The sheer amount of excitement here on this Island of Fire can sometimes be too much to handle.
Between the absence of cars, the constantly changing populous and the daily siren tests (one blast for ranger’s returning, two for wildlings) I can hardly find time to explore the Sunken Forest or make it up to the Grove.
What’s more exciting than all that? Law enforcement.
The Fire Island police have their priorities straight: remain overly permissive concerning drinking on the beaches and streets, come down hard on bars caught serving to minors, look super flashy in unnecessarily frequent boat patrols, and of course, keep people off the sand dunes.
Why should you stay off the sand dunes? Well in addition to the $200 fine, according to the National Park Service’s website:
Dunes provide much-needed protection to back-barrier environments (including human development) against severe wave, wind, and storm events.
Basically, without the dunes, life on Fire Island as we know it would come screeching to a halt and we would all be swallowed up by Poseidon’s rage and his legion of blood-thirsty krakens. So the next time you drunkenly throw your frisbee over the fence and onto the dunes, leave it. Let the winter storms destroy the dunes (which are rebuilt every year anyway).
