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Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve, NY
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| no partners | | Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve came strongly recommended (by my best hiking partner, my daughter), so I took an early morning trip out The recommendation proved sound. Now, Caumsett doesn’t feature rigorous treks or towering ascents. Rather, a pleasant venue, fit for relaxing strolls, with smoothly rolling meadows, gently curving shorelines, and undulating forest lands.
A bit of background. Caumsett sits on the northern shore of Long Island New York, just into Suffolk County. On its northern edge the Preserve borders Long Island Sound, and in terms of location it sits nearby a similar preserve, Target Rock Wildlife Preserve. In its prior life, Caumsett served as an estate for a variety of entrepreneurs and wealthy. With that history, the Park features not only nature but a variety of manors, residences, stables and other structures. Its role as an estate ended in the 1960’s, when the state bought the property, developed it as a park, and now has established it as a nature preserve, particularly for birds, but more broadly to maintain biodiversity of animals and plants. Even with that, the park offers an array of human activities – fishing, horse back riding, bicycling, cross-country skiing, bird watching, and just plain jogging, walking and hiking. From my brief observation during my visit, the park seems to serve all those purposes – human recreation, nature habitat, wildlife preserve – equally and in balance.
As noted, I started my visit early – the parking lot was basically empty when I arrived. I headed north from parking (one could start out going east), noting but not stopping at the collection of stables and related buildings just off the parking lot. As I went north, I passed through abundant thick, mature forests, broken in places by occasional open grassy meadows. In one of those meadows, the morning sun used the gap created by the meadow to light up a sprawling isolated tree, the sun’s rays turning the tree’s twisted, barren branches a fiery orange.
Next up, the salt water marsh in the northwest corner. Not scenic. Matted grass, blackened mud, still water. But ecologically important, I understand, as the marsh pulls dirt and contaminants from the Long Island Sound. So if not scenic, the marsh is functional.
From the salt water marsh, the trail turned east onto the shoreline along Long Island Sound. Wonderful. The shoreline featured a wide, flat expanse of sandy beach, strewn with an abundant collection of pebbles, rocks and boulders. Inland from the water line, a couple hundred feet back, a striking, even towering, sandy embankment rose, at times fifty feet tall, not a dune, but hill proper to an upper plateau. Looking closely, I surmised (my theory later buttressed by a placard I saw a week later at neighboring Target Rock) that the boulders and rocks strewn about did not wash up. Rather, the rocks and boulders became deposited as rain, tide and wind slowly wrestled the embankment from under the thick matting of roots holding it steady. Further the embankment of soil and sand, and rocks and boulders within, arrived eons ago via glacial transport, and even further, the forest on top represented the slow progression of the forest from grassland to mature tree stands, a progression over thousands of years.
With that in mind, I walked along the beach, in admiration of its scale and form, the gentle waves of Long Island Sound rolling in, their sounds mixing with calls of the numerous birds and water fowl, as well as the sound, interestingly, of sand and pebbles cascading down the slope of the embankment, those pebbles and sand coming loose from the action of the wind.
I followed the beach all the way to the east side of the park. There the trail turned south, bringing one to a large inland lake. The wind grew calm at times, allowing nice clear reflections on the lake's surface. Across the lake, on its southern shore, the land climbed up a smooth hill, a hill upon which the last of the estate owners had built a mansion in the 1920’s. Very stately. The mansion, a rather classic two story, brick manor, situated as it was on the top of the hill, provided a wide view across a large expanse meadow and forest, as well as of course, the scenic inland lake, plus the ocean beyond. Quite elegant. The flow of the view, however, became interrupted by a sign and fence, right at the hill top, directly in front of the mansion. The sign, with its message fortified by the wood slat fence, carried a prohibition to cyclists, banning all riding on or down the hill. For good reason. The crest of the hill already showed severe rutting and erosion from what almost certainly was past cycling, and maybe winter sledding.
I continued on south, the walk back to the parking lot now traveling on paved pathways (the previous trails were dirt.) And in the slightly warming morning, a good array of individuals had arrived, walking, running, cycling, on scooters, just enjoying. With that I arrived back at the parking lot, and as the park had once been an estate, and was situated in a decidedly suburban area, I took advantage of a modern amenity, a rest room with flush toilets and running water. |
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