New York, relentlessly urban, unforgivingly treeless, is a place where getting away, at least now and again, is essential. It can, however, be very difficult to get away from. Around it lies a moat of horrors designed not so much to prevent entry as to thwart escape, a no-man’s-land of snares and mazes to deter the seeker of bucolic ease.
To the east lies the tract of retail Sahara known as Long Island, where, as if in a nightmare, the strip malls peter out only to be perpetually reborn in the form of more strip malls.
