The Mast-Head

It sure was crowded this weekend. Just ask the ducks at East Hampton's Nature Trail, who had been so well fed by countless visitors that they, like many locals, fled for quieter backwaters.

Normally hundreds of ducks, a few swans, seagulls, and assorted scavenging song birds flock to the Nature Trail to wait for the few regular visitors who feed them. But by Sunday morning, few were to be seen begging for handouts and those ducks still hanging around the David's Lane parking area seemed more annoyed to be interrupted than hungry. There was so much sodden bread floating on the stream that I mistook it for a layer of fallen blossoms.

For me the joy of the Nature Trail has never been the feeding frenzy near the car park. For as long as I can remember, first with my grandmother, later with boyhood friends, I have been drawn down the winding paths back into the interior. It is, to be sure, a manufactured environment, but one that over the years has found its own kind of balance.

On Sunday, my sister drew the attention of our small group to great overhanging growths of wisteria, from which long heads of white and violet flowers dangled. We wondered whether the vines would eventually choke the trees and shrubs on which they climbed, and I imagined the entire canopy collapsing under their weight.

Native ferns had sprouted orange sporangia, a startling sight none of us had noticed before. "Reproductive organs," I announced with uncertain authority, figuring that must be what they were.

We stopped for a while at a bench at the Huntting Lane end of the path. My wife and mother sat while my sister and I posed Adelia, the 1- year-old, in some skunk cabbage for photographs.

A helicopter began circling loudly overhead. My sister, who has trained to become a pilot, remarked that it was flying rather quickly, leading me to speculate that it might be the county police rushing to an emergency or paparazzi searching for Paul McCartney's wedding, which is rumored to be taking place here soon.

The chopper continued to circle the village, its overhead buzz answered by a bullfrog. We could only just hear the rumble of Memorial Day traffic from Main Street.

David E. Rattray