Nature Notes: Something Nice

Most of the eastern United States is made up of counties, townships, cities, villages, hamlets, and neighborhood areas that have names but have no local government. The western states, which came latest, have counties and cities, but also neighborhoods that have distinct names as in the East. Some of the Midwest states, which joined the union in the middle of its growth, have towns and villages, as well as cities and counties.

The eastern states patterned themselves after Great Britain, partly by choice, but also because they were under English control and ownership until the end of the American Revolution. Having very small units of government was one way of furthering local control. Nassau County has only three townships, two cities, and a slew of villages. In Suffolk County newly incorporated villages such as Islandia and Mastic are formed here and there, and, not infrequently, a hamlet such as Montauk will try to become its own village, but a referendum is needed to make it happen.

In the hamlet of Mattituck on the North Fork, where I grew up, it is very much like a village with its own post office even, but it has no village board and does not actually govern itself; it’s governed by the Town of Southold, in which it is located. The townships were originally under the control of elected trustees answerable to England’s state government, but when New York State passed a law in the early part of the 20th century creating townships run by town councils, only three of Suffolk’s 10 townships kept active town trustee units — Southold, Southampton, and East Hampton — as separate government entities.

Moreover, townships and villages had their own police departments. The five eastern Suffolk townships and most of their villages still have local police departments, but, in the interests of economy, Suffolk’s other five towns elected to use the county’s police department to maintain law and order in their jurisdictions.

The trustees deeded out parts of the land primarily for subsistence farming and the like under state “patents,” such as the Dongan Patent, according to which East Hampton Town Trustees still govern and are stewards of their public lands. Town councils and trustees are often at odds, especially in Southampton and East Hampton. Hamlets do not have local laws; cities, townships, and villages do, once approved by the state. Then there are county laws enacted by county legislatures. In Suffolk County the 10 townships and their villages were under the control of a county board of supervisors until after the middle of the 1900s, when the boards of supervisors were replacedby county legislatures. A few years later Nassau County followed suit. The posts of county executive were created to lead the counties, but only with the consent of the legislatures that enacted laws and helped oversee county departments.

It seems complicated, but it all works. Some of the hamlets like Wainscott, Montauk and Amagansett have their own post offices. A few hamlets have their own public schools, one of which, in Wainscott, is very small, but quite long-standing. Sagaponack in Southampton Town was a hamlet with its own one-room schoolhouse, but near the beginning of the new century became an incorporated village, and still has its oneroom schoolhouse.

One of the largest neighborhoods in East Hampton Town, as large as any hamlet and not in a hamlet, itself, is Northwest Woods. Others are Promised Land, Beach Hampton, Montauk-bythe-Sea in the hamlet of Amagansett, Camp Hero and Oceanside in the hamlet of Montauk, Whalebone Woods in East Hampton, Lion Head in the hamlet of Springs, and Georgica in the hamlet of Wainscott.

What does this have to do with nature, you ask? Well, hamlets have their own shtick, as it were, just as nature has different territories and ecological communities. The various human political units and neighborhoods have distinct characters.

Noyac, where I reside, is a lightly populated middle-class hamlet on Noyac Bay and Sag Harbor Cove. It abounds with birds, mammals, frogs, salamanders, snakes, you name it. It has its own crow population and crow roost up in the hills. On the other hand, it has almost no nightlife in the manner of Montauk and Amagansett. It is idyllic, save for Noyac Road, which is progressively busier year after year as it competes for traffic with Montauk Highway and Scuttlehole Road in the early morning and late afternoon in fall, winter, and spring, and throughout the day in summer.

All of these neighborhoods, hamlets, and villages were created bit by bit going all the way back to the first South Fork immigrés who crossed the Long Island Sound, sailed into the Peconics and landed at the edge of North Sea Harbor in or about 1650 and proceeded to settle Southampton, which was, in part, already settled by Amerindians for thousands of years prior to white colonists’ arrival.

Cart roads were fashioned in part along old trails. Some were constructed on the marsh with cut cedar poles laid side by side for hundreds of yards. If you have visited the Midwest you will find the roads there quite different. They are laid out in an east-west north-south grid and are as straight as an arrow for miles and miles in any direction. Not so on Long Island.Trails meandered and roads meandered in their tracks following geological contours and avoiding glacial erratics, which littered the surface of the higher areas.

Everyone had a place and a name and mostly got on. They were all in the same boat, as it were. They created schools for the young ones and almost everyone attended church on Sunday. The men teamed up in volunteer fire departments, worked together to catch whales and bring in long seines by hand. There were no Levitts or Farrells to come in and build you a house as if overnight. People pitched in, helped each other out, communed, and enjoyed Sundays, the weekend day of leisure.

Even later on when motor vehicles replaced horse-drawn carts, steam engines moved back and forth from New York carrying people and freight, bicycles became as popular as walking, motorboats replaced rowboats, refrigerators put the ice man out of work, and so on, it was still very folksy in the hamlet of Mattituck right up until the end of World War II.

Then the concept of “upward mobility,” something borrowed from city life, began to rear its ugly head. We began to compete zealously; we left the womb of nature and natural life; we went amok. In my way of thinking we are still amok, caught in a rat race that is fed by greedy self-serving politicians, but trying mightily to return to some semblance of old ways, old days, when a man on a tractor or wielding a hammer or a Stillson wrench was as important as an attorney in a three-piece suit or a celebrity eating at a local restaurant.

Now comes the real rationale for such a long and boring tale. The hamlets of East Hampton are to be studied by professional planning consultants picked by the town. In Southampton, the Flanders area is to become gentrified, at least as shown in Newsday’s futuristic pictures under the watchful eye of another team of high-paid consultants.

I ask: Is it possible to come up with a plan that preserves current density or even reduces it in these hamlets? Can we get back to some small houses, uncrowded and peaceful neighborhoods where walking is as important and enjoyable as motoring and playing fantasy football games? Is it possible to stop razing houses to build new ones? Can we let kids learn to work with their hands early on, rather than spend all of their free moments playing video games and Little League baseball? Can we convene as friendly neighbors, help each other out, turn the leaf blowers into hand rakes, keep the loud music within the confines of one’s private space? Does every house need a lawn, a deer fence?

I realize we can’t go back in time, but we can make things simpler, easier, quieter, darker at night, while we still have the chance. How about it, consultants? Square the circle or round the square, but come up with something useful, pleasant, aesthetically pleasing, and nice for a change.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].