is that the crowds now drive me that much sooner to my Hamptons getaways. One is Alewife Creek. Bring a kayak to Cedar Point County Park, in the Northwest Woods, paddle east of the Point itself, with its gray-stone lighthouse, built in l860 when that end of the peninsula was an island, and look for Alewife Creek. Then paddle the mile or two up its mossy banks to Alewife Pond. No Maseratis idling in the distance here, only an egret or two and, if you’re lucky, a hawk. Almost as private as a boat on the water are the places no one goes in August because everyone’s at the beach. Mashomack, on Shelter Island, is a 2100-acre preserve, with color-coded trail walks from three miles to 11 or 12, the woods have hardly changed since the island’s first white settlers arrived in the l600s. Barcelona Neck, off Route ll4 between Sag Harbor and East Hampton, has a trail down to Northwest Harbor, where tiny sailboats bob at their moorings and surfcasters fish for blues. East of East Hampton, in the flat sandy stretch of Napeague, are the visually splendid red sand Walking Dunes, and a network of trails that lace their way to Montauk. I love to cook, and July in the Hamptons to me means going, before the day is out, to
my favorite farmers’ markets—Pike’s on Sagg Main in Sagaponack; Halsey’s on Head of Pond Road in Water Mill—and the two new weekend standouts: the Hayground School
“I love the Hamptons. No, let me say that better. I love the summer that one can find here–still–if one knows where to look. “ in Bridgehampton on Friday afternoons, Sag Harbor on Saturday mornings. For fish I go to the Seafood Shoppe in Wainscott—or Citarella in a pinch—Iacono’s in East Hampton for fresh-plucked free-range chickens;
and Cavionola’s in Sag Harbor for the best cheese in the Hamptons or anywhere else. On a Thursday night in July, if I’ve tired of cooking, I may wander down to Sag Harbor’s little Marine Park, spread a blanket on the lawn and listen to a free concert. If I’m feeling more ambitious, I may head over to Shelter Island and a concert—free again—at Itzak Perlman’s summer music camp, where teenage students play like gods. These, again, are gathering places, but not hot restaurants crammed with people: summer celebrations in the warm July air, with a backbeat of fall-promising crickets. The Hamptons has glamor, so I’m told, and for all I know, those who seek it find it. To me, the beauty of the place is something else, unless by glamor you mean Sagg Beach on an early evening, the last hold-outs with their books in their beach chairs, a big black Lab running free, a barbecue party stoking their coals, sending swirls of cinders into the dusk, with the moon rising up from the sea. ✦
Michael Shnayerson’s new book The Big Book of The Hamptons (Assouline, 2014) is out now.
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