Discovering the Other New York

Surf, Sunsets and Sand Mesas!! The last one is my own name given to a unique dune formation or a series of dunes anchored at the top by beach grass.
It’s pre 1929 and Robert Moses is traversing, alone by foot, through a wilderness of scrub pines, marsh rivers and bays frequented by a few duck hunters and Baymen. His destination was a spit of sand off the Atlantic Ocean where he, through his vision, created one of the most spectacular ocean beach parks in the country ….Jones Beach State Park.
Growing up that was our vacation destination for two weeks of every year. I became an “ocean rat” at a very young age. Later I would take days off from work when there was a storm or hurricane sweeping by and rush out to the beach just to body surf the 10+ foot waves in the middle of September. The phrase “rip tide” was not invented yet and if it was I would not have cared.
As the “boomers” grew up attendance at Jones dropped off and the two West End beaches were closed off to swimming for budgetary reasons. Today however one can hike the solitude of the deserted beaches and the shoreline of the Jones inlet which opens the bays and coves of south Nassau, inside the barrier island, to the Atlantic Ocean. To get to the inlet one must also traverse a small wilderness of scrub pines, dunes, ponds, sand mesas and beach plums as Moses once did ….to a smaller degree. Today however there is a trail through it and instead of duck hunters there are a few Spanish fisherman.
The shoreline of the inlet faces West providing some of the best sunsets in the Northeast. Directly across the inlet is the charming hamlet of Point Lookout. Walking the inlet further south to the Ocean, as the angle changes, one can see the Long Island and New York City shoreline come into view. Starting with the City of Long Beach “skyline” to the Rockaway Peninsula and into Brooklyn ending at the Lower Bay, The Narrows of NYC and the Verrazzano Bridge …… which cannot be seen with the naked eye from the inlet however with a simple 200 mm lens comes into spectacular view in every picture.