Fire Island ocean beach, supreme summer travel adventure, & a cozy boho-chic beach town tour, let’s hit the road for this video and visit Bellport, Long Island, New York.
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Located on the south shore, of the east end of Long Island in the state of New York, Bellport is a charming village hamlet. It was always a pleasant, and naturally beautiful spot to escape the brutal heat of New York City during the summer. When Si Newhouse, the publisher of Conde Nast and its glamorous array of publications like Vogue, purchased a summer home there, he encouraged his directors and editors to do the same. His rationale was that being situated in Bellport, you aren’t farther east on the South Fork.
Now anyone who has been to the South Fork of Long Island can quickly discern two things, it’s clearly the playground of the ultra-wealthy, and the traffic is miserable. No surprise that that same ultra-wealthy set flies over the traffic in helicopters and private airplanes. One of the first things a visitor notices that on the one continuous road that stretches the length of the south fork peninsula, there is one lane in and two lanes out. Bellport on the other hand is still on the main landmass of Long Island, but yet far out past the commuter belt. It takes about an hour and twenty minutes on the handful of express trains into Manhattan, but an absolutely agonizing two hours on the local trains. So for daily commuting, it’s really a little bit far to be doing 5 days a week, but if you work remotely or run a business from home, it’s easy to go into the city for the day for meetings.
One of my favorite ways to escape the oppressive summer heat of both the desert and New York City is to visit dear friends of mine in Bellport. We love to putter around the garden together, neither of my friends are originally from the East Coast so gardening in the area is brand new to them. My father had planted over the years an absolutely beautiful garden in my childhood home, and definitely passed down the same love of growing things to me. Teaching my friends all of his lessons has made a world of difference to them, and the garden is growing in beautifully. It’s all the more impressive really, because they started out with almost no landscape whatsoever, not even turf.
The sights and sounds have such strong memory triggers for me, every time I go back there I always feel like I’m reliving my childhood. All the wonderful summers at the beach, canoeing on lakes, rivers, and harbors, exploring desolate peninsulas and islands, all come flooding back to me. It’s wonderful to go back in the mind, but it’s also dangerous, because we’re in the present, and we can never go backwards. So it’s so important to review the past, enjoy the sensation of pleasant memory triggers, but also to put a firm line behind them, and regulate your emotional state in order to not be overwhelmed by memories. It’s also wonderful for me to go back there, because I have such a feeling of home, but also, it’s not as nice as my life in Southern California. That makes me extremely grateful, because when I feel like I’m experiencing the best of the best of my hometown area, but it doesn’t measure up to the Southern California desert, the backcountry mountains, or La Jolla, it just humbles me.
Let’s head to Bellport, Long Island!
When I was growing up we used to call this time of year the dog days of August. 2021 was an especially active hurricane season on the East Coast, and my visit was bookended by them. An unpredictable hurricane barreled up the East Coast in the days leading up to my visit. I flew in about 4 hours before the hurricane hit. It was headed straight north towards the south shore of Long Island, almost dead-center on Bellport. People in Long Island, like many low-lying coastal communities, are notoriously slow or unwilling to evacuate during a hurricane. So many people were still traumatized by memories of being trapped in their second floors during Hurricane Sandy that people were actually following the evacuation orders. Well as unpredictable as any natural event, this hurricane took a big right turn around Long Island and then after going north, proceeded east towards upstate New York and the Hudson River valley. Once it was up there it sat, flooding countless valleys and wreaking havoc on the entire region.
So after a rainy evening, I packed myself up and caught the train out to Long Island. Hot, humid, and with hurricane season in full swing, I was desperate to get out of the city as soon as I arrived there. Compared to the noisy and chaotic city, it was massive relief to my senses to be at my friend’s serene and peaceful home.
The Garden
We spent several days in late spring removing old landscaping, and installing new native plants and expanding the garden beds. After a wet summer, almost every plant we moved has transplanted successfully. It’s green, lush and starting to become one of the most beautiful gardens on the street. Crepe myrtle trees are a spectacular addition to this garden, they have beautiful flowers and a gorgeous fire-cracker like growth habit. Beach plum bushes are thriving, and their fruit provides ample food for the wildlife. The native hydrangea is blooming beautifully and I have to admit as a native long-islander I wasn’t even aware of this or even many other native plant species. It just goes to show how much is out there beyond the standard nursery plant list if you look.
Bellport’s Coastal Vernacular Design Style
Let’s head down to the bay, and catch some delicious coastal breeze. Lush mature trees, cedar shingled homes, and pea-gravel driveways define the relaxed, coastal-vernacular style here in Bellport village. Unlike the south fork of Long Island east of Shinnecock inlet otherwise known as, “the hamptons”, everything here isn’t so manicured and perfect, giving it a much more laid-back and boho feeling. Bellport village is perfectly situated on the great south bay to take advantage of the refreshing coastal breeze, jutting out just slightly from the south shore of Long Island. The movement of the beach grasses in the wind is captivating, visually bringing the breeze to life. The blades of grass have a waxy sheen that glistens and glitters in the sunlight like diamonds. Now that I’m soaking wet in the late-summer humidity, let’s take some dripping like a pig photos, in front of my favorite historic home here in the village.
Ho Hum Beach
Now it’s time for the moment I’ve been waiting for, a trip on the ferry to the village beach on Fire Island. I love being on any vessel on the water, but a trip on the town ferry to Fire Island is an all too short treat. The air is just so crisp and fresh over the Great South Bay.
The beach is spectacular today, the white sand is powdery soft, and the bracing fresh air off the ocean is a balm to a hot and sweaty soul. The structure stranded out in the water on piers in the near distance was built just a few years ago, and almost immediately afterwards storms eroded the beach to the point where it couldn’t be used.
These barrier islands are always shifting, but the long-term prognosis for them is bleak. Despite ample and expensive beach replenishment in some areas, the erosion just gets worse and worse. Hurricane Sandy was unfortunately a tipping point, putting the barrier islands in terminal decline. Fire Island was breached in multiple places, one of them being the end of this beach. 10 years ago when I last went to Smith Point beach to the east, you used to be able to walk the length of the beach from here to there. The dunes are a shadow of their former selves from even 10 years ago. Hurricane Sandy caused a full immersion of the barrier islands, condemning many if not most of the sea pines and bay berries to death by saltwater intrusion. The roots of the grasses and other plants on the dunes are actually what holds the barrier island together, and without them, there isn’t much to keep them from washing away in a severe storm.
The birds are thriving here, and baby birds are scurrying around all along the shore line, learning to hunt for food. It’s so much fun watching the little things flit up and down the lapping waves, struggling to get that morsel of food without being swept away. Except for maybe the breeze whispering through the palm trees, I don’t think there’s a more relaxing sound in the world than the gentle breaking of the waves against the shoreline.
Watching these baby birdies play along the water’s edge reminds me of the days when I was a little baby birdie on this gorgeous south-facing coastline. Now before I was the perma-tanned desert dude you see today, I was a seasonally tanned, toe-headed blonde beach baby from North Shore Long Island. And while it has its share of lovely beaches, secluded harbors, and windswept peninsulas, it doesn’t have the ocean beaches. For a special treat growing up, we would drive down the Sagtikos parkway, to Fire Island, for days filled with bodysurfing, sandcastle building, and boogie-boarding.
I still feel the same way as an adult when I go to the beach, that time has sped up, and the enjoyment of my favorite place slips away like sand through parted fingers. It’s time now to tootsie roll our way back to catch the last ferry of the day, or risk being stranded here for the night. Frankly I could think of worse outcomes. The next day I was back in the hot, noisy, loud, and chaotic city.
Well that was an amazing trip back to Bellport Long Island, and I left not a minute too soon. Later in the week I flew out of New York City in the morning, and in the evening there was massive flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, killing a total of 46 people in the region. In the city, many of those who died were trapped in ground floor or basement apartments, and drowned in the unstoppable deluge of water. Even though the townhouse I was staying at is on high ground, the intensity of the storm was no match for the drainage and sewer system of the neighborhood. I had been staying on the ground floor and it flooded out not twelve hours after I departed. I call that a lucky break.
Thank You
Thank you so much for joining me on this trip back to the East Coast, and for spending time with me here on my channel. My name is William Z Brennan, but you can call me Will. I’m a natural lifestyle expert, the founder of Desert Mountain Apothecary, and the author of upcoming e-book Natural Lifestyle Optimization. Desert Mountain Apothecary is the original desert apothecary for mind, body & spirit. We’re proud of our desert roots and inspired by desert mountain botanicals.
Inspirational Message
If there’s one thought I want to leave you with today, it’s to be kind to yourself. You can’t fill from an empty vessel, so if you don’t love yourself, you can’t love anyone else. You are worth it, you matter, and you are the light that illuminates the world.
With lots of love, from me,
Will Brennan, and Desert Mountain Apothecary.