Walking And Dreaming On A City’s Wild Shore

by David K. Leff

It’s a breezy, cloud-studded summer day on Connecticut’s longest undeveloped and unprotected barrier beach less than an hour’s drive from Manhattan. Smells of salt and desiccating seaweed are strong. From a cramped parking lot at the east end of Long Beach West in Stratford, I follow a sandy path over dunes toward Bridgeport’s Pleasure Beach along the slender handle of this garden spade-shaped peninsula with its wide blade aimed at the harbor of Connecticut’s largest city. Long Island Sound sparkles on the south with wrinkle after wrinkle of wind-driven waves. To the north, tidal flats edge a narrow inlet known as Lewis Gut where great egrets are wading. Beyond is the bright green marsh of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge, a place known for clapper rails and busy with saltmarsh sparrows during migration. The same glance holds houses, boxy industrial buildings and fuel storage tanks that stretch along the mainland toward the rectangular geometry of Bridgeport’s skyline.

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