Trip 46 — Long Island Walk
Prologue
Monday, 3 November 2025
When I started the Abecedarian Walks at the end of 2020, I had no idea how long they would take. The lack of musical performances in the second year of the pandemic restricted my career, at least in its usual forms, and I got into the rhythm of heading off every couple of months to do an island or two.
It wasn't until last year that I realized I could complete the 26 perambulations in the span of five years. I also noticed that "L" was one of the remaining letters. It was a good opportunity to commit to finishing by the end of 2025 and to staying close to home for the finale.
Well, today things are different. Two days ago I got engaged to Liz — the Liz who walked 36.55 kilometers with me one day on Prince Edward Island, the Liz who said "Do you want to just walk it?" when it was difficult leaving the Pereira airport by bus in Colombia last year, the Liz who burst out laughing but had no qualms when I realized shortly before alighting from our bus in the Japanese Alps last month on the eve of her birthday that access to our lodging would require a 90-minute forest hike — and three days ago we signed the contract to purchase a two-bedroom apartment in our current building.
So there's lots going on, and I don't particularly feel like leaving the city, but things are booked, and it's time. I haven't gotten to (or been able to) sleep much lately, and this walk doesn't even have a plane ride for me to catch up on the way.
Tomorrow it begins: over the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge and then to Queensbridge Park, to start Abecedarian Walk #26 — Long Island includes the New York City boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. I'll head out the North Fork to Orient Point, back in to Riverhead, out the South Fork to Montauk, and then back along the island's southern coast, over almost three weeks.
I've been to Long Island many times, of course, and taken some longish day walks. But I've never gone there and back without some kind of transportation. It famously has the frequently choked Long Island Expressway and the much-maligned Long Island Rail Road to support its 8 million residents, and it will be refreshing to explore it without relying on either.
Getting out there has long been unpredictable. In "Making Long Island: A History of Growth and the American Dream," Lawrence R. Samuel explains the LIRR's reputation for rattling trains, delayed service, high fares, and collisions with cars ever since the early 1900s. And the Long Island Expressway, the Northern State Parkway, and the Southern State Parkway — all projects of that grand champion of the automobile, Robert Moses — filled up to their breaking points as soon as they were built.
The book follows Long Island's progress from about 1920 to 1980. The island's natural beauty, abundance of fish and seafood (and duck), and proximity to Manhattan have always been among its most appealing features. But the pristine land was also blighted by rampant racial discrimination, especially with regard to housing; William Levitt's renowned community of mass-produced, cheap homes in the 1940s and 1950s officially forbade non-Caucasians from living in Levittown. And the island's recent reputation for drug smuggling had roots in the Prohibition era, when boats could easily come ashore unnoticed, laden with scotch that was quickly handed off to city-bound trucks.
The construction boom started in the early 1900s, when the giant estates and farms were divided into lots to house people seeking extra space close to New York City. Long Island became a center of aviation, with Charles Lindbergh taking off for Europe from Roosevelt Field in 1927 and Mitchel Field being a production hub for military aircraft during World War II. Many people avoided Long Island during the war under the assumption that it was off-limits.
When peace came, construction took off once again, with people putting deposits on houses that hadn't been built yet and wouldn't be for some time, due to a shortage of materials. Since the 1970s, building has waned — materials, labor, and taxes are high, current residents often try to block new developments, and many youth see their futures elsewhere.
I don't know whether anyone has ever walked the perimeter of Long Island. According to the New York Times, Patty Ellis walked from Brooklyn to Montauk over nine days in 2000, but she was driven to and from each day's starting and ending points.
Like her, I expect to deal with exasperating traffic. But, like her, I also expect to be rewarded with a pedestrian-pace immersion into this fascinatingly diverse, sometimes urban, sometimes rural island. While I could have chosen a time of year with better weather and more daylight, I'm excited to see it during quieter times. And a visiting Liz won't be stranded due to strike action as she was on PEI — the LIRR unions postponed the walkout they had threatened a few weeks ago.
Go on to day 1
