Winter Beachcombing: Finding Treasure and Tranquility on Long Island's East End

A mother-daughter adventure among ice-covered boulders.

Items found while beachcombing at 67 Steps Beach in Greenport.

This week is winter break for NYC schools and my daughter and I spent a couple of nights on the North Fork. It’s my favorite time of year on Eastern Long Island. Although many businesses close for the season, the beaches are always open.

Unlike the south shore's sandy shoreline, the north shore of Long Island features rocky beaches dotted with massive boulders—remnants of glacial activity from 21,000 years ago. One of the most beautiful beaches is 67 Steps Beach in Greenport.

Ice-covered rocks

As we pulled up to the beach, I was intrigued to find a shopping basket with a sign encouraging people to collect beach plastic and deposit it upon departure.

Wearing two pairs of pants and our warmest winter jackets, we descended the stairs (of which there are actually 61, not 67—we counted!) and arrived to find ice-covered rocks and giant boulders perfect for climbing.

Carolina triumphant at the top of a big boulder.

We both got lost in beachcombing. She was looking for perfect tiny rocks smooth and almost egg-like in formation. I was interested in anything unusual—both natural beach finds and human artifacts, like an abandoned Funkee Monkee, one of those viral toy trends that somehow found its way to this timeless shore.

A frozen Funkee Monkey found on the beach.

Old buoys felt like they belonged amongst the rocks and broken seashells. The funkee monkee, not so much.

A buoy found at the beach.

As I collected these human-left artifacts—eyeglass frames, a balloon still tethered to its string, the top of a perfume bottle—I thought of my friend Karen Mainenti's art series “The World Without Us” where she created surreal futuristic scenes of animals discovering items humans left behind, curiously exploring each object.

We left the beach invigorated by the cold yet calmed by the time we spent meditatively scanning the ground unearthing treasures and trash. If you’re lucky enough to live close to a beach, I highly recommend a winter walk.

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Words of the Week

“In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.” —John Burroughs, Naturalist.

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Photo of the Week

An image from Karen Mainenti’s of her “The World Without Us” series that I referenced.

From her Instagram:

This collection of collages… reconsiders ordinary objects as relics of humanity’s time on Earth. Mainenti envisions the planet after our extinction, with animals appearing to contemplate inscrutable consumer products left behind by the human race. Against plush matte backgrounds of pulp-dyed art paper, she collages images of animals carefully excised from vintage wildlife magazines alongside objects from classic advertisements from the mid-twentieth century. Each vignette is unified by a single hue, ranging from pastels to earth tones, reflective of the colors that were once popular in fashion trends and evocative of gender conventions. Her use of source imagery from an earlier era which ushered in an explosion of purchasing power and mass production in the U.S. provides perspective on contemporary life.

We are lucky enough to own one of Karen’s pieces. The owl on a branch observing a Chanel No. 5 bottle (not seen in this image) hangs in our home and we love it.

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