Dan's Papers - October 13, 2006 - Take a hike with Ken Kindler

Naturalist Bill Mathews invited me to accompany him as he previewed trails in preparation for his Westhampton Beach School District adult education course, Walking Tours of Greater Westhampton. We met on Speonk Riverhead Road, one mile south of CR 51. On the left side of the road, just before a curve, three vertical metal pipes mark the entrance to the trail. These trails are not blazed; when I walk here I always carry a copy of Larry Paul's East Pine Barrens map (LIGTC 631-360-0753).

Bill and I headed east on Middle Line of Toppings Purchase (MLTP). We followed this straight woods road for almost two miles. Naked, bleached tree trunks, relics of the Great Wildfire of 1995, tower above scrub oak and young pitch pine trees. Early succession groundcover, such as heather, bearberry, and reindeer lichen, is plentiful. A short distance into the walk, we crossed over an illegal north/south-running ATV trail, which seems to follow a boundary line between parcels of land. We used part of this "boundary trail" near the end of our walk.

Suddenly we found ourselves among mature oak and pinewoods. Just before this transition area, the woods road cuts across a narrow ribbon composed almost exclusively of pitch pine trees. These trees are several years more mature than the trees emerging from the burned area. I expect that from above, it would appear as a mile-long green line describing the boundary of the wildfire. On Larry's map it is labeled as a fire road. We noticed the raised shoulder of soil caused by the bulldozers scraping away the flammable duff down to the mineral soil. A couple of years after the fire, Mindy Block and Kenny Spadafora planted three-year-old pitch pine seedlings in this 15-foot-wide scar. Recently, Kenny and I tried to walk part of this "fire road" and found that the closely planted seedlings have grown into a nearly impenetrable wall. If you wish to learn more about these environmental restoration projects, you can visit their website at www.qualityparks.org.

After a short walk through mature woods, we arrived at an intersection with another woods road, Old West Hampton Road (OWH). If you turn right and walk a short distance south on OWH you will find a panoramic view of the now verdant burn area. If we followed OWH north, we could have cut the loop we were walking in half, but we intended to visit the pygmy pines along the way. Continuing east on MLTP, we noticed the uneven trail tread caused by motorized vehicles. The large oaks began to disappear and were replaced by scrub oak. Smaller and smaller trees were gradually replacing the large pines. As we grew close to Sunrise Highway we found ourselves looking down on a mature tree canopy.

After following a trail running east, parallel to the State DOT wire fence, about a quarter-mile, we found a woods road opening to our left. This is an extension of the DEC red trail. It intersects with the Paumanok Path on its way to the DEC red loop a couple of miles north of here. We followed this trail a short distance and turned left onto Main Trail. We could now see the dome of the radar tower one mile away. It sits at an elevation of 250 feet. There are remains of a small trail system that took hikers to several vistas in that area. Mature trees now block these vistas, and the trails are either overgrown or badly churned up by ATVs.

Main Trail crosses over OWH a half-mile north of where MLTP intersected it. From here the trail angles directly west. To our right, we passed several faintly defined trails running north to the Hampton Hills Golf Course. A mile further, we passed the opening to a barely discernable trail leading north, to the old vistas. About 400 feet after passing the opening to the vista access trail, we turned left and headed south on the same unnamed boundary trail we had cut across earlier.

Once again we came to a transition area with mature woods on one side and an area of re-growth on the other. And, once again, we saw the dense ribbon of trees bordered by a mound of earth. We were intersecting the firebreak west of where we had walked earlier. Bill and I continued south, turned right onto MLTP and soon found our cars parked along Speonk Riverhead Road.

Ken Kindler is a Trails and Open Space Advocate working to help the trails groups and land managers care for our "Natural Island." If you would like to learn more about our trails or help care for them, visit the Hiking Long Island website. www.hike-li.org.