodded.

The paddle toward Cow Neck point was again very mild water and few if any boats. The ridge along the shore though had had lots of erosion-control boulders put in place below the forest leading to Cow Neck Point. Brendan J. O’Reilly in the Jan. 11, 2013 Southampton Patch writes,

Hedge fund billionaire Louis Bacon’s Sebonac property took a beating from Superstorm Sandy in October, and crews are at work this week making repairs to the waterfront. Bacon famously donated a conservation easement of more than 500 acres in Cow Neck to Peconic Land Trust in 2001, according to The New York Times. …. In late December, a barge carrying 400 tons of stone ran aground on the Great Peconic Bay shore in Hampton Bays, and local excavation companies responded to help. (“Barges of Boulders Shore Up Cow Neck After Sandy“) 

To the north is Robin’s Island, also owned by Louis Bacon, who has set aside most of it as conservation easement. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/17/nyregion/closely-guarded-secrets-some-islands-you-can-t-get-to-visit.html?pagewanted=all

The goal today was to hug the coast from Cow’s Neck Point to Jessup Neck (about 1.5 to 2 miles), portage across and finish at Noyak/Mill Creek Bay another quarter of a mile to the east.

However, arriving at Jessup’s Neck, we noticed the long orange snow fencing cutting across the entire neck. The netting typically means a protected site for terns or plovers; no crossing is possible. Jessup’s Neck is named after John Jessup who took over the land in 1679, but the entire area is the “Elizabeth A. Morton National Wildlife Refuge, a 187-acre peninsula on Noyack and Little Peconic Bays” (https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Elizabeth_A_Morton/about.html).

Plovers are listed as endangered in New York, relevant mostly Long Island since they are shore birds, though a few pair nest on Lake Ontario. Plovers were decimated a hundred years ago for food and hunting, reestablished after the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, yet their numbers have plummeted again by shoreline development and disturbance in the dunes where they nest. Long Island is the nesting site for around one quarter of Atlantic Coast population(https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7086.html). Many locals don’t care for some of the public beach areas being closed. It isn’t uncommon to see a bumper sticker stating Plover. Tastes like Chicken. East End Long Island is an odd mix that way … people who define themselves so much by the bays, pine barrens, shores, dunes, and ocean. To say you are an eastender carries some clout with other eastenders. They’ll say this place and its impact on their families define them in part. Yet ask about the decline in fish stocks, algal blooms in the summer bays, the shoreline homes few eastenders can afford and an unsurprising nostalgia seeps its way into their story. I’ve often wondered when we begin to reconcile things like fencing cordoning off protected areas or dealing with overdevelopment with our nostalgia. Maybe nostalgia is in part always fictional, but much of what we long for in nostalgia are the very things the endangered species and other regulatory acts are trying to return. They’re certainly not doing it perfectly, but it’s better than watching so much disappear and slipping deeper into longing for the past and not working for the future.

Sure enough the signs and fencing were up and no portaging here. The fences will be up until September when they return to their wintering grounds in the south. We had the choice to paddle all the way around Jessup’s Neck or drag the kayaks up the trail to the parking lot at the wildlife refuge. We walked up to the bird-viewing platform and looked out across the area. The restrictions will be in place until August 31 (https://www.fws.gov/uploadedFiles/2017%20Morton-Amagansett%20Beach%20Closure.pdf). So up and around the neck or wait here for our ride from Maria? A young couple wandered up to the viewing scope, smiled at us, and looked over our soaked clothing and down to the kayaks on the beach. Having fun?, one asked. Sure, I answered. The gods knew just where to stop those glaciers back when. I meant it as a conversation starter. They turned and walked away, clearly not wanting follow-up discussion on deities and glacial deposits. Scott said it’s a good place to stop, having overheard the conversation. He had a bit of a scowl toward my tone.

 (photo by Scott Schram)

The parking area for the refuge is a quarter mile away. We loaded all the gear into the kayaks and decided to carry both at the same time, front and back. My Perception Sea Lion is a nice sea kayak–stable and solid, but it is heavy. We switched places every hundred yards or so, Scott making it farther than I during my turn. During our walk, a “gang” of turkeys sauntered the path in front of us. I use the word “gang” because in wondering what a flock of turkeys might be called I found, “a group of turkeys — has many awesome and unusual descriptive nouns, including a “crop”, “dole”, “gang”, “posse”, and “raffle” (http://blog.nwf.org/2011/11/twelve-unusual-and-fascinating-facts-about-wild-turkeys/). Posse would have worked too, but I tend to think of it in Texas terms, not in celebrity hangers-on.

 (photo by Scott Schram)

At the refuge center, Carly, a summer intern with SCA (Student Conservation Association), made way for us to load the kayaks on the car near the buildings. It saved us another hundred yards. whew. Carly’s work for the summer is doing bird interpretation and education for visitors and groups as well as monitoring the plover and tern sites. Sometimes I worry for the future of all the nonhumans out there, but listening to Carly’s commitment and joy reminds me, her generation/my daughter’s generation are better informed than I was at that age. It’s up to their choices, and clearly a few of them are making good ones. Maybe they’re the answer to my nostalgia rumination above.

Scott heads back to Texas tomorrow. I’ll miss him; his friendship is immeasurable; our paddling trips are always a picaresque of characters more intriguing than the narrator. I told him to fly back and complete the last two days of the circumnavigation with me. When’s that?, he laughed. well said, Scott.

“I fought my whole life, studied, played, worked, because I wanted to hear and know the whole story, my story, our story, and understand as much of it as I could.” (Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run)

My friend for almost forty years Scott Schram came to visit. Somehow, he had snagged two tickets to the Springsteen broadway show and wanted to start the circumnavigation trip with me. Scott and I have a long history of water and music.

Back in our college days, two or three times a month we’d arm ourselves with a twelve-pack of whatever was cheapest (Stroh’s, Black Label, and every now and then the gods of sales offered up an affordable price for Pabst Blue Ribbon) and drive to one of the lesser-known parks at Lake Lewisville (yes, that’s back in Texas), set up lawn chairs, and turn on one of our car cassette players, listen and argue about music late into the night. Springsteen was most often the headliner, whether it was the word tumble of “Blinded by the Light” or the pared-down, echoed acoustic sounds of “Mansion on the Hill.” We had no idea of Freehold, life at Asbury Park, nor much of anything about the northeast, but we knew his music and lyrics were trying to do more than erase three to four minutes of late teen/early twenties struggles. For all the literal and cultural distance, we felt he spoke to us about a larger group of us, paying attention to subtleties that enriched all if we noticed. Since then, we’ve paddled rivers in Texas https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5357543 and in South Carolina and talked music along the way.

*****

A few days after the Springsteen show, we had organized the first two legs of the paddling trip: Peconic Lake Dam to Shinnecock Canal & Shinnecock Canal to Noyak Bay/Pine Neck. Both trips of around 12 miles and 7 miles respectively, nothing too demanding and to be quite honest, our “testing the waters” of kayaking in the Peconic Bay. My home is no more than a quarter of a mile from the Peconic River–Long Island’s longest river (12-15 miles according to differing definitions of a river)–and it is dammed here creating Peconic Lake (also called Forge Pond). Actually our neighborhood association is called the Peconic Lake Estates Civic Organization (PLECO). The association is an eclectic group of old and new; membership is $50 per year and the monthly gatherings at our meeting house never fail to have a fine array of cookies, sheet cake and coffee or tea. PLECO is a “neighborhood organization promoting the spirit of ‘good neighborliness'” as it says on our website. We have road clean-ups and a few events and lectures, but mostly the meetings are about keeping our little collection of homes a neighborhood.

From the Peconic Lake dam, folks can paddle and portage all the way to Riverhead and during the summer, frequently do, as the Peconic Paddler rental store in Riverhead takes folks west of here on River Road and lets them float most of the day back. The dam, though, is source of community and recreation as on virtually every nice-weather day for 10 months of the year, folks from the area are fishing from its banks. Even during our 15 minutes of putting in, one fisherman caught a bluegill and had no idea of how to unhook it.

The Peconic River drains mostly west to east (an oddity on Long Island) because of the glacial history of Long Island. Just to the south of the Peconic River is the Ronkonkama Morraine–the southern rise of Long Island’s glacial deposits from around 21,000 years ago. The river is mostly the result of seeps from groundwater rather than drainage from tributaries (Long & Wilhelm 9). It has been dammed and used since the late 18th-century for iron forges to cranberry bogs to ice for ice houses. The Dam Road meets Forge Road on the north side of the dam.

NYS Parks and Rec. created a functional boat slide and landing for paddlers to enter below the dam. The water is languorous and has a brown hue from the tannins and silt. It’s not deep but a gentle current will push you to the next dam around a half a mile down the river.

Scott cut a noble kayaking pose as we pulled into the Middle Country Road portage.

The small portage and parking area also announced the Peconic River Blueway Trail and its 9.5 miles of put-ins and take outs.

Almost immediately after we put back in we had to pull out to go around a small falls–17-foot sea kayaks are not made for such adventures. The next leg of the trip took us past The Roadhouse Brick Oven Pizza outdoor seating area. A few homes are hidden away from River Road and their backyards face the extended pond of the dammed Peconic–one favorite backyard had four metal letters facing the river L O V and E tilted on its side. Next to the letters sat a few guys drinking Tecate. Como esta’ la cosa mis amigos? Bien, bien, they laugh and raise their beers to us.

By the time we cross under Center Drive, we can see Grangabel Park and the take out for those renting from the Peconic Paddler. The take out is clear, but the park is nice walking for couples in hand-holding mood, and also now includes a fish ladder for the anadromous alewives (they live their adult lives in salt water and spawn in fresh). These small fish provide abundant fish for osprey, heron and eagles, as well as larger marine fish. The same dams we’ve been portaging today are one of the reasons for the severe decline of the alewives–they can no longer migrate upstream. In the last few years, the Peconic Estuary Program and Seatuck Environmental Association have worked with state agencies to begin creating fish ladders to assist alewife spawns.

We landed, took our kayaks to the area behind the Chase Bank where the tidal Peconic meets the last dam I’ll see until I round the north fork and arrive from the east, weeks, if not months from now. We leaned back a bit to cross under the Peconic and McDermott Ave. bridges and out where river becomes bay. Along the way, past the Long Island Aquarium, an older gentleman rowed a skull back and forth from the Cross River bridge to an area with boats docked. He pointed to his rearview mirror on his glasses and mumbled something like, “… for safety.”

Colonel’s Island is a little drop of land in the Peconic before it opens up to the bay. We head southeast after it passing around Iron Point to Goose Creek Point. I told Scott that we needed to pay homage to the Big Duck in Flanders as we paddled by. He used his middle finger to wave saying he’s “shooting the bird” to the Big Duck. ah, humor. ah, humanity.

At Red Cedar Point, we took our first real break of the day. Scott collected shells as I scouted out the increasing wind from the west. Whelks, scallops, and razor clams (much less a horseshoe crab carapace) are not typical in north-central Texas, so for him they are the exotic charms on his memory of the trip. I showed Scott where the first round of horseshoe crabs had laid their eggs by the light of the last full moon.

The last mile or so to the Shinnecock Canal was quick with the west wind whipping us forward. We hugged the beach enough to imagine we were close but were far enough out to let the wind use our paddles as sails. As we pulled into the beach, a few guys fished from the banks of the canal tossing bait into the current and letting it be carried into the canal. One caught a sea robin, cussed about its uselessness, and tossed it back into the swirling water.

Soon, Maria arrived with the car and had brought a few beers to christen the first day’s effort. It was a good day.

 (photo by Maria Brown)

*****

On the train ride to Ronkonkama after the Springsteen show, I told Scott how amazed I was Springsteen could seemingly bare himself so fully and honestly for two-and-a-half hours, five nights a week for what will be over a year by the show’s end. Was it real? Was it just a show? Is his performance doing both?  Is it possible to tell a story so raw and open, night after night, and not let it become distant and routine? I wonder about any story that way. How does one tell it over and over so that it keeps growing and changing so that it isn’t autobiography so much as community biography? Can you see your own story as big enough to reimagine yourself as just as a minor character? To make my story fit into our story? Scott says even if it was performance, it was real enough to convince him and that I should quit overthinking stuff. Have another beer and shut up, he offers and laughs. I’m still caught in my reverie. Can the horseshoe crabs and iron forges, Algonquin trails, and alewives make their way into this story? Can I tell my and their story and openly, deeply bare our common home? Have another beer and shut up David. Scott is a very dear and wise friend.

“The poets down here don’t write nothin’ at all, they just stand back and let it all be….” (Bruce Springsteen, “Jungleland”)

References:

Long, Robert P. and William and Barbara Wilhelm. Canoeing the Peconic River. Cutchogue, NY: Peconic Publishers, 1983.

Springsteen, Bruce. Born to Run. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016.

“In myths, people turn into all kinds of things. Birds, animals, trees, flowers, rivers.” (Richard Powers, The Overstory)

I’ve been here off and on for four years now, and I’m not sure I know Long Island as a home yet. Thus, I decided to take part of this summer to ask why and begin to find some answer.

This past year, I’ve sold my home in Texas and bought a house nestled into the Pine Barrens near Riverhead. However, the distance between place of residence and home is resonant and palpable thing. It certainly requires getting to know the place (neighbors, local shops and stores, the right restaurant and pub), and for me, getting to know the other neighbors (all the array of critters and plants–native and exotic). This distance between place and home must also be spanned by some notion of myth, some narrative tug at one’s being that “places” you in your home. Learning stories of a place is a beginning–who’s been writing, who’s been singing, who’s been storytelling and finding the common themes, interactions and connections with this place. By the way, we should include ALL who have been writing, singing and telling stories of a place, not just since 1492 (with all the violence and difficulty that includes) and not just since the arrival of humans (with all the violence and difficulty that includes). The glacial erratics in my yard have told me stories about why Long Island is here, just as the horseshoe crabs have taught me about the red knots’ late spring return. However, at some point you have to place yourself in the story to make a myth of home.

I’d been sorting through how to do this for over a year–time in the woods and wetlands, time paddling the four major rivers (Carmans Connetquot, Nissequogue and Peconic), a bit of time in the Sound and the Bay. Check, check, and check. Each of these have been and will continue to be brief excursions about learning from knowledgeable folks and learning the stories, but I hadn’t had to invest myself in these, other than some afternoons and evenings. What I needed was to take up an event which would demand something of me in place. Something that my 57-year-old body through aches and pains would remind me … “yep, you’re here.” Also, through, the trip had to be about being and contextualizing here, this loooong island.

It came to me … how about paddling around Long Island? It’s been done a few times in the past 20 years (more on this later), and the distance is around 260-280 miles–manageable enough if I took on day trips taking out and putting in, and sorting out drop-offs and pick ups with dear friends. Mostly, it seemed a chance to learn more about this place, the expanse of it and in the process give myself a small, myth-making experience–one that after enough days of paddling, enough time of sore shoulders, kayak mishaps, and the unplanned oddities that always happen on long trips, maybe I’d turn into something else, more intimately connected to place … and find myself at home here.

Here are the parameters:

1. put in at the Peconic Lake dam not far from my house and make day trips of 10-14 miles. Thus, 28-30 days total paddling.
2. generally I wanted to return home each night, but if I can impose on some friends keeping me closer to the next leg, kindly ask/beg.
3. not expect this is contiguous–day after day. I have work to do at my university and other writing to complete. I’ve got the whole summer.
4. have fun, but sweat and engage.
5. have friends with me for some days and paddle alone for others.
6. try to read a bit about the places I pass through and by.
7. keep some kind of log. This blog isn’t going to be a how-to guide to paddle around the island. There are better sources (please refer to Mike Bottini’s Exploring East End Waters: A Natural History and Paddling Guide & Kevin Steigelmaier’s Paddling Long Island and New York City). Also, the best way to put it is that’s it’s a search for home by circumnavigating where I live, and hopefully ending where I begin.

(Scott Schram and I loading kayaks)

Powers, Richard. The Overstory: A Novel. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018.