Connections: A Coherent Whole

An old friend, whose high-winged plane has been tied down from time to time this summer at the Montauk Airport, had offered to take me up for a look at this place I call home. And so, on a beautiful morning last week, before the heat of the day had affected the air quality negatively, it was time.

I’ve never been a fan of jet flight, and have always marveled at the lives of those for whom flying is commonplace (Hillary Clinton, for example, when she was secretary of state). In the late 1980s and early ’90s, though, I discovered how easy — and pleasant — jaunts in small planes could be. I jumped at whatever opportunity came my way to go to New York City by air and, on a few occasions, to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 

The goal last week was not to get someplace but to share the experience of seeing the landscape from a new perspective. My friend the pilot explained his essential check-list routine, strapped me into the passenger’s (or co-pilot’s) seat, put me in a life jacket (just in case), and adjusted my headset. After a few bumps as we took off, it was smooth sailing, at between 500 and 1,000 feet, for an hour and a half.

It was great fun to float over places I knew intimately and to get a bird’s-eye view of waterfront palaces. It was astonishing to see certain aspects of this tip of the South Fork in ways that aren’t possible except from the air. 

It’s hard to tell while driving or walking near Accabonac Harbor, for example, that it stretches horizontally as far as it does — and seeing the houses on Gerard Drive from above made the folly of their location clear. The extensive oceanfront campground at Hither Hills State Park and the long row of trailers on Gin Beach in Montauk were evidence that you don’t have to be a millionaire to have a beautiful vacation spot here.

Straight lines in pretty hues on tilled farmland in Amagansett (100 acres of it, I think) were lovely to look at, and two dark-brown circles in Gardiner’s Bay, which I was told were made by schooling menhaden (that is, bunker), were an exciting surprise. 

I had forgotten that Gardiner’s Island has a primeval forest, and I learned that Cartwright Shoal is much longer than I remembered from the days when we picnicked there in years gone by.

As we circumnavigated the tip of the island from Three Mile Harbor to Montauk Point, what lay below no longer seemed the series of alternating developed and open spaces I know — nor a series of different beaches, waterways, and woodlands — but a coherent and breathtakingly beautiful whole. 

We are fortunate to have so much public parkland here and that voters  continue to endorse the use of their tax dollars to protect scenic and environmentally valuable properties. But if everyone were able to see the landscape from the air, as I did, I think preservation would be guaranteed.