Mark and I spent a few hours walking from Sound Avenue truck noise, to Long Island Sound’s faint lap- lap of wavelets on the shore. We reached a beach that is isolated. Only a few houses perched on the top of a 140 foot bluff and no beach access close by. One has two walk two miles in either direction to reach this beach. We were headed for a point on the bluff called Friars Head. It is a blowout surrounded by dwarf beech trees that looks like a monk with a bald head with a ring of hair surrounding it.

Our path was a roughly rectangular-shaped. Mark parked in the lot of a new Riverhead Town Park. Just to the left is the access road for the Dorothy Flint Nassau County Girl Scout Camp. The road also serves three private houses.

We followed the hilly road till we came to a fork. Left fork, private home, right fork, Long Island Butterfly Reserve. Professor Paul Adams stays here all summer raising butterfly-friendly flowers. We skirted his property finding a small valley to descend to the beach. It wasn’t an easy descent. Trees, brush, poor footing but finally we slid on sand off the bluff to the beach.

The upper beach was littered with lots of plastic. Other than this, only other signs of humanity were beach buggy tire tracks. We headed west to look for dwarf Beech Trees that are considered globally rare. Soon, however we came upon two old wooden barges that were towed here to fortify t he beach. It worked. The barges slowed the littoral drift and erosion. The result is that beach is much wider and the bluff less eroded. Mark showed me two old photos on his i-pod that he took when he met a local person who had the photos. The barges might have been built in the 1920’s. They were towed there in the 1930’s. They had a pointed bow instead than the usual square one. The hull construction is white cedar planking and the ribs are oak. There are hundreds of pegged holes. We were looking at historic vessels that were build about a century ago. Homeowners joined together to obtain these barges to protect the bluff from erosion during storms. They act like snow fences.

We found two sets of stairs from the bluff, one serves the girl scout camp, the other the private home next to the butterfly reserve. We came upon the Friars Head Golf Course main lodge perched on the bluff. The construction of this building and the fairways led to the demise of many of the dwarf beech trees. We started seeing dead beech trees at the base of the bluff. The trees grow on the bluff and are subject to slumping when

storms create waves that undermine the bluff and cause mass wasting, where wet sand and gravel submits to gravity under their excess weight. The beeches are vulnerable to this as well as strong salt-laden winds that shape their canopy. They look like flags with all branches growing eastward. They are dwarfed for two reasons…salt air wind and poor soil.

We turned back thinking that our ascent up the bluff will be extremely difficult at the point of our descent. Instead we chose the stairs that led to the girl scout camp. Chugging the 189 steps to level ground we finally ended our isolation. I was tired at this point and overdressed. The temperature was in the mid-60’s. The bluff took back the energy we used to easily make our descent.

We found our way through the camp heading toward the car. Along the way, I found a patch of jack-in-the-pulpet that is located behind the horse barn. I don’t think I’ve seen this wildflower in at least two decades. We concluded that these fine-looking horses are polo horses because there is a polo field right there.

I have rarely experienced a more perfect view while on the beach. Two straight lines and a slightly wavy one…sand to water, water to sky, sky to Connecticut horizon. It was worth the strain to get to this place. Simple and pure and feeling the isolation in an environment which is extremely rare. The isolation is almost as rare as the beeches.

As I passed the forest on our return, I seemed to hear the trees saying “KEEP THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE.”