High tide today and a strong northwest wind driving spray even onto the upper beach, where a network of deep ruts made it difficult to walk, so I again retreated behind the dune line, and again rapidly filled 3 bags of trash. It's rather depressing to see how much garbage is scattered in this area, partly because of the driving there, but also I suspect that in past years people have simply driven their garbage bags to the beach and tossed them out of sight into the dunes. It's dismaying that people do this, but it's inevitable that if you let people drive on the beach and make absolutely no provision to monitor their conduct, the result is mayehm (albeit only by a small minority- but that's always the problem). I'm no fan of Reagan but one thing he said makes sense: trust but verify.
OK, with work done, time to play a bit. The area I was cleaning belongs to the Peconic Land Trust and I ventured a very short way up into a narrow valley. On either side I saw some of the stunted beech trees that are the key element of the Dwarf Maritime Beech Forest that's known as the Grandifolia Sandhills. Here are a couple of examples.
I'll write more about this globally rare and endangered natural community in future posts. I wonder whether any of the beach party people ever suspect they are throwing their empty beer bottles into the finest example anywhere in the world of a globally rare natural community, comparable to the famous Torrey Pine Reserve near San Diego. Unfortunately the Town of Riverhead approved the bulldozing of the core of this amazing place, but fragments still persist.
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