It will be a good ole time in Montauk this weekend for the Montauk Friends of Erin St. Patrick’s Day festivities. The fun starts tomorrow at a luncheon to honor this year’s grand marshal, Jack Perna. It’s also an opportunity for everyone to pull the green out of their closets.

    Women will be wearing green dresses, green blazers, green shoes, green nail polish, and, like me, a green scarf. Green is not my most flattering color, so I keep the wearing of the green minimal. When I wear green it makes me look as if I’m sick. I don’t want people I’m talking to thinking I might be getting ready to puke on their new green shoes.

    Members of the Friends of Erin will all be sporting their green blazers and black derbies, and I have to say, some of them clean up real nice. Other men add a flash of green on their ties, and still others will smile with green teeth, but I don’t think that’s intentional.

    The best outfits are the ones worn for the parade on Sunday. That’s when spectators really dress it up. It amazes me how foolish some people will allow themselves to look during a parade. But hey, everyone loves a parade, right? Well, everyone except those who actually live in Montauk, many of whom stay home to avoid the rowdy crowds.

    Quite a few of the women lining the parade route wear green wigs, but I’m thinking a little hair dye might be in order and might offer myself up for the job. I can do it, you know. I went to hairdressing school and turned many a head of hair green, unintentionally of course, but they got over it, though some of the lawsuits might still be pending.

    While I was really good at doing hair dye for those who wished to sport a green head of hair, hairstyling was not my forte, which I learned the hard way, especially when women would cry when they looked in the mirror at my station.

    In beauty school, as they called it, experimentation was rampant. My husband never knew what I’d look like when I came home each day. I had streaks of purple hair before that was a trend, a shag haircut dyed brown that made me look more like Ringo Starr rather than Joan Jett, whose look I coveted, and various colors of nail polish, which was a stretch because I don’t usually wear nail polish. It makes me feel too dressed up for daily life in Montauk.

    We also did facials. And that’s when I really turned green. At beauty school — which is an oxymoron because most of the technicians weren’t even close to being pretty and they didn’t compensate with a good personality — we were encouraged to use ourselves as guinea pigs. So one day I got home early and slathered my face with a thick green clay mask. This was years ago when people still used all that junk. It had to stay on for a half hour, so I lay in bed reading while my skin was supposed to be tightening and getting younger looking, and I fell asleep on my side.

    My husband came home, walked into the bedroom, and called my name. I turned over to greet him with the green clay mask on, which by this point was all crackly and flaking and looked like the spackle painters use, and he literally jumped with fear, thinking I had caught some deadly disease at school.

    So, I’ll just stick to my green scarf this weekend. But I will be at most of the festivities, wearing my usual black pants and whatever blouse isn’t wrinkled. And if I get adventurous, I might add a few green streaks to my blond hair. With my luck, though, and lack of hairdressing talent, it might just fall out, and I’ll be stuck wearing a green hat!

    Or I might just stay home and drink green beer. I hear it’s good for you, no matter what the color.

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   Two Novembers ago I was set straight by Jane Callan, who tends the flowers in The Star’s windows, as I was bemoaning the season that was falling into “the sere, the yellow leaf.” Winter, she said, to the contrary, was not a sad time — not a sad time for a lover of flowers, at any rate — but a time of renewal, a time for gathering strength “so that they’ll come back even stronger and bigger than they were before.”

    There is a wonderful resilience in nature that is eminently evident to anyone who has ever had a plant, but too few of us, she thinks, really pay attention. “Most people,” she said during a conversation this week, “want the plant to be where they want it to be, not where it wants to be. I see that a lot when I go into people’s homes.”

    She traces her love of plants to her childhood when she visited greenhouses in New Jersey. She likes to see them grow and thrive. She won’t go so far as to say they speak to her, but by keeping an eye out she is attentive to their needs, which, she says, are not great. The flowering kind basically need proper light, proper water, and to be free from stress — just as we do, in order to live long lives.

    “I can see that that one,” she said, pointing toward a hibiscus in the window, “needs a drink.”

    Anybody passing by this office can tell that these plants, which include the aforementioned hibiscus, gardenia, jasmine, and citrus tree-form “standards,” as well as cyclamens, roses, begonias, lantanas, bougainvillea, and flowering cacti, are where they want to be, and that The Star truly “shines for all” in their case.

    “I’m not sure what direction the sun is coming from,” she said in answer to one of my questions, “but they like it, and they like the cool nights. In the summer, I take them home and keep them outside in the pots so that they can have the sun, fresh air, and the rain to wash over them.”

    Interestingly, she keeps no plants in her own house. “There’s no light. Because of the overhangs. It was built in the ’60s.” Were she to do so, her plants would languish, merely exist, rather than live.

    “I feel sorry for the plants I’ve seen that haven’t been properly cared for. You can tell — they look scraggly, sapped of strength. Most people don’t know what they’re supposed to look like . . . they’re just there. They’re thought of as a design element. It’s always a problem: Who are you thinking of? The plant? Or yourself?”

    A question we all, or most of us anyway, could take to heart.

   “I want your life,” said my Aunt Pat from California upon seeing me at my nephew’s wedding on Friday night. “I joined Facebook just to look at your pictures,” she said.

    “No, you don’t,” I assured her. I don’t post an update when I struggle to make the rent, I explained. I don’t share a picture of that. But yes, I live on an amazing island and I am blessed with a breathtakingly beautiful commute to East Hampton, by land and sea, and I enjoy capturing it when I can and sharing.

    I’m sure Aunt Pat is not the only one who thinks I live the life of Riley, whoever that is. “In her color portrait world, she’s got it all,” sang Rob Thomas in his song “3 a.m.”

    I did post one picture of myself being pulled over, I thought. I just had to, the contrast of the Mardi Gras beads on the rearview mirror and the red flashing lights offering an opportunity not to be passed up. But the next four times I got pulled over, for an expired inspection, were not so colorful, and the last one brought me to tears, when I really just needed a quick drive to the ocean for a breath on deadline day at the paper. I have been trying to remedy the inspection issue with estimates and regular visits to mechanics on my days off, with no success.

    The next time I saw Aunt Pat I was crying in the glamorous ladies’ room of the Fox Hollow Inn after it hit me that my father was never going to take my mother onto the dance floor again. My therapist told me I have all five of the top causes of stress, and people think I have the perfect life. In some ways, I do. Aunt Pat hugged me and cried with me at the loss of such a huge presence in our incredibly close, large family.

    My cousin Lisa was also impressed with my life as determined from my Facebook posts. “I see that you’re a journalist for a newspaper!” she said. That is so exciting and fun; you are so lucky, she said.

    I agreed, but I wondered if my gorgeous cousin had any clue how much my hairstyle suffers progressively from Monday through Wednesday as deadline approaches, along with the decline in the number of breaths taken, my level of patience, and my ability to socialize. (Many know not to talk to me on a Tuesday; some find out the hard way.)

    We Star writers pour our hearts into our weekly stories, before editors fine-tune the words to flow smoothly for the reader, and we wait, wondering what might be sliced and diced. Lately our stories have often had to be cut or held, what with the decrease in advertising leading to a much smaller paper at this time of year.

    This week I saw a lot of negative posts about the media, but I wonder if those people are supporting print newspapers and public radio or simply the drama-filled, sensational television news. I wonder how many have a subscription to The Star. I wonder how many even read any full articles at all, or rely on the scrolling words at the bottom of a television screen or their Twitter and Facebook “news” feeds, or, worse yet, extremist radio personalities.

    Our paper is well done. So much energy and detail go into its content and photographs, in addition to checking facts and fairness. It is an amazing group effort, and some of us who rely on the income from the work struggle greatly to make ends meet in positions not known for high pay. But we think it important that messages get out, and are drawn to furthering that purpose.

    We are a cool bunch. Through our own stress and trauma and those of people we write about, we support one another with empathetic glances and cupcakes. We share a kitchen in a lovely historic office, with uncomfortable chairs and vintage equipment that frustrates us but sustains a pleasant simplicity.

    Sometimes there are the delightful sounds of children gracing the building, and there is almost always a dog or two, and even the occasional visit by a miniature pig, but not lately, due to circumstances too funny to mention. (Ask David Rattray if you must know, and definitely before you go out and get yourself a miniature pig.)

    A pig is just one of the things David must deal with while managing all of the sections of the paper, the angry complaints, the letters to the editor, keeping employees happy and paid, preventing lawsuits, and creating an online presence to keep up with high-tech readers. All while picking up children from school and taking them to their various lessons.

    It is not easy. But it is worth it. Sharing the truth and the good news is exciting, and it is important to warn residents of the bad news. Perhaps if it wasn’t for our stories and editorials, the situation here would not improve.

    News needs to be read. I hope that those who understand its value will support newspapers and share the content whenever possible. Meanwhile, we will continue doing our jobs in hopes of a day we can make a living from such a career, or at least the appearance of brownies on our kitchen “share” table.

   Carrie Ann Salvi is a reporter at The Star.

   April showers bring May flowers, but March showers bring peepers. These tiny frogs are rarely seen but heard every evening from now until late summer. They begin as a thin chorus, gradually growing into a stunningly loud, high-pitched din by the peak of breeding season.

    In past years, when the peepers reached their orgiastic crescendo I would phone my friend Todd Osborn in Seattle and, saying nothing, not even hello, just let the frogs do their thing while he listened. Todd died last year from cancer, so this season’s frog-song carries for me a mournful note amid all the hope and amphibian lustfulness and biological imperative it signifies. I will be thinking of him as the frogs rave on.

    Tuesday’s downpour and warmer daytime temperatures were enough to draw the peepers from their winter hibernation, and a knot of them could be heard calling just after dark from the marsh near the driveway. It was too wet to stand outside and give their song a good listen, but comforting that the sound signaled the end of winter as I walked in from the driveway after work.

    As I do each year, I wrote the date of the peepers’ arrival on a basement wall in pencil. Ten and 12 years ago, the peepers would not be heard until the week of March 20 or later. This may be too short a time sample to mean anything, though the trend toward earlier appearances is clear from my basement record.

    From the day the frogs first sing there is no turning back. Osprey will soon appear overhead, joining the red-winged­ blackbirds, house wrens, and other early arrivals on the South Fork. Striped bass season opens tomorrow. It’s difficult to believe: Just a week ago, we were shoveling out and groaning under yet another dump of snow.

   The very first attempt I made at  journalistic writing was a fictional obituary as an academic exercise in an evening course at the Columbia School of Journalism. It never occurred to me at the time that I would go on to write and edit hundreds (and hundreds) of them.

    Not long afterward, I married into the Star family and began writing obituaries for real. Ev Rattray, whom I met at the journalism school and who had come home to edit the paper, set the standard: Obituaries were not to be written by rote, and they were to celebrate the life of those who died.

    At first, I found calling grieving family members very trying — believe me, it’s not easy to pick up that phone and attempt to ask questions with sympathy and sensitivity — but I soon learned that many were often, if not exactly pleased,  at least somewhat relieved to talk about their loss.

    As I have gotten older, I must admit, I’ve found myself handling far too many obituaries for contemporaries, for people I knew well, but it always remains gratifying to find something significant to add, whether it is a small, telling detail that illuminates character or a notable accomplishment that reminds the reader of just how much was lost. This has become harder to do as the community has grown, but we try.

    This week I found myself editing an obituary about a 90-year-old man I had never met. His family had given us material about his remarkable professional life. They had little to say about his long connection with this community, however, so I took the time to find out and to add something to what they had given us. I hope they will be satisfied with the result.

    Overfamiliarity with these matters comes at a certain peril, sometimes. A man I know told me something a week or so ago about his wife that was quite wonderful but little known. Because I spend a lot of time working on and thinking about obituaries, I blurted out — with an embarrassing lack of mindfulness — that I was going to write down what he had said and make sure it got in our archives so that it wouldn’t be forgotten when it came time to write her obituary. Naturally, he was quite taken aback, so I quickly added, “Thirty years from now, of course!” Oh, dear.

    I managed to check my tongue before I got around to injecting my plans for my own obituary into the conversation. Although I intend to be around a long, long time before anyone else has to think about it, I’ve had plenty of professional hours to ponder it. Ev Rattray, who was 47 when he died, had written his own obituary in anticipation of his final out. I think I will make it a family tradition.

   The mark is gone now where they laid Yoco Unkenchie. The year was 1653, and a group of Manhansett men were carrying their dead sachem on his final trip from his Shelter Island home to Montauk, where he was to be buried.

    Yoco was the chief of Shelter Island’s native people, and it was said that upon his death they disbanded, some to live among the Montauketts, others to join the Shinnecocks.

    Story has it that the place where his bearers laid Yoco’s bier by the side of the path between Sag Harbor and East Hampton was marked by a small hole dug to memorialize the spot.

    In his 1840 “Chronicles of the Town of Easthampton,” David Gardiner wrote that for more than 190 years passing Indians kept the hole as fresh as if it had been lately made. For the six generations that followed Yoco’s passing, he wrote, no member of the Montauketts would pass the spot without removing whatever sticks, stones, or leaves had fallen into it.

    The hole, about 12 inches deep and 18 inches wide, was still there in 1845, near the three-mile stone that set out the distance to Sag Harbor, when the Rev. N.S. Prime paused there.

     An 1899 history of the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church tells the story as well. Its author, the Rev. Jacob E. Mallmann, said he had spoken to an aged Sag Harbor resident who told him that Stephen Talkhouse, for whom the Amagansett bar is named, would kneel down at the spot whenever he passed and clear it with apparent reverence, “following the custom of his forefathers.”

    When the turnpike between the two villages was cut in about 1860, Yoco’s spot was lost. And, as Mr. Mallmann wrote, “the sacred memorial of over 200 years’ standing was obliterated.” My grandmother Jeannette Edwards Rattray said that the place was nevertheless known as Sachem’s Hole forever more, at least into her lifetime.

    New York State erected a marker supposedly on the site in 1935, referring to Yoco as Pocgatticut, a name by which he was called in some records. The familiar yellow-and-blue sign contains several errors, from what I can tell, giving the wrong date and changing Sachem’s Hole to Whooping Boys Hollow.

    I stopped by the sign this week. I had come from Sag Harbor, setting my odometer to zero near the Episcopalian church. As I stood by the side of the road I noticed the thin winter light coming through the stands of oak and pine. Cars’ tires hissed past. Snow remained here and there in a few places. The approach from the north had been up a long grade, I noticed, and I imagined the party that carried the funeral bier being ready for a rest as they reached the crest of the rise.

     Yoco’s burial place in Montauk is lost to time as well, and lost most of all perhaps to the development that began in earnest on its sacred hills in the late 1920s. Even so, it is an astonishing tribute to the man that his people and their descendents maintained a memorial to him for almost two centuries.

   Do people who live in hot climates get into the concept of comfort food, as we do here where winters can be harsh? In my mind, comfort food should be warm, and generally also soft, sticking to the ribs —  with a spoonful of nostalgia stirred in, of course. With temperatures having been unexpectedly low recently, I’ve found myself keeping warm over the stove.

    Enter therefore quiche. I was a little embarrassed to realize that my almost-12-year-old grandson had become proficient at making a dish that I have always been hesitant to attempt. But I didn’t admit to him that I was a novice when, one recent afternoon, the pantry and refrigerator were almost empty — but for some eggs and a pre-made pie shell.

    The truth is, I love cookbooks, although it must be said that I read them more for entertainment than to follow directions. The quiche recipes I perused called for things I didn’t have on hand (ham and gruyere, for example), and I didn’t fancy a trip to the grocery store over slick roads. But the fine print suggested using whatever was on hand, so instead of announcing we had nothing for dinner that night, I made a quiche with a sauteed mix of onions, green pepper, and mushrooms, along with a goat-cheese filling. It was easy. Never fear the quiche!

    On another frigid day, I found myself cozily reading “At Oma’s Table,” a Jewish-cookery book by Doris Schechter — a friend of a friend — when a recipe for  Flanken With Vegetables caught my eye. It called for short ribs, turnips, parsnips, and a new jar of Gold’s horseradish. I went a bit overboard at the market on the vegetables and wound up with a huge amount of stock in addition to dinner for four. Those who shared the meal thought it a little bland, but, nostalgia being what it is, I liked it a lot.

    (Anyway, if you ask me, “slightly bland” is practically a requirement of the best comfort dishes. How else would you characterize the dense, stodgy, classic mac and cheese, or mashed potatoes — which, by popular acclaim, are the ultimate American comfort foods?)

    The vast quantity of beef-vegetable broth leftover from the flanken presented something of a challenge. After pondering the variables, I put most of it to work as the base of the best lentil soup I ever made . . . with a little help from Mollie Katzen’s original “Moosewood Cookbook.” In addition to the starchy favorites mentioned above, soup — glorious, hot soup — is a standby for winter comfort. Where would we all be without chicken noodle?

    There is one old-time, local comfort food, however, that I am long overdue to make again: samp, the hulled and dried kernels of corn that were a once-upon-a-time staple of the East End diet. I never made it the old-fashioned way, as a porridge served with milk, but many years ago developed a recipe that called for the broth that results when you braise a ham, French-style. Perhaps if the weather stays nasty into February, we’ll have samp for Valentine’s Day. Not terribly romantic, I admit. But heartwarming? Yes.

   I’m not a big fan of heart-shaped jewelry. I find it juvenile, so I wasn’t too upset when a heart-linked gold bracelet my husband gave me one year for Valentine’s Day went missing while I was wearing it. I might wear my heart on my sleeve but never around my neck, on my wrist, or ring finger.

    As is my luck, a friend of my daughter’s found it about eight months later on a wooded path I used to get to the cliffs at Camp Hero in Montauk. It was a bit crushed but still wearable. Nonetheless, I threw it in my jewelry box along with the other odd bits of gold jewelry that I owned. Hearts, gold or silver, stay tucked away. If it’s a heart-shaped box filled with chocolate-covered nuts, it will also stay tucked away, hidden actually, so I can savor them whenever one of my frequent chocolate cravings kick in.

    Once the price of gold soared, I started looking at my trinkets in a whole new light, wondering what they may be worth if I sold them. Winter in Montauk will do that to you. Now, I’ve become obsessed and have started studying almost everything I touch for its resale value.

    Since the experts have said we need more green and black tea in our lives, I’ve started drinking diet Snapple. As I sip from the bottle, I learn a lot from the little tidbits of information inside the Snapple caps, but what I really think about is if the bottle will be worth money in 50 years.

    I’ve learned that brain waves can power an electric train, which might be useful to the people who live near the Montauk train station who complain about the constant hum of the idling engines, especially in the summer months. Imagine if they could use their brain waves to move the trains about 5,000 feet west? Ready, all together now, concentrate and move that annoying train.

    But I digress. My husband and I recently sold a signed piece of art that the artist had given to us for Christmas one year. The piece was buried in a book in the space under my bookshelves, with a bunch of assorted candles, surf magazines my son has been featured in, old VCR tapes, and books. We sold it for a few thousand dollars and later learned on the Internet that it was worth about 10 times more than that.

    It makes we wonder what else we can sell. (Yes, it’s that bad out here in Montauk in winter.) I look at everything now with dollar signs in my eyes. Will the glass bottle with the swan-like S engraved on it be worth thousands of dollars someday the way old glass Coke bottles are?

    My children wonder why I save so much and I blame it on my mother, who saved nothing. When I returned home to City Island in the Bronx for a visit after my first summer in Montauk, I found my bedroom stripped of everything I owned and was told it had all been thrown away. She also read my diary that was hidden under my mattress, but that’s another column!

    I had some really cool stuff from my hippie days that included long, granny dresses, John Lennon-style sunglasses, a fake fur coat that I wore with my long bell-bottom jeans and a long black cape. I would sell it all on eBay for a chunk of change if I still had it.

    I’ve never been a wheeler-dealer. I left that up to my brother, who attempted to sell my little blue sailboat right out from under me when we were teens. Her name was Bluegirl and even though I had no sails or proper rigging for it, my girlfriends and I would row it out on the water to sunbathe in. My mother stopped the sale, but Bluegirl was eventually lost in a storm.

    It always surprises me when I read in the paper that something sold for quite a bit of money, something that most of us would think useless. A painting that was purchased at a yard sale that sells for $10,000 is everyone’s dream. I have an old wall clock, floral metal trays bought from estate sales, and a complete set of Waverly novels that were written in the 1800s that I’m holding on to so they’re worth even more when I decide to sell.

    I am currently negotiating with a New York City dealer on a book owned by my sister that was written by Theodore Roosevelt and is autographed by him. It’s all about big game hunting, which he took great pleasure in. But it’s disturbing how he describes killing wild animals. I told my sister that if it sells I expect a commission or at the very least a dinner at Gosman’s restaurant when it opens.

    My recent sale of the artist’s piece and the price I saw it could have gone for has made me greedy and I’m saving even more stuff. My daughters really give me a hard time. “You never use it,” they claim, while telling me to throw out perfectly good stuff.

    What they don’t know is that my grandmother’s elaborately embossed punch bowl from Germany that I was lucky enough to receive after her death will one day be their inheritance. I think it’s worth a lot of money, but then again I’m eyeing Snapple bottles and crushed bracelets, so what do I know?

    If I decide to sell the punch bowl sooner, I’ll be moving to an island somewhere warm and will leave the house and all the junk in it to them. That will be their inheritance, and I’ll get even for the mean things they’ve said to me over the years.

   Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   We are in flux. Though we’d love to hold on to those whom we love, it can’t be done. That much of them lives on in us is the most we can hope for. The body is gone, though the spirit, to the extent that it was transmitted to us and to the extent that we received it, remains, and, in the end, it is only the spirit that is real, I think; as real as the grass, the trees, the rocks, the hills, and the sea.

    “It comes in waves,” Mary said of her mourning in the days following the death of her mother, as apt an allusion as can be imagined. The waves are high-pitched, though, frankly, I told her, I thought it would be worse, that when the time came she would slump to the floor in grief. “Well, I am on the floor,” she said, “inside.”

    Meanwhile, she has been working at living. There are duties with which her mother entrusted her that she must carry out. These take up quite a bit of her time. And then there is work itself, which I’ve found in such times to be a blessing. And then there is the family, the older, younger, and youngest generations.

    “How’s she doing?” Kathy, who each week recreates our newspaper, asked.

    “She’s carrying on, better than I thought she would,” I said.

    “We’ve got no choice,” Kathy said sympathetically.

    The kids’ reactions have been striking. Our daughter Emily’s 6-year-old son, Jack, said, when told, “Grandma equals Infinity.”

    I remember Emily, at just about the same age, saying, when I told her that her grandfather, my father, had died, “I feel like a broken umbrella.”

    And Ella, our daughter Georgie’s 4-year-old daughter, said to Mary as they went into her bedroom one recent night, “Nana’s in the stars now. . . . Come, let’s look!”

   Last week, when I was writing about the poignant story of Yoco Unkenchie’s final journey from Shelter Island to his Montauk burying ground, and the spot between Sag Harbor and East Hampton where his funeral bier was briefly laid, I thought how sad it was that knowledge of where his body was finally placed had been long lost.

    It is said that Gravesend Avenue in Montauk is so called because of the number of Native American burials encountered there by workmen in the 1920s. That may well be apocryphal; when the Montauk Development Company laid out roads in the hamlet, they grouped them by letter of the alphabet without much ado about local references. Then there also is a question of whether the burial ground of the time is really on the east side of Lake Montauk in the place known as Indian Field.

    The poet Walt Whitman, writing in an 1861 edition of the Brooklyn Standard, had this to say about Montauk: “It was the sacred burial place of the east Long Island Indians — their Mecca . . . Wyandance lived there. The remains of the rude citadel occupied by this chieftain are yet to be seen, surrounded by the innumerable Indian grave hollows. It was called Duan-no-to-wouk.”

    Wyandance, or Wyandanch, was a younger brother of Yoco Unkenchie, also known as Poggatacut, whom he succeeded as leader of the eastern Long Island tribes in 1653. Wyandanch was allied with Lion Gardiner, of the island that bears his name, and he granted Gardiner what is today Smithtown at a time of conflict between the Montauketts and Naragansetts. Wyandanch’s dealings with the settlers and other native tribes is described in detail by John A. Strong in the collection “Northeastern Indian Lives.”

    My grandmother Jeannette Edwards Rattray in her book “Montauk: Three Centuries of Romance, Sport, and Adventure” wrote: “Most graves in Indian Field cemetery are marked only by rough field stones, set in circles deep in the tangled grass. . . .”

    Between Fort Hill, where the Montauketts built a palisade redoubt 180 feet square, and Signal Hill, the site of the Montauk Manor, is Council Rock, where, the story goes, the tribe met for meetings. Wyandanch died in 1659, the victim of poison, Gardiner said.

    Wyandanch had lived his last years in North Neck, on the high ground on the west side of the lake, overlooking Fort Pond, according to a 1651 reference. This observation from the time leads me to imagine that both he and his brother were buried there, and not in Indian Field.

    The precise location of Wyandanch’s “citadel,” as Whitman put it, and his resting place are gone to time, as is his brother’s. Little remains to remember these men, who tried to navigate two worlds: their own and the Europeans’.