Hempstead Plains: An oasis amid LI suburbia

If you’re looking for something new, steer clear of Hempstead Plains Preserve. Its roots lie in the glacier that receded some 10,000 years ago. Meaning the Plains are older than anything around them.

“It’s a unique landscape,” said Friends of Hempstead Plains habitat manager Rob Longiaru.

And one that is captured vividly and colorfully in these photos by Steve Pfost.

The Hempstead Plains are an anomaly, the largest prairie in the Eastern United States. It’s also a place, Longiaru said, that Long Islanders should visit to better understand Long Island.

“When you come here, you get a much more nuanced picture of local history,” he said.

Some insights become stunningly obvious within just a few minutes of walking the preserve’s trails: That the Island is — as the name of the nearby museum reminds us — a Cradle of Aviation, for example. “You come here and you look around . . . it’s flat, it’s wide, it’s open,” Longiaru said. “And you realize, ‘Oh this is why they tested planes out there.’ ”

Of course, one reason the preserve attracts photographers and art classes from Nassau Community College (its campus is home to the preserve) is its stunning visuality. Especially now.

“The summer is a lovely season to visit the Hempstead Plains,” said NCC Professor Betsy Gulotta, the preserve’s longtime conservation project manager. “Many wildflowers are in bloom, including the orange butterfly milkweed, black-eyed Susans and native bush clovers, and the native grasses that characterize a prairie are bursting up, growing taller every day.”

As peaceful and bucolic as it may appear, even on a July morning, the preserve’s grasses are locked in eternal combat with invasive species, made more numerous by development. But given the resilience of this piece of ground against all manner of aggressors, Longiaru has no doubt who the winner will be.

“If we were all to disappear tomorrow,” he said, “this old piece of the Hempstead Plains would survive.”

And here it is, in all its summer glory.   

— John Hanc