Spoils of war

by Paul Kandarian

You won’t find war in some of the most historic hikes in our area, but you will find remnants of the war machine. But mostly, you’ll find peace and quiet, a most wonderful state of mind, in these three conservation holdings on the South Coast.

They seem like they’ve been there forever, but the World War II lookout towers on Gooseberry Island in Westport, at the far end of the Horseneck Beach reservation, just past the museum and education center known as the Horseneck Lifesaving Station, have been there since the war. They were built to keep a military eye on the sea, notably looking for German submarines, but now are still standing solid, not decaying, jutting into the sky like the sentinels they once were. Gooseberry is a wonderful place for a hike and sightseeing, connected to the mainland by a cement causeway that, until recent years, you could drive over to park in a rugged old dirt-and-rock strewn parking lot. There was a gate across it the last time I wandered down that area, so parking to walk over can be a challenge.

But the walk over the causeway is a lesson in man-made obstruction; the ocean on one side of the causeway and on the other pounded by waves, and some controversy still exists that it disrupts the natural order of things. But Gooseberry Island is a terrific place to hike and reflect, and draws a mix of families, boaters (there’s a rudimentary boat ramp there), hikers, birders, and anyone who loves the salty sea air.

Walking from the parking area, a flat path cuts through the gut of the island and near the towers it splits in two. After gawking at the towers to the right, and trying to visualize what life must have been like in them, you can also walk left to the calmer eastern side of the island. Either way, it’s a nice walk, even on the rocky shoreline where you can look for sea glass, shells, and other stuff the waves have tossed to land – including the random massive ocean-eroded log that came from who-knows-where.

Gooseberry is a hotspot for birds as well, as the migratory breeds travel up and down the coast, including swallows, geese, ducks, seabirds, and piping plovers.

MARCHING ON

A much busier walk, but not noticeably due to the size of the place, is Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown, which during World War II was used as a rifle range and communications center. Prior to that, colonials used the area for farming, and much later in its life, after the military left, it was the town dump, later being turned over to the Audubon Society, finally undergoing the cleanup and restoration it deserved.

It is now a pristine 242-acre hunk of rocky land with a few miles of walking trails that offer views second to none on all three sides of the promontory just up the road from the road from Sachuest Beach. The wildlife is extraordinary; Sachuest is home to the second largest wintering population of harlequin ducks on the east coast, and the refuge is home to easily spotted white-tail deer grazing the fields, owls, otters, loons, falcons, and many other creatures both winged and four-footed.

The visitor’s center is a massive, very informative building full of the point’s rich history, including a display of artifacts from the time of the Native Americans up through the war. There are nearly 3 miles of walking trails looping around the property, most of them hugging the coastline where there are benches – or rocky overlooks – to stop and take in nature’s landscape. Down the road is Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge on the shores of Ninigret Pond in Charlestown. On this massive hunk of land once stood another key US military holding, the former Naval Auxiliary Air Station Charlestown.

Here you will see the occasional remnant of giant runways built here, now overgrown but a visible testimony to its past. And one notable presidential bit of trivia: George Herbert Walker Bush trained as a pilot here, and would later become our nation’s 41st Commander-In-Chief.

Prior to it becoming a conservation holding, there was talk of building the state’s first nuclear power plant, but outcry was so strong it was shot down. Luckily for the public, in the years since, there have been public tennis courts built here, an 18-hole disc golf course, a myriad of hiking trails, a dog park, a senior center, and many more attractions.

And due to its remote nature, it has become the perfect home for the very popular Frosty Drew Observatory and Sky Theatre, where thousands of skysearchers have learned what populates the sky above them over the years. War, what is it good for, as the old Edwin Starr song goes, the lyrical answer being “absolutely nothing.” But what the war industry has left behind in its place is spectacularly beautiful and peaceful back in its natural state.