Nature Notes

By Larry Penny

The Town of East Hampton, unlike almost every other municipality across this great land of ours, holds several public parklands in common with its county and state. Such shared open space holdings include Hither Woods and Shadmoor in Montauk and Barcelona in Northwest Woods.

East Hampton and Suffolk County share the ownership of several additional tracts of land, including one of the last to be acquired, the Duke estate on the west side of Three Mile Harbor. Such partnerships for the purposes of jointly acquiring and managing public lands is almost unprecedented throughout the rest of the United States and serves as a model for further joint ventures in the public sector.

Barcelona, the glacial peninsula between Little Northwest Creek on the west and Northwest Creek on the east, is one of those parklands. New York State owns 449.5 acres of it, Suffolk County owns 94 acres, and the East Hampton Town Trustees about 29 acres, 24 of which are occupied by four miles of trustee roads.

One of those roads is the old Sag Harbor to East Hampton road, which crossed Little Neck Creek and served as the main thoroughfare between the port of Sag Harbor and East Hampton prior to the construction of the turnpike, Route 114. The remnants of the 200-year-old bridge portage across the creek are still evident today on the Barcelona side.

Before it was Barcelona, it was Rousell's Neck, farmed by the Rousell family. A tiny cemetery with but a few ancient gravestones situated smack in the middle of the golf course memorializes the passing of the Rousells and the passing of Rousell's Neck.

Now there is a new name in honor of a woman who lost her life in the Sept. 11 horror, but it is likely that Barcelona will be the name used in common parlance well into the future. There is no place like it and that is why, perhaps, worldly mariners passing its steep headland on their way in and out of Sag Harbor's harbor named it thus a long time ago.

Today Barcelona is a place for all to enjoy, not just a few. If you're a duffer and you don't want bystanders to kibitz about your swing, the nine-hole golf course on Barcelona is designed with you in mind.

In terms of wildlife habitats and plant communities, Barcelona is a mosaic of almost every kind found on the South Fork. Here is a list: shore, dune, coastal bluff, salt pond, fen, brackish marsh, saltmarsh, eastern deciduous, mixed hardwood, pine-oak, freshwater wetland, maritime grassland, and red cedar old field.

Consequently, there are few places on Long Island comparable in size that have as many different plant and wildlife species, and as many rare and endangered species. If we count the waters washing its shores, Little Northwest Creek, Northwest Harbor, and Northwest Creek, not to mention Rattlesnake Creek and its two forks, we add to the list of species a host of fish and invertebrates.

Barcelona is the only spot on Long Island where white pine, pitch pine, and oak-hickory forests interdigitate while touching the sea. Before it was farmed, it was lumbered; its original stands of trees prior to invasion by Europeans must have been impressive.

Today, in the absence of farming and lumbering and under the aegis of a parkland management regime, its trees, especially its white pines, pitch pines, and tupelos, are growing at a rapid rate and have almost reached the stature of old growth forest.

The bluffs facing Northwest Harbor on the north are among the highest bordering the Peconic Estuary, about as high as those along Hedges Bank to the east, at Cow Neck in North Sea, on Gardiner's Island, Robins Island, and northeast Shelter Island, Hither Hills, and Culloden Point in Montauk.

The bluff faces are partially covered with blocks of vegetation, which are always in the process of slowly moving downhill, or "slumping." Northern bayberry, wild rose, and other shrubby species hold them together on their descent. Eventually, they come to rest at the bluff toe and are taken away by the sea during northeasters.

Barcelona's bluffs are glacial in origin and about 15,000 years old. Like all headlands along the Atlantic Coast, they are slowly being washed away, but the recession of one to two feet a year is tempered by a second geologic phenomenon, which is part of the same erosion process, but quite uncommon as far as coastal bluffs are concerned.

Some of the sand loosed by erosion is blown back up on top of the bluff to form dunes that move inland. In other words, the actual height of the bluff top is increasing in places, as some of the "perched" dunes are on the order of 20 feet tall. There are five of them at Barcelona and they are arranged from west to east in terms of their age. The newest ones are to the west, the oldest, to the east.

The oldest ones have more or less stabilized and are no longer creeping inland. They are covered by a sparse mantle of sassafras, oaks, hickories, and hackberries of recent age and not more than five or six inches in girth. They stand cheek by jowl with much larger trees, which are gaunt and leafless, half covered by the encroaching sands.

The most recent dunes are devoid of vegetation and moving south at more than a few inches a year, obliterating the old footpaths and game trails that circumnavigated them, creating little detours, as it were, in order to pass. These are the walking dunes of Barcelona, not as large, nor as primeval, as the walking dunes of Hither Hills, but walking nonetheless.

The trustee trails make the whole thing work. They are far from intrusive, being simple dirt roads that are walked and jogged on as much as they are driven on. These are the same trails that were used by carts pulled by horses hundreds of years ago to remove logs, to haul eelgrass and saltmarsh hay from the shore and marsh for insulation and livestock feed.

These are the same trails that used to run to the old pier on the west side of Barcelona (the remnants of which were rediscovered by Susan Casper five or six years ago during an extraordinarily low tide), which functioned as an export-import site for ships serving ports far and wide. These were once busy roads that knew the somnambulant creaking of wooden wheels turning in wooden bushings. Now, they repose in peace.

Barcelona is home to birds, turtles, snakes, and mammals. Waterfowl and muskrats ply its edges. Whippoorwills sing at night in the summer while fireflies flash their wares. Muttering black ducks sweep overhead in the fading light of a late winter afternoon. In all seasons, humans consort with nonhumans, pets converse with the call of the wild.

It's a magical place at any time of year. Just to think, 15 years ago a plan for 150 second homes was laid on the table and on the verge of being certified and sent to Albany. Of course, it didn't happen and it never will. Such are the small pleasures of life in East Hampton.