Imagine this: a balmy evening at a North Fork vineyard, with fields of sunflowers stirring to operatic strains emanating from an open-air pavilion.

Or this: "La Boheme," sung by internationally renowned performers in a tent next to Mecox Bay, while your feet shuck shoes and seek the tickle of meadow grass.

And this: Puccini, Verdi, and Strauss operas enacted on a theater stage not 100 miles west but here on the South Fork, at Southampton College's Fine Arts Theatre.

It will happen once again this summer, when, on June 28, Opera of the Hamptons begins its sixth season of productions here. "Die Fledermaus" will be the first, at Pindar Vineyards in Peconic.

"Die Fledermaus"

The company draws its members from opera troupes worldwide, including, in the United States, the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan, and the Santa Fe Opera.

Many have performed here in the past, though Beverly Hill, the lead soprano in "Fledermaus," will sing on the East End for the first time, after a Vienna debut. So, too, will Richard Holmes, the show's leading baritone, a veteran of a number of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas staged in New York City.

Johann Strauss's comic operetta will be performed in modern dress and sung in English, with a discussion of the story preceding the show. It will be staged with dramatic action, costumes, and props, but minimal scenery, at a pavilion behind the Pindar Vineyard winery, which can be enclosed in case of rain.

"Il Trovatore"

Dr. Herodotus Damianos, the owner of the vineyard and an opera lover, has donated the use of the pavilion for the past several years. Some of his Peconic wines will be served to visitors along with cheese.

The troupe will perform Verdi's "Il Trovatore" - a tale of love, jealousy, mistaken identity, and a gypsy's curse - at the vineyard on Aug. 17. Tickets for each of the two shows are priced at $25.

One of the founders of Opera in the Hamptons, Barbara Giancola of Brooklyn, said the enterprise was a "natural."

Right from its beginning, six years ago, she knew it "would go," said the mezzo-soprano. "I felt very strongly" about it, she said.

Rehearsals

Now, Ms. Giancola and Martha Campanella, who has a house in Southampton, along with Susan Behn and Peter Moreo, both residents of Hampton Bays, are the active members of the board of directors.

They gather the singers, who work on a "highly professional level," Ms. Giancola said. The performers meet for seven rehearsals in New York or Brooklyn before they appear here.

Franco Gentilesca, the company's stage director, and Atarah Hazzan, the music director, are Opera of the Hamp tons veterans. Both are "re nown ed in their particular fields," said Ms. Giancola.

The company can be hired to perform at private functions, she noted.

Young Artists

Last year the group instituted a young artist program. The group now chooses between one and three young performers each year to work with the company.

One of this year's choices is Debra Anne Valentin, a lyric coloratura soprano. Ms. Valentin, a winner of the New York Vocal Artists Competition, holds a master's in music from the Juilliard School. She will perform in the June 28 "Die Fledermaus."

David Urbon, a tenor who will sing in "Il Trovatore," the second Pindar Vineyards show, is the other young artist to be featured. Mr. Urbon was a winner at the Metropolitan auditions in Los Angeles, and has sung with the Cincinnati and Orlando Operas and in Vienna.

College Stage

Three shows will be staged at Southampton College: "Die Fledermaus," on July 19; Puccini's romantic tragedy "Madama Butterfly," on Aug. 9, and "Il Trovatore" on Aug. 23.

Ticket prices there are $40 for reserved seating or $25 for general admission, though season subscriptions covering all three operas are available at a discounted price.

"What Is Opera?"

Opera of the Hamptons' performance of "La Boheme" by Puccini - the abridged version of the tragic love tale - will help the Siena Spirituality Center in Water Mill celebrate its 65th year of ministry at the Villa Maria property. The show will take place under a tent on the lawn there on Aug. 3, with tickets costing $40.

For children and adults who need to ask the question, "What Is Opera?" there will be a three-part lecture series in the fall, sponsored by the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, that should provide an introduction to the genre.

The free one-and-a-half hour talks will be held at Veterans Memorial Hall in Southampton on Oct. 17 and Oct. 24 and on Nov. 7. Ms. Hazzan and one of the singers will demonstrate aspects of opera at each session.

Meanwhile, however, the uninitiated should find enjoyment in this summer's operas even without knowing the score.

With the price of restaurant meals on the South Fork following the stock market climb - that is, through the roof - when diners find a place that gives good value for money, they are often tempted to keep the good news to themselves.

One well-kept secret is the Annex in Wainscott, which, while it caters largely to gays, increasingly draws others to its good food and attractive renovated barn, where they are made to feel completely welcome.

When the present owners took over a few years ago, the seating area was enlarged. Now, a striking brass-railed staircase soars above the bar to an additional dining area on the second floor. There is also an attractive glass solarium which provides extra dining space on the ground floor.

First Impressions

First impressions count: Water glasses were immediately filled with iced water freshened with a little lemon juice, the bread was excellent, the martinis gargantuan, and the presentation throughout was pretty.

The appetizers we tried were all exceptionally good, particularly the soup of the day - a spicy fresh tomato which had, I think, a cooked base thickened with cream to which finely chopped, fresh (and good) tomatoes had been added. As soups go, it was as good as you can get.

For $8 you can get a plate of calamari that would easily do as a main course. The coating was light and crunchy, the calamari tender and not chewy, and it was served with a spicy rouille that I would dearly like to copy at home it was so good.

Imaginative

The other two appetizers were also very imaginative - the sauteed exotic mushrooms with fried goat cheese over greens were full of unusual flavors and textures. The asparagus, prosciutto, and goat cheese tortilla wrap was also a winner, though the pretty green tortilla was a little on the heavy side.

Several dishes were served with salad and, even though the days of iceberg lettuce served with chunks of hard tomato and unpeeled cucumber are behind us almost everywhere, it's worth mentioning its high quality, freshness, and delicate dressing.

Moving on to the entrees, we tried sliced steak on toasted garlic bread. Served medium rare as ordered, with very garlicky bread (made with real garlic - no cheating), sauteed red onions, and exceptional french fries, at $12 this is a bargain.

One of the specials of the day was salmon wrapped in a golden shell of overlapping paper-thin potatoes. When the shell was cut, the imprisoned juices of the perfectly cooked salmon were released in a heady aroma - delicious. It was served with, for me, a rather-too-healthy mixture of barley and wheat.

The only dish we were disappointed in was the pasta of the day. It looked wonderful, with its giant shrimp, sausage, and little bow ties, but it turned out to be lackluster. The veal milanese, on the other hand, was fine, with lightly breaded, tender cutlets, garlic smashed potatoes, and the most attractive presentation of a variety of salad greens.

The Annex's generous portions left us little room for dessert. We tried just one, a key lime pie, which was only so-so, and an excellent cappuccino.

Conversation Possible

There is a thoughtful, well-balanced wine list from which we chose a well-priced and well-liked 1993 Robert Mondavi cabernet sauvignon.

It also should be mentioned that the dining room has excellent acoustics. What a pleasure to be able to hear the conversation at your table even in the midst of a lively, chattering crowd!

Given the quality of the food and the prices - appetizers between $6 and $10 and entrees running from $10 for a burger to a high end of $21 - the Annex and its chef, Darlene Smith, deserve to be more widely known.

Because the East End has been home to controversial and groundbreaking figures in art from Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning to David Salle and Julian Schnabel, it is fitting that Southampton College has chosen an artistic pioneer to become its second University Professor.

Brian O'Doherty, who creates his art under the name of Patrick Ireland, is a protean figure in the contemporary cultural worlds of art, film, video, television, art criticism, and writing, both fiction and nonfiction.

An early member of the conceptual art movement, he has had more than 40 solo exhibits in this country and Europe since the early 1960s, including at the Brooklyn Museum and the National Museum of American Art in Washington.

Serve As Catalyst

As a University Professor, Mr. O'Doherty will be based at Southampton College but teach at all three campuses of Long Island University. His appointment, like that of the first University Professor, the essayist and public television commentator Roger Rosenblatt, is designed to not only lure potential students but attract more involvement at the college by the extraordinary wealth of artistic and literary talent on the South Fork.

The university's president, David J. Steinberg, said he hoped that Mr. O'Doherty's appointment would "be the catalyst that creates a nationally recognized center for students interested in the fine arts and media, bringing together the artists now on our faculty with other notable artists in this region."

Ex-N.E.A. Director

For 19 years Mr. O'Doherty was the director of film, radio, and television programs at the National Endowment for the Arts. He wrote and directed the documentary "Hopper's Silence," about the artist Edward Hopper, and has written and produced many series about art for television.

Many of the artist's exhibits have involved individual peformances or site-specific installations, such as a huge blue labyrinth at the Elvehjem Museum of Art in Wisconsin and a series of "rope drawings" in which ropes are strung between floor, walls, and ceiling in gridlike formations which dictate the shapes that are then painted on the walls.

Mr. O'Doherty, who was born in the village of Ballaghaderrin in Ireland, adopted his working name in 1972 "until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland."

Former Times Critic

He attended medical school at Trinity College, Dublin, and did postgraduate studies in the physiology of perception at Cambridge and Harvard before stepping across to the field of the visual arts.

According to Jan van der Marck of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Mr. O'Doherty "brings a scientific attitude and probing intellect, as well as historic literacy and aesthetic awareness to everything he touches." He praised the artist's "highly original use of codes, electronic and linguistic, to impart concrete information through abstract means."

Mr. O'Doherty was an art critic with The New York Times in the 1960s and editor of Art in America in the early '70s. Since 1969 he has been an adjunct professor at Barnard College, teaching art writing and the art film. His wife, Barbara Novak, is an Altschul Professor of art history at Barnard and Columbia.

Can't Wait

"I'm excited about the students, the staff, and the opportunities at Southampton College," Mr. O'Doherty said.

"Among those opportunities is the wonderful task of bringing the students into contact with the many distinguished artists and filmmakers in the community, which is unparalleled in this country for its concentration of talents," he said. "I cannot wait to join my colleagues in developing the students' potential in the visual arts and film/video, the areas closest to my heart."

Mr. O'Doherty will begin teaching in the fall.

With the East Hampton Town Board about to name a date for a general airing of the Amagansett Corridor Study, it is time to take a closer look at some of the study's recommendations.

The 300-page report is an exhaustive document which seems to have left no stone unturned. The town got its money's worth on this one. That is not to say that its conclusions are without flaws.

The consultant's mission was to determine how best to protect the Montauk Highway, from Pantigo Place to the beginning of Napeague, from the dreaded "highway sprawl" so prevalent elsewhere in the nation and to keep Amagansett itself oriented toward people rather than automobiles.

West of the hamlet, the study is on target. It protects existing nurseries, allows for limited business use of residential properties to encourage working from home and bed and breakfast establishments, and suggests narrowing the definition of neighborhood business zones to distinguish them from central business districts.

To the east, however, the recommendations are less successful. The study recommends a "planned commercial district" for the entire north side of the highway from the Amagansett train station to Moran's Country Store (formerly Gray's). Such zoning would encourage exactly what the town hopes to discourage - the spread of what planners call "slurb."

New commercial growth has to be accommodated somewhere, but sanctioning further strip zoning rather than seeking to centralize retail uses would be counterproductive, even if developed in good taste. The acreage to the north of Amagansett Main Street would be a better alternative. "Walkability" could be maintained.

The Bistrian family has long hoped to create more business zoning on its almost 43-acre tract behind the village core. This vacant land is zoned residentially, with 10 acres set aside for affordable housing. The tract adjoins Amagansett's municipal parking lot on the south, Windmill Lane on the west, and an almost 20-acre residential parcel, also with affordable housing potential, on the east.

The study recommends that the entire tract become an agricultural zone with provisions for affordable housing. This is a mistake. If the community really wants to keep Amagansett Main Street walkable as well as attractive, the way to do it is to build more retail stores within the core, not in a satellite district outside it.

Why not allow more retail development around the municipal parking lot and a mix of affordable and other multifamily housing, along with open areas and greens, on its perimeters? Not only would Amagansett have a convenient, clearly demarcated village center, but Springs residents, whose business establishments are few, could drive there, park, do some shopping, and leave without ever having to cope with, or add to, Main Street traffic.

The Bistrian property and the land east of it on the north side of Main Street should be rezoned in part to neighborhood business. This is especially suitable now that the town has prohibited supermarkets and put a 10,000-square-foot cap on the size of stores in these zones. The study further recommends eliminating many high-intensity uses now allowed.

What the study calls a "scenic vista" behind the parking lot is neither scenic nor a vista in the usual sense: It cannot be seen at all from the highway, and from Windmill Lane it is marred by power lines and train tracks. And it has not been active farmland for a long time.

As for the proposed planned commercial district east of the hamlet, the study suggests strict guidelines for construction: landscaped 100-foot setbacks as buffers between highway and stores, campus-style layouts, and a limit of one business per building. In other words, the study makes recommendations to ameliorate the aesthetic of strip malls while encouraging continued strip development.

This is reasonable for the six-acre parcel already earmarked for commercial development between the V&V service station and what had been a Chinese restaurant - but not for the rest of the land. Six acres is large enough to accommodate businesses such as a supermarket, large drugstore, and the like. But no matter what aesthetic controls were in place, expanding retail uses to the east would continue to spill development outside the village core and contribute to highway sprawl.

The rest of the proposed new commercial district, 19.7 acres abutting Bunker Hill Road, is zoned for residential use and affordable housing. While the study recommends central business zoning, it states that affordable housing is suitable for the parcel as well.

In discussing affordable housing, the study recommends that two-family houses be added to the code in addition to multifamily buildings. That is a good idea - except that segregating affordable housing from other multifamily complexes, especially in a commercial zone, is distasteful.

One other note: The consultants seem to have taken the pulse of the neighborhood in recommending against a change of zone to allow an inn and restaurant just east of Windmill Lane and more or less behind Miss Amelia's Cottage. This proposal, which includes an attractive greensward off Main Street in place of two small shops, seems in keeping with the study, and we see no reason why an application for a change of zone should not go to public hearing. The East Hampton Town Board would decide the fate of the property after hearing from all sides.

The character of the East End depends as much on our hamlet centers as on our beaches and open spaces. These centers should be convenient and pleasant places in which to live and shop, walk and bicycle, or sit on a bench. Village life is much to be prized. Any plan for Amagansett must make this its goal.

It would be hard to imagine a more ardent keeper-of-the-flame than Elaine Steinbeck, the spirit behind the global celebrations engendered by her late husband John's literary legacy.

Shuttling between Steinbeck festivals all over the world, the Nobel laureate's widow in the last year alone visited Singapore, Bali, Java, Hong Kong, Paris, London, and Louisville, Ky., to speak at events honoring the great writer of proletarian fiction.

"I represent John, you know," she said in her warm Texas drawl during an interview at her house in Sag Harbor. "I'll travel anyplace that wants me." The annual festival in the writer's hometown of Salinas, Calif., naturally wants her every year.

For The People

Last year she charmed Bruce Springsteen into giving a concert to benefit the Steinbeck Research Center at San Jose State University. His latest album is "The Ghost of Tom Joad," named for "The Grapes of Wrath" hero.

"That was a big load of tax-free money," Ms. Steinbeck said with relish. "Bruce was a great fan who felt that John wrote for the people just as he sings for people. He knows John's work perfectly."

What with all her jetting about, Ms. Steinbeck has learned how to spot her husband's name on the spine of a book in almost any language except, oddly, Japanese. When she asked a Tokyo bookseller if he carried the works of John Steinbeck, "Of course," came the reply. "We have 'The Angry Raisins.' "

Steinbeck Vs. Albee

Such startling cultural exchanges have tickled her for years. After Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962, President Kennedy asked him to visit Russia as the guest of the Soviet Writers Union.

"John agreed to go if he could take along Edward Albee, whom he'd never met, and kick up a little dust," she said. "We spent three months behind the Iron Curtain, John and Edward, the older and younger writers, disagreeing publicly about almost everything."

"They made the front page of Pravda: 'U.S. Sends Dissenting Artists!' The Russians were embarrassed by their outspokenness. It was great fun, and the two men were wonderful together."

Passion For Theater

Ms. Steinbeck began life with a passion for the theater she still has today. Born and bred in Fort Worth, she was reading her way through Shakespeare by third grade and acting in all the school plays. Supportive parents took her to every show that came to town.

As a senior in high school she attended a famous touring company's production of "Hamlet."

"I went crazy. I went backstage and met all the actors, and I held Yorick's skull in my hands. Then I ran home to Poppa. 'Shakespeare didn't mean for us to read his work,' I told him. 'He meant for us to see it and hear it; it wasn't even published when he was alive.' My father thought that was the smartest thing!"

Backstage Talent

Ms. Steinbeck went on to study acting at the University of Texas School of Drama in Austin, where she met a lot of theater people, including Eli Wallach, and married her first husband, Zachary Scott.

A job offer from New York's Theater Guild, big Broadway producers at the time, brought the couple to the Westport (Conn.) County Playhouse, Mr. Scott as an actor and she as an assistant stage manager.

"I wanted to act, originally, and I told Zach I was as good as he was," she said. "But I was also good at the technical part. In those days there were no TV soaps or commercials, and if you didn't have a job in the theater you had to work at Macy's - the kiss of death."

"I was told the backstage crews - the carpenters, electricians, and prop people - would never listen to a woman. But I found that since I knew what I was doing, they would so listen, and I was never without a job."

Tennessee's Retort

She assistant stage-managed Tennessee Williams's first play, "Battle of Angels," which was so bad it closed out of town. "The language was there, but he didn't know theater yet."

"We all read him our notes after the opening in New Haven - Tennessee loved me to tell this story - and when we were done criticizing his play, he said, 'I put it down thataway, and that's the only way I know how to put it down.' End of show. He'd never heard the word 're-write.' "

Later, the great playwright asked her to add this to the story: "Tennessee finally realized he hadn't paid enough attention to audience reaction, so he started going to the theater and listening to audiences. Then he went home and wrote 'The Glass Menagerie.' "

She laughed heartily. "As if it were that easy!"

World War II brought the Scotts to Hollywood, where Mr. Scott filled in for some of the movie stars who were serving in the armed forces. "All the film people lived in a heap and never saw anyone outside the heap. I couldn't stand that; my passion was still the theater."

Returning to her stage-managing career in New York, Ms. Steinbeck worked her way up until she became the second woman ever to manage a show on Broadway, as stage manager of the original "Oklahoma!"

"I guess if you can say that, you've done all right," she said.

Then she met John Steinbeck, and they fell in love. "He was divorced. I wasn't divorced, but I was sad; I had no business being married in the first place."

Steinbeck Country

He drove her all around Steinbeck country, pointing out where he'd written "Tortilla Flat," "Of Mice and Men," "Cannery Row," and the epic "The Grapes of Wrath," among other stories about life in the dust bowl states during the Depression and among the itinerant farm laborers of California.

In Salinas, they came to his childhood home. "I was born in that room, and wrote in that room," he told her. "I don't remember a time I didn't write."

When they were married in 1950, his children from a former marriage became her children, too. The couple lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side near Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller, "in this wonderful atmosphere where everyone was writing plays and novels."

To Sag Harbor

Mr. Steinbeck sat down to write "East of Eden" the minute they were settled. Averse to reading fiction while he was writing it, he asked her to sample the latest novels. He was already a fan of Norman Mailer, but along came James Jones's "From Here To Eternity," which she recommended.

" 'Find that young man,' he told me. I did, and Jim and his wife, Gloria, became our fast friends. John was also crazy about Irwin Shaw and lots of other writers. Although he could be unforgiving, he was never jealous. He had nothing but admiration for people who wrote good books."

The Steinbecks bought their house in Sag Harbor in 1955 (the Joneses bought in Bridgehampton), eventually building a little house on a point of land for him to write in. She indicated a small, gazebo-like structure overlooking the water, now something of a shrine. A delegation of five Estonians was expected to visit it later in the day.

Joyous Gard

"John named it Joyous Gard, after the castle where Lancelot took Guinevere," Ms. Steinbeck said. "Then he gave me a little swimming pool for my birthday, and had the workmen pour a dollop of cement on the grass beside it, where he wrote my birthday greeting with a nail, Lancelot's salute to his beloved: 'Lady, I take record of God, in thee I have mine earthly joy. '"

He was a difficult man when he was writing, said Ms. Steinbeck. He never breakfasted with the family, but drove up to Main Street with his standard poodle, Charlie, of "Travels With Charlie," to eat and talk with the fishermen. Then he'd hole up in Joyous Gard with his yellow pads and two dozen sharpened pencils, and work.

"He kept strict hours at his desk," she said. "For a totally uncreative but appreciative person like me, it was a thrilling discipline. That's one reason our marriage was so successful: Some wives think they can write, too, but I never thought that."

Nobel Laureate

News of the Nobel Prize came by accident one morning at the height of the Cuban missile crisis.

"I was frying bacon in the kitchen and told John to switch on the TV to make sure the world was still turning. On my sacred word of honor, the first thing we heard was that he had won the prize for literature. We just stood there and screamed."

"Although John had wanted Graham Greene to get it, he enjoyed it thoroughly. So many letters came in we hired three secretaries to help answer them. John wrote the fun ones himself. He was crazy about Grace Kelly, and wrote her: 'Dear Princess Grace honey....'"

The Third Act

Last winter Ms. Steinbeck suffered two strokes, one in Key West, Fla., and one back in New York. "My doctor had warned me to settle down a little now that I was in my 80s," she said. "I guess he meant it. Thank heavens I wasn't crippled."

Now she plans to rest a little more, but keep her life basically the same. "I'll never marry again. I didn't decide to make John my life, but it just happened. It was fun, and it still is."

She'll answer the enormous correspondence that comes in, travel with family and friends, and talk about her husband's work along the way, lending purpose to the journey.

She'll also indulge her enduring passion for the theater. Both a trustee and a patron of Bay Street Theatre, she is also a close friend of its founders, directors, producers, playwrights, actors, and other guiding lights.

"I'm mad about Bay Street," she said. "This is the third act of my life, and thank God I've got a theater to play it in."

Those who have been watching "American Visions," Robert Hughes's masterly overview of American art on PBS, will almost certainly feel differently about the next exhibit of American landscape painting that comes their way - which might just be "On Site" at the Lizan-Tops Gallery in East Hampton.

For the artists of the young America, which lacked history or heroes, Mr. Hughes argues that it was the spectacular untouched landscape that came to represent the nation. And from the moment the nation's citizens saw those panoramas of untamed splendor by Alfred Bierstadt or by Thomas Cole and the Hudson River painters, they, too, have remained obsessed with the American landscape.

But now the wilderness is tamed, the peaks are trod, the Grand Canyon has been "looked out," and the awesome unknown is featured on a million calendars.

Domestic Scenery

Landscape painting has lost its epic scale, too. The monumental vistas, though they may remain, have been traded for the domestic scenery of field and hillside. This can be seen in the East End landscapes in the Lizan-Tops show, although here one still has the grandeur of the South Fork broad, flat fields and soaring skies.

Ralph Carpentier emphasizes these distinctive features by holding the focal point of each painting - a narrow horizontal strip containing trees, hedges, houses, and barns - in a vise of sky and field. Particularly when those skies are filled with clouds, as in "View From Conklin House II," they almost feel as if they will fall and crush you.

Intimate Scale

David Paulsen has a very interesting group of farmscapes. They, too, have big skies and deep fields anchored by trees and hedges, but they are painted with an amber glow, as if they had been hanging in a smoke-filled room for many years. This has the effect of focusing one's attention on the structural composition of hedge and hill and the division of fields.

All five painters represented in the exhibit treat the sky differently, but Mr. Paulsen, in "Tiska's Farm, Treeline," has a wind-tossed sky with touches of pink, gray, and robin's-egg blue that is particularly comforting.

Francesco Bologna's paintings glow with a love of the East End and people's place in it. Not for him the distant vista, the sweeping sky - what attracts him are old barns, a peeling boat up on chocks, rusting farm machinery, a few twisted trees. He records the intimate details of a way of life that is vanishing almost as fast as the untamable wilderness did.

Simon Parkes's upbeat small scenes of beaches, harbors, and bays with bounding boats and scudding clouds are also on an intimate scale.

Disappearing Beauty

Ty Stroudsberg's paintings are looser, more Impressionistic, and freer with their colors. Swaths of lilac, soft yellow, pink, and peach are anchored by the dark, structural shapes of barns or trees.

There is one grabbingly uplifting painting as you enter the gallery. It is called "Statice Field," but its vernal colors could be the wild lupine, spring rocket, mustard, daisy, coltsfoot, and violet of those splendid brief days when winter is gone and the summer traffic is still a distant nightmare.

Speaking of the South Fork landscape, an introduction to the exhibit says, "Because so many of these precious sites are succumbing to development, these paintings may be regarded as historical documents of the beauty that is disappearing from the East End."

And, sure enough, when you look at the paintings, you find that out of the 35 or so on display, there is not one, not one, that doesn't show the grimy thumb print of human encroachment: the waterways have boats and jetties, the land has barns, tracks, power lines, old machinery, the hard edges of cultivated fields, and the beaches have old snow fences and tracks through the dunes.

If the change in landscape painting is anything to go by, we should fervently support all efforts to protect our countryside. Otherwise, the next landscape show we visit may feature a begonia in a windowbox.

The real estate boom that has enveloped the South Fork over the past 18 months has also been felt in Bridgehampton. But while most past development in the hamlet was centered around old farm fields that lay close to the ocean and south of the Montauk Highway, the focus has shifted northward.

"Scuttlehole Road has become a really desirable and prime, prime area in the Hamptons," said Scott Strough of Strough Real Estate Associates. "It's not only anchored by the Atlantic Golf Club and the beautiful estates, but the farm views and open country feeling of that stretch are what people are looking for."

"It's part of a natural progression of things," said Paul Brennan, a vice president of Sotheby's International Realty. "There's not a hell of a lot of things left south of the highway that are not too expensive."

Large Land Buys

"We're seeing a movement toward a wonderful area north of the highway including Scuttlehole Road, Lumber Lane, and Butter Lane," added Margaret (Peggy) Griffin, manager of Allan Schneider Real Estate's Bridgehampton office.

While houses have been sprouting up in the potato fields that once lined the road, Mr. Brennan said the real action has been "in large tracts of land. Now you have to wait the year, or two years, for the subdivisions to go through."

Many of those subdivisions are of the "reduced density" variety, in which a developer asks for fewer large "estate" lots in exchange for preserving less open space, according to Mr. Brennan.

"It will be a nice characteristic for the area," he said. "I think we've learned over the years that small lots with an ag reserve don't lend themselves to a country setting. They sort of suburbanize everything."

Probably the most obvious addition to the neighborhood is the rambling estate that Edward S. Gordon, a New York developer, has been creating for himself across the road from the Atlantic Golf Club.

Gordon's Shangri-La

His Shangri-La, which includes a private golf course and a mansion the size of a city high school, has caused serious rubbernecking by passing motorists.

"I think it's spectacular that an individual has placed that kind of interest into an area," said Mr. Strough.

He said Two Trees Farm, owned by David Walentas, where polo matches have been played in recent summers, has also helped to gentrify the area.

"It's a terrific mix of golf, equestrian use, and farm and country appeal that is missing in many areas south of the highway," said Mr. Strough.

As a result, land prices have escalated. "A short time ago, you couldn't give that property away on Scuttlehole Road," said Mr. Strough. Now, one-acre farm lots can command upward of $200,000, he said.

No Longer A Blip

By comparison, Mr. Brennan said similar sized lots south of the highway can cost $300,000 or more.

While estates have been built, much of the construction has been in what Ms. Griffin called "starter homes," ranging in price from $200,000 to $600,000.

"People may have been renting a few years, and now they're ready to build," she said. Others, she added, "have been fixing up wonderful village homes" in the center of the hamlet. Sales remain strong south of the highway as well, Ms. Griffin said.

With the buildup, Bridgehampton, once almost a blip on the highway between Southampton and East Hampton, now "stands on its own," according to Mr. Brennan. "It's become a terrific destination," said Mr. Strough.

This is the seventh article in a series examining various aspects of real estate on the South Fork.

The rural experience: a walk in the woods, a meander through the meadow, a stroll on the sand.

Even these are not without controversy on the South Fork, where residents want both privacy and access to unspoiled preserved areas.

East Hampton Town's trail system, when devised in the early '80s, caused a furor among owners of properties adjacent to the new paths, who feared the trails would bring a loss of privacy, decreased property values, and criminal trespassers to their doors.

Now, the woods trails, with names like Devil's Cradle, the Keyhole, and Northwest Path, have wandered into homeowners' hearts, with developers voluntarily including hikers' access in subdivision plans and residents enjoying strolls on nearby paths.

Antagonists

There are still some, though, who are "openly antagonistic," according to the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, and a healthy strain of "not in my backyard" sentiment lingers.

On North Haven, a 2.5-mile trail on the village-owned Stock Farm Preserve has been disputed for more than a decade, with the homeowners' association of the adjacent development, North Haven Point, threatening a suit to stop trail improvements.

There is wide support for the North Haven trails, said Jeanne Vielbig, president of that village's trails association.

"I think the majority thinks it's an asset," said Fred Stelle, who heads the Village Board's Parks and Recreation Commission. The board recently voted to proceed with a 1.25-mile "loop trail" section.

North Haven

According to Jed Schutz, a member of North Haven Point's board of managers, besides concerns about hikers traversing backyard edges, causing a loss of privacy and raising security worries, the association questions whether a trail should be placed in the fragile wetlands.

The board has cited the presence of ticks, a threat to walkers, on the preserve. Members also contend that a trail is disallowed under the covenants deeding the Stock Farm property from the original subdivision owner to the village.

In recent developments, the owners of four North Haven Point lots have been charged with illegally clearing trees from their property and laying them as barriers across the village trail. Mr. Schutz said the group was "attempting to negotiate a reasonable solution with the village."

Asked if prospective buyers might see the trail as an asset, Mr. Schutz said, "I couldn't conceive of that being a plus."

No More Wagons

Though the ancient East Hampton trails and Trustee roads - originally lumber trails through the woods or paths allowing fishermen to reach the water's edge - were wide enough for a wagon or a horse and rider to pass a walker, the new ones are usually footpaths. They traverse property owned by the town or the county, or easements reserved by developers.

According to New York State law, a municipality may "require land in a subdivision to be reserved for parks and recreation." The law also allows for the protection of "natural features" found on the land, including trails.

In East Hampton, an existing trail cannot be "obliterated" by a developer, but the Planning Board may allow one that interferes with subdivision plans to be rerouted.

Developers Volunteer

The Planning Board does not require developers to create new trails, but often asks for reserved easement areas where they can be placed. Trails are usually cut by members of the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society.

Though the town cannot require a developer to allow public access to a trail across private property, many do so voluntarily, or deed reserved trail areas to the town. Maps of the trail system are available at the East Hampton Town Clerk's office.

The East Hampton segments of the Paumanok Path, a 100-mile system of connected trails from Rocky Point to Montauk, will be sited largely on public land.

Privacy Issues

Issues raised when the town's plans to preserve or create trails were first revealed are still concerns: liability, degradation of the environment, misuse of the trails by motorized vehicles, and public access, which, some homeowners feared, would lead to break-ins, fire, and loss of privacy.

Privacy is a key element for his clients, said Randy Parsons, a private land-use consultant who heads LandMarks in East Hampton. Private land buyers can be deterred by the presence of a trail allowing public access, he asserted.

Though he walks the trails often himself, Mr. Parsons said he "understand[s] that a lot of people really crave privacy," and that those accustomed to city living may have some "paranoia about strangers."

Informed Buyers

Such fears are unfounded, trails proponents insist.

"You couldn't find a nicer bunch of people than hikers, bikers, and horseback riders," declared Richard Lupoletti, president of the Trails Preservation Society.

According to Rick Whalen, a deputy town attorney and a trails advocate, "what we feared 10 to 15 years ago - that trails would be a potential problem, opposed by neighbors - turned out not to be the case at all." In fact, he said, the extent to which trails have been accepted is "remarkable."

For prospective buyers of land or homes abutting trails, "it's an unknown, so they're a little leery," said Mike DeSario, a broker at Cook Pony Farm in East Hampton who specializes in land sales and development.

When people become informed, learning where trails are, who uses them, and that motorized vehicles are not allowed, they "okay it," he said.

Liability

Liability is another concern. According to New York State law, said Mr. Whalen, property owners are not liable for "ordinary negligence" when their land is used by the public for recreational purposes. The only instance in which a landowner may be considered liable, he said, is if he or she has committed a "willful or malicious act" that results in an injury.

But Mr. Parsons said landowners continue to worry about having to defend themselves against a suit.

David Weaver, a surveyor at Walbridge Associates in East Hampton, agreed. In his experience, many land buyers seeking privacy "don't like having a trail near them." Mr. Weaver often represents Northwest property owners and land developers before the Planning Board.

He specifically looks for trails when surveying tracts. If one is found, "we work around it," he said. "As long as the Planning Board is willing to accept relocation [of a trail], which they almost always have in past years, it doesn't pay for the developer not to cooperate."

Subdivision design has evolved over the years, said Mr. Whalen, to include more open space.

Land developers here are "sophisticated," said Mr. DeSario. "They realize that people come here because it's beautiful, and if they destroy that, they won't come."

In fact, trails have come to be considered a "recreational asset," Mr. Whalen said.

In fact, he added, several 1980s developments, including Wildflower Woods, off Hog Creek Road in Springs, and Cedar Trails in East Hampton used the inclusion of trails as a selling point.

Public Acceptance

Better planning early in the development process, including careful provisions for a buffer zone between trails and houses, has alleviated some of the early problems and complaints, Mr. Whalen said.

And, he said, a changing public attitude toward recreation, with greater awareness of trails and more and more people using them, has contributed to their acceptance.

The Trails Preservation Society, which counts 225 memberships, last year led 1,200 people on more than 90 guided hikes, according to Mr. Lupoletti.

The areas with the most extensive trail systems adjacent to houses are in Northwest and Springs.

"We're finding that people who live in those areas are the ones using the trails," Mr. Whalen said.

Before Is Better

Homeowners in the Landfall and North Woods subdivisions in Northwest were vociferously opposed to the creation of the first trails, within sight of their properties.

"The trick is people knowing about it from the beginning," said Mr. DeSario. "For the most part, I find that if it's presented accurately - that there's a trail and on a busy weekend you may see six people going by - most people are comfortable with it."

Creating a trail over an existing piece of property is a different story, though planners "almost never do that," he said.

Although most trail easements are already in place and buyers are informed of them before purchase, objections are sometimes raised when a trail is cut through woods homeowners have formerly had all to themselves.

"We're aware of the fact that it's a much better business to cut the trail before a homeowner moves in," said Mr. Lupoletti.

Adequate Buffers

"One way of making trails fit into a residential community is to make sure there's an adequate buffer," Mr. Whalen said.

The lack of such a buffer is the cause of a suit against the town brought by a Bull Path resident whose house was built facing a 20-foot-wide sliver of land which the town later purchased for a trail.

"None of our trails impinge on anyone's private property," said Mr. Lupoletti. "When that takes place, we move the trail."

A spirit of compromise helped resolve a situation that arose this year in Northwest, where a section of the Old Camp Road segment of the Northwest Path was moved after two residents whose land it crossed complained they were disturbed by mountain bikers using the trail.

"We don't want to impact anybody adversely," said Mr. Lupoletti.

The trail system is "part of what I feel the town has done to keep this area beautiful and to allow people to enjoy the beauty," Mr. DeSario said. Ultimately, he said, that was good for the real estate market.

Soft, transparent, marble-sized squid eggs were brought ashore on Sunday by waves generated from the latest of the recent series of low-pressure fronts.

The jellies with the embryo centers were left on the wrack line as the tide dropped. Once ashore, light filled them so they could be seen a few fathoms apart all along the beach, jeweled proof of rich life offshore.

Not far off, a swarm of diving birds rained down on the baitfish chased to the surface by feeding bluefish and the striped bass that forage below them for scraps.

The fishing season is off to a truly auspicious start despite the un-June-like weather. And, speaking of starts, the new Lazy Bones had her maiden voyage yesterday. The original, a popular Montauk party boat, now sits at the end of Salivar's Dock. "It was sad taking the stuff off the old boat. I gave it a kiss goodbye," said Kathy Vegessi, who, with her husband, Michael, has pioneered a laid-back, half-day, near-shore approach to fishing.

Phenomenal Fluking

The new Bones went for fluke (summer flounder) on her first trip and found them. The fluke action is "phenomenal," in the words of "Al" from Altenkirch's Precision Outfitters of Hampton Bays. Al said he went only by his first name "so they can't blame me for not catching fish and bomb my house."

If the fluke chatter around East End docks is any indication, Al needn't worry about his house. There seem to be enough fluke around for even inexperienced anglers to catch.

Kathy Vegessi reports the fluke around Montauk are not large, but they are plentiful. "The pool [winners] are down around three or four pounds." She said most were smaller, but of keeper size, that is, 14.5 inches long or longer.

The number of small fluke could also mean a rosier future for commercial fluke fishermen now under very strict limits. The species is managed under Federal mandate by seasonal quotas.

This week, draggers were allowed to take 200 pounds of fluke per trip. Next week the trip quota will go to 70 pounds.

The State Department of Environmental Conservation recently announced the size of the striped bass harvest last year. Commercial fishermen harvested about 490,000 pounds of their 520,000-pound quota.

Recreational fishermen harvested 6.5 million pounds in 1996, 5,935,000 worth of legal-size fish and an estimated 606,000 pounds of fish that did not survive the contest. According to state figures, the 1996 recreational catch is the highest ever recorded, more fish than the largest combined commercial-recreational catch in the history of the state.

Regal-Legals

Three years ago, the legal minimum size for striped bass was 36 inches. That was changed to 28 inches, but fishermen acknowledge fish 36 inches long and longer by calling them "regal-legals." A good number of regals are being caught, according to charter captains. The season for striped bass market fishermen will not start until July.

Harvey Bennett, whose Tackle Shop has moved from its former Skimhampton to 3 Fort Pond Boulevard in Springs, reports bluefish are being caught from the beach all along the north side of Napeague. Bass and weakfish are found at Jessup's Neck, Buoy 16, with a mix of weakfish and fluke off Greenlawns, the name given the west side of Shelter Island.

AMAGANSETT

Bullock to Jeffrey Bliss and Valerie Anisko, Devonshire Lane, $400,000.

Brew to Maureen Jannarone and John DeMeritt, Broadview Road, $285,000.

McCormick to Robert and Pamela Kramberg, Timber Trail, $617,500.

Rofheart to Mahriana Rofheart, Oak Lane, $185,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Woodridge Home Bldrs. to Neal and Nanette Shipley, Martin Krasnoff, and Nitza Wilon, Becky's Path, $300,000.

Mahoney to Bettysue and Jeffrey Hughes, Ocean Road, $1,450,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Burke Assoc. to Laurence Boschetto, Cedar Trails, $625,000.

Boschetto to Geraldine Newman, Duke Drive, $217,500.

MONTAUK

Hadjipopov to Peri Aronian, South Essex Street, $340,000.

NORTHWEST

Lauritano to Elizabeth Menninger, Woodpink Drive, $262,000.

Duxbury Bldrs. Inc. to Peter and Lorraine Boyle, Bull Run, $835,000.

NOYAC

Haas to Allen Gribetz, Middle Line Highway, $335,000.

Puljic to Jeffrey and Patricia Silverman, Larboard Drive, $245,000.

SAG HARBOR

Gallen to Mark and Mindy Robinson, Route 114, $190,000.

Loesch to Valentine and Regina D'Ovazio, Harbor Drive, $325,000.

Blake to Allen Harvey and Ludlow Beckett, Carver Street, $180,000.

SAGAPONACK

Milligan to Stephen and Wendy Gellman, Parsonage Road, $560,000.

SPRINGS

Rothenberg to Mitchell Behr and Michael Jurado, Glade Road, $200,000.

Matthews to Jacalyn Shafer and Catherine Sull, Renee's Way, $180,000.

Konzet to Michael and Lainee Steinberg, Waterhole Road, $235,000.

Lemoine to Robert and Lynn Tramondo, Woodcock Lane, $159,000.

WAINSCOTT

Wainwright to Anita Wien, Wainscott Stone Highway, $1,350,000.

WATER MILL

Horton to Charles and Susanna Finkel, Holly Lane, $415,000.

Sheahan to Diane and Robert Cornell Sr., Cobb Hill Lane, $1,100,000.

Loring to Robert and Barbara Donohue, Osprey Way, $400,000.