A hidden refuge for LGBTQ+ nature lovers

Look at the Sunken Forest from atop a nearby dune today, and its canopy resembles a neatly cut suburban hedge. But rather than boxwood trimmed by an attentive gardener, it's mostly prickly holly leaves plus an occasional unruly pine tree poking through. Walk through it at ground level, though, and its topsy-turvy, trippy essence is revealed: below that canopy, unseen by the outside world, it seems like the trees are growing in zero gravity – sideways, perhaps, or with trunks twisted into knots. The oldest trees here date back more than 300 years. Still, even those might be no more than a couple of metres tall, gnarled into gargoyle-like shapes like oversized bonsai, stunted by some invisible forcefield.

On a damp autumn morning, as drizzle coated the leaves to glistening, with the forest floor dotted by mushrooms and the air echoing with unfamiliar yowls – catbirds, Sucena said, so-called for their meow-like song – this forest's strangeness seemed especially otherworldly.

Sucena has been walking the Sunken Forest's 1.6-mile boardwalk since they were a child, but still retains a wonderment when wandering through the trees. Maritime forests like these are not uncommon, Sucena explained – consider mangroves in Florida, for instance. Holly groves aren't rare, either. But a holly forest just metres from the ocean only exists here, at Sailor's Haven on Fire Island, and in nearby Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Since the latter was severely impacted by super-storm Sandy in 2012, the importance of this grove has only grown in the last decade.

This forest is here thanks to an accidental equilibrium, a Goldilocks moment in nature. "It maintains itself, and not through any sort of intention, but in a way that's sort of Zen and deeply spiritual," said Sucena. They note that salt is typically kryptonite for holly trees, though not in the Sunken Forest. The ocean is blown constantly across the dunes, a process known as salt spray pruning, which results in that houseproud-like canopy as holly can only thrive below such seaside mists. It also keeps the trees' trunks from shooting upward, so they twist their trunks like pretzels. But crucially, those mists also help nourish the trees, bringing in decaying plant and animal matter to settle on the forest floor and enrich the shallow soil so well that holly can thrive.

"There's a delicate balance achieved here: too much salt spray, and the trees would disappear. Not enough, and the trees wouldn't be able to grow in the first place," said Sucena.

The unpredictable, unexpected Sunken Forest provides a metaphor for Sucena working here every day. "I'm really interested in thinking about how nature and queerness come together, as the rhetoric around what is natural especially comes in around trans identity. I am transitioning, and there are people that would say that's unnatural. But I look at nature and say, 'Actually, it's really diverse'," they said. Sucena noted that nature expresses itself in different sexes, male and female, but the concept of gender is a distinctly human construct. "Gender is all of these layers of cultural and social knowledge, history, interaction layered on top of sex."

Cherry Grove – or "The Grove", as locals call it – sits next to the Sunken Forest and emerged as one of the US' first LGBTQ+-friendly enclaves before World War Two, powered mostly by an influx of artsy Manhattanites. The Cherry Grove Community House and Theater, which was constructed in 1948, earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in large part thanks to its pivotal role in queer history. This was a rebellious, unashamed enclave even while homosexuality remained illegal in New York, according to trans historian and filmmaker Parker Sargent, who has long owned a house in the community.

"Even then, there were postcards of men in drag, saying, 'Don't tell mother I'm going to Cherry Grove.' It was already known to be queer and campy," she said. Their idyll under threat from Moses, local LGBTQ+ residents wanted to protect a place where they could act and dress as they wished. One key element to such isolation was that The Grove, and most of Fire Island, was inaccessible by car. Instead, ferries were the only way to get here, and they remain the primary method of transport today. Cars would bring people, and people would bring unwelcome judgement.

Neither of the leaders of Fire Island's anti-road movement, Maurice "Murray" Barbash and Irving Like, identified as queer, but they did embrace activists from all communities, including the Grove, in an era when social mores often stymied such cooperation. Barbash, who died in 2013, often told interviewers that he couldn't have fought the road back alone. It was the coming together of his neighbours that helped defeat Moses's plan and persuade President Lyndon B Johnson to sign the Fire Island National Seashore into existence in 1964 – and in the process, protecting both the Sunken Forest and the largely LGBTQ+ community that lives in the two communities to its west, Fire Island Pines and The Grove, from the outside world.

Sargent echoes much of what Sucena observes about the connection between nature and the LGBTQ+ community, especially those identifying as trans. She first came here with her wife in search of somewhere sandy where she could unselfconsciously wear a bikini. "I can breathe better, there's a weight off – I'm not different here. You can hold each other's hands and it's not an act of defiance," Sargent said, noting that one of the most cherished aspects of The Grove is that it has some of the finest beaches on Fire Island. "Elsewhere, the queer community has always been relegated to the worst portion of the beach. The Sunken Forest is a gay nature-lovers' paradise, and we in our community do things to take care of nature. White, straight men get everything first – that's the reality – but this is a rare space, and we said it's our fight to keep it ours. They couldn't build over it and take it away from us."

Sargent has loved spending time in nature her entire life but recognises the complicated relationship between nature and queer people. "I've been out since I was 14, and been feminine my whole life," she said, noting that hours-long solo hikes in places other than Fire Island could be interrupted by jarring encounters. "Suddenly, you pass someone and you might not feel a need to act butch, but certainly to prepare yourself for how they'll react to you being gay."

Mikah Meyer agrees. The gay writer was the first person to visit all 417 US National Parks Service parks, including Fire Island National Seashore. He struggled to find a corporate sponsor in 2017 at the outset of his three-year quest.

"[The outdoors industry] is a culture that has historically been very masculine," he said, "And so it's a magnified reality of what most queer people experience in our daily lives – maybe the tentmates next to you in a campsite are casually using gay slurs, so if they talk to me, I might say my tentmate is my brother." In an effort to reclaim the outdoors as a welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ people, Meyer launched the Outside Safe Space programme, which encourages queer or queer-friendly hikers and campers to wear a pin or sticker to help destigmatise the great outdoors. This is something Sucena is passionate about as well.