Around and About

Mon –

Huntington inlet leads out to Huntington Bay and from there connects to Long Island Sound and the great wide world.  The town has documents proving its founding in 1653, and since then boats have come through the channel constantly, continuing on the final mile to the town docks.  At first it was settlers, and commerce, which then became coastal trade of grain to New York for manufactures, evolving into various bulk deliveries, and finally today only pleasure boats.  I love living in a place with a long written history, so many stories to connect with and changes to contemplate.

I know that many others have lived here since the glaciers retreated thousands of years ago.  Each paleolithic individual lived as full a life as I have, had just as many hopes, fears, experiences, dreams, and existence; and eventually met the same fate.  Perhaps that way of life was best, for understanding the nature of the world and not wrecking it with improvements and tenuous cosmic fantasies.  Yet I cannot help but be a child of my culture, and stories are what I love, and for me the story of each person in the prehistoric dawn of time cannot help but feel the same, compressing all those years into one vague dreamtime with one foggy life experience.

Tue -

Everywhere in midsummer is a visual feast.  Puppy Cove terminates in a preserved tidal grain mill, although most of the rest of the homes are quite recent.  Not visible even at low tide is the huge barge sunk in the middle, which the kids and I used to paddle around.  No doubt many other artifacts litter the bottom, hidden from view as are the tiny snappers recently hatched and whatever else may be around this season.

Living in one place for decades has the fine effect of placing a patina of memory over everything, extending the moment into ghostly pasts, still true for me, which nobody else can see.  Unfortunately, it also means I get nothing done.  Fortunately, it turns out I have nothing to do.

Wed-

Local folklore claims Einstein summered here in the twenties at the height of the Gold Coast, and walked this very road while it was sand and gravel.  Sometimes it is interesting to consider such notions, for it adds a thickness to my rather trivial stroll and provides a bit of escape from the soupy climate today.  But of course, Einstein is no more (and no less) of this place than Napoleon or Buddha or Jane Austin or anyone else who ever lived.

Only I, in all the universe, could make such a connection, think such a thought, follow it into logical or fantastic trails of words and internal myths.  That is frightening, and exhilarating , and smug,  and a very fun casual snippet of being that I forget as easily as it drifted into my awareness.  Just part of the wondrous glory of being who I am, today, on this harborside street.

Thu -

July 4, the docks are decorated, the barbeque begins soon.  Community beer and burgers on our little patch of sand, comparisons and rivalries and ambitions temporarily forgotten in a grand celebration of being alive and well (and thriving) in a great country at a great time on a great day.  Sometimes it is best to just forget our cares and woes and concentrate on all the good things we have.

I suppose we are all patriots in our own way _ thankful to be Americans and free.  We pay our taxes and obey the laws, complain as we will.  But that “in our own way” comprises an awful lot of differences, some of them bitter.  It is said that is what makes democracy strong, but it can also make most of us feel powerless most of the time.  Churchill’s remark still stands; the day is bright and hot and beautiful; the future is filled with possibility; and our cares will explode and fade like the evening fireworks.  Until they all come back tomorrow, of course, but that’s another story.

  

Fri-

 

Like most of the inlets on the North Shore, Huntington Harbor originally ended in a large tidal marsh.  Fortunately for the settlers,  it only extended a half mile inland, and the town could be build where the land begin to rise, within easy distance of the important docks.  The main reason Huntington exists is the several passes through the high sandy shoreline cliffs, providing relatively easy access to interior Long Island, and via another pass in the Ronkonkoma moraine to the South Shore beyond.  In any case, the village proper has no shoreline, and the colonists, being quite enterprising, rapidly built a tidal dam where the deep water turned to marsh.  This is today’s Mill Dam road.

The deli sits where the old power plant once stood, supplied by barge with coal in the early 1900’s.  Today this is all recreation _ marinas, ball fields, parkland, boat launch ramps.  History has moved swiftly around here.  No doubt, in not many years, everything will be submerged and possibly tidal marsh will reclaim the thriving village.  By then, as always, what people remain will probably have adjusted.  It is exhausting to worry about the cosmic future, and in some ways futile to worry about it much.  Yet wondering what we can do, what we should do, to try to preserve things as they now are is also a natural and correct human reaction.

 
Sat-

 

Halesite is supposedly where Nathan Hale came ashore as a spy and was captured in the revolutionary war.  It’s the site of the traditional town docks, now filled with marinas and restaurants.  Looking back up the harbor on this side, are the Knutson boatyard sheds, where some kind of coastal defense vessels were built in WWII.  There is also a picture from the late 1800’s of a beached whale, which caused a lot of trouble trying to remove when it began to stink.

 

A whale would die long before it made it this far into the harbor these days.  Pollution and dredging at one point turned the inner waters into an oily bathtub in the early ‘90’s.  Fortunately, some amelioration is now in progress with a sewage and overflow treatment plant, restrictions on home and industrial chemicals, and a better public attitude.  It would be nice to see the dolphins playing again here, as my wife saw them do in the ‘50’s.  With rising water levels, it’s only a question of how long these deceptively stable shorefronts can remain.
Sun-

This was once part of Gatsby’s Gold Coast, and this shot looks back from the site of the old Ferguson mansion, since turned into condos, with some architecture saved.  It provides nice views from the other side of the harbor, on East Neck Road, across from my normal daily stroll.  I try to get all the way over here a few times a week.  The area has a relatively strange past, near the town docks but not far from the old pottery factory and boatyards.  Lately, the gateway to the extremely swanky Huntington Bay neighborhood.

Why should I care, anyway?  Is it not enough to enjoy the bright days and the new grapevine, and my own racing thoughts?  Like so much of my knowledge, this does me no particular good, especially in the only sense people much talk about here, which is real estate and money.  But my curiosity has always led me into peculiar paths, like the little monkey George, and even if I do not own the waterfront I probably get to fully enjoy it more than most of those who do.