Walt Whitman Birthplace Association is delighted to present a guided hike with WWBA Tour Guide and Educator, Jack Canfora, to Jayne’s Hill, the highest point on Long Island, on Sunday, June 16, 2024. Participants will see the hike Walt Whitman took when visiting his childhood home in Long Island, New York.
Please meet your guide in the West Hills parking lot at 11AM.
West Hills County Park
Sweet Hollow Road,
Melville, New York 11747
Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking!” are the opening lines of Walt Whitman’s “Paumanok,” a poem that explores Long Island’s natural beauty, especially the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. Whitman’s fascination with the natural water that surrounds Long Island comes from his knowledge of Jayne’s Hill, the highest point on Long Island. Whitman returned to Jayne’s Hill at least twice after moving from West Hills in 1823 with his family. He enjoyed the view that captured the woods, fields, and beaches of Long Island. He was known for venturing out from dawn to dusk taking in Long Island’s scenery with some food, water, and a good book in his hand. What better way to capture Whitman’s spirit than walking the same trail that he would have taken to get up to Jayne’s Hill and take in a few poems about Paumanok (how Whitman referred to Long Island).
WWBA Docent Jack Canfora will be leading and narrating the hike. Jack is a wonderful historian as well as an accomplish playwright. His Off-Broadway plays include Poetic License, (59E59 Theaters), hailed by the Associate Press as “white-hot entertainment,” and Jericho, a New York Times “Critic’s Pick,” deemed “an important contribution to the repertoire of the American Stage.”
