Working LI's Greenbelt Trail so others can hike

A group armed with a collection of lawn tools and implements has gathered alongside a densely wooded side road, just off Route 51 in Riverhead. Hedge clippers, check. Bow saws, loppers, heavy-duty work gloves, check. It looks as though they've cleaned out a couple of aisles at the nearest Home Depot.

"Did anyone bring goggles?" one of them shouts.

The crew of 14 men and women sort out their equipment, then go tromping down a trail into the woods. One of them is pushing what looks to be the heavy artillery of this squad: a bright orange, industrial-strength lawn mower.

A lawn mower? In the woods? Just what kind of hike is this?

"It's not hiking," replies Nancy Duffrin of Shoreham, the woman leading the group. "It's working."

Working to keep Long Island's 225-mile trail network open so the rest of us can get out and enjoy the outdoors.

The group, which meets every Monday, is one of several involved in weekly trail maintenance hikes organized by the Long Island Greenbelt Trail Conference. Nassau and Suffolk's largest hiking organization has now become largely responsible for maintaining many local trails, including the one the group cleaned a portion of that day: the 48-mile-long Paumonok Path, which runs almost uninterrupted from Rocky Point to the Shinnecock Canal. Recently, the group was on a stretch of that path near Wildwood Lake in Riverhead.

Although the Greenbelt Trail group and other local clubs have always been involved in the stewardship of these trails, there is a new urgency to this volunteer work. In the past few years, as state, town and county budgets have been slashed, the responsibility for much of the maintenance and upkeep of the great outdoors is falling on the shoulders of those who use them.

"In terms of maintaining the trails, we're it," said Tom Casey of West Sayville, longtime vice president of the Greenbelt group, which was formed in 1978 and has about 2,000 members. "The state and county people just don't have the staff."

Inspired retirees
Duffrin, who leads the Monday hikes, began walking the trails on Long Island 20 years ago. In early 2009, though, she sensed the increasing need for maintenance and -- inspired by newly elected President Barack Obama's call for more volunteerism in America -- volunteered to organize a Monday cleanup crew. Duffrin, a vigorous 70-year-old and the former director of instructional computing at Stony Brook University, is retired, as are most of her crew (who else could be counted on to show up in the woods every Monday at 9 a.m.?).

On the stretch of the Paumonok Path, the mower leads the way, clearing the small shrubbery along the sides of the 21/2-foot-wide trail. The group follows behind, snipping low branches; clipping the leaves of encroaching vegetation; clearing away smaller trees or large branches that have fallen on the path or been left by the mower; uprooting the occasional pieces of stump that protrude from the ground, ready to turn the ankle of some unsuspecting hiker.

The volunteers are earnest and know that their efforts are helping preserve the trails. They are efficient and experienced, but they're also having fun.

"I love the exercise," said Bill Brenner of Centereach, who joined the Monday crew last spring. "Being out here is good for the heart and the soul."

Not so good, though, for the orange mower that stalls on a slope about a mile into the hike. The operator -- Pete Manfredonia of Central Islip, whose wife, Nancy, is a past president and one of the founders of the Greenbelt Trail group -- yanks the power cord. Nothing.

The group gathers around and opinions are offered as to whether trying to restart the mower on an incline is wise. A visitor walks warily around it to higher ground, imagining that if it does start up suddenly, it could go careening back down the trail, trimming anything -- including hikers -- in its path.

Here is where a professional parks department maintenance crew might have the advantage in experience or equipment.

"OK, well, let me try it one more time," Manfredonia says, after considering the various opinions. "If not, we'll move it back down to level ground."

He yanks on the cord, and the mower's 190-cubic centimeter engine roars back to life.

A deal with the DEC
With their committed core of volunteers, the weekly maintenance hikes are not likely to stall anytime soon. That will come as a relief to Heather Amster, the Stony Brook-based regional manager for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Amster, who has watched her department shrink from six employees to one (herself), has a formal signed agreement with the Greenbelt Trail group to make sure the maintenance hikes on the Paumonok Path are done regularly and in coordinated, organized fashion. While no one gets paid, the agreement includes coverage of the volunteers by the state through its workers' compensation fund in case somebody does get too close to a clipper.

"Without them our trails would become overgrown and eventually impassible," says Amster, who supervises the approximately 20,000 acres of DEC land in Nassau and Suffolk counties. "They have really stepped up to the plate during this fiscal emergency. But what they can do is limited in scope. There are bigger things that need to be done on properties of the magnitude that we own and those volunteers can't do."

The volunteers do what they can. "It's very labor-intensive," Brennan said. "We just try to leave it a little better than we found it."

The nature of the volunteers' work varies depending on the trail. "Our main job is trimming and clearing downed trees with our chain saw," said John Coughlin of Bellmore, who supervises the weekly maintenance hikes on the Greenbelt's Nassau-Suffolk trail that runs from Massapequa to Cold Spring Harbor. "We also do a lot of litter cleanup, especially where the teenagers have party spots."

And it's not just hikers who are pitching in: Mountain bikers, hunters and dog-walkers are also involved in helping maintain the trails they tend to use.

Blazing the way
At what point the state will be able to take back some of the responsibilities of trail maintenance is unclear. In the meantime, Duffrin's Monday group soldiers on.

Far behind the main body of cutters, mowers and clippers, volunteers Janet Hahn of West Hampton, and first-timer Maureen O'Brien of Manorville, are repainting the "blazes" -- the vertical white marks painted on trees that enable hikers to follow a trail. Hahn is a veteran of Duffrin's Monday crew.

"I do enjoy it," she said. "Although I wish I had more time to hike."

There is an art to painting the blazes. "Keep the lines straight," Hahn explains, as she carefully applies white latex paint to one of the many pitch pines that give this area, the Pine Barrens, its name. "As the tree grows, the blaze expands and is even more visible."

The white marks are placed every 75 to 100 feet along the trail, so that when you stand next to one, you can always see the next.

"Because" Hahn adds, "you can get lost in the woods on Long Island!"