This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the Paumanok Path. It's a 125-mile-long trail that links forests and parks across Suffolk County, from Rocky Point in the west to Montauk Point in the east.
This month I finished hiking the path. This isn't a heroic achievement, I hasten to say. The walking is easy. Unlike the Appalachian Trail, which is nearly 20 times as long and follows a spine of mountains from Georgia to Maine, the Paumanok Path is mostly flat and sandy. In 2021, an ultramarathoner did the whole thing in 25 hours, 42 minutes. It took me about two unhurried years to piece it together.
Still, what a wonderful experience. To do the whole path, I set foot in places I never would have gone otherwise. I scrambled over and under dead pitch pines in the Rocky Point Pine Barrens State Preserve, just east of Port Jefferson. I checked out the locks on the Shinnecock Canal. I yelled out to ice fishermen last winter on Big Fresh Pond in North Sea. I used a wooden bridge to cross the reedy Tanbark Creek at the southern end of Three Mile Harbor. I walked on bay beaches on Napeague, dove into Hither Woods and Hither Hills, and marveled at the big gun batteries in Camp Hero.
A highlight was the day last spring that I did the easternmost section of the hike, which goes along the bluffs on the ocean side of Montauk. The trail took me down onto the enormous boulders that protect the Lighthouse from the ocean, wrapping around the Lighthouse counterclockwise before finishing at the visitor center. Not many tourists that day, but I talked to a couple of guys who had ridden their bikes to Montauk from somewhere up the Island.
Part of the magic of the Paumanok Path is its near invisibility. It's marked by white blazes on trees that are easy to miss if you aren't looking for them. You could live right next to it and be unaware of its existence. I can tell you that even some people who do walk on it aren't aware that their little neighborhood section is part of something much bigger.
I think of the Paumanok Path as a necklace of emeralds. Its designers creatively linked large and small patches of preserved state, county, town, village, and land trust properties. The path is almost entirely through woods except for road stretches just west of the canal, around the Shinnecock Hills golf course, and in downtown Montauk. That so much of it is offroad is amazing considering how densely populated this area is.
Today the trail is maintained mostly by volunteers. I give huge Thanksgiving thanks to them, especially to the indefatigable work crew from the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society (on whose board I serve). They tackle a different trail section each week, year round, with loppers, weed whackers, chain saws, and other gear. (Not just the Paumanok Path.)
If you're interested in hiking the Paumanok Path or another trail, I suggest buying maps of East Hampton and Southampton, which are sold in the Town Halls. (Each town is covered by two maps, east and west.) And consider joining the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society or the Southampton Trails Preservation Society, both of which lead hikes frequently.
Robert Moor, in the prologue to his excellent 2016 book, "On Trails: An Exploration," writes that there is a wisdom in trails, which evolve to serve the needs of the people who walk on them. "In bewildering times — when all the old ways seem to be dissolving into mire — it serves us well to turn our eyes earthward and study the oft-overlooked wisdom beneath our feet," he writes.
This Thanksgiving I'll be celebrating with family, but a little piece of my mind will be out on the Paumanok Path, coursing through the oaks and pines and huckleberries under gray skies.
Peter Coy has been a journalist with The Associated Press, BusinessWeek and its successor, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Opinion section of The New York Times. He lives in East Hampton.