“This place,” says Alex Bates, “it brings you down to a very simple way of living.” Just pack a bag. Leave the city. Drive an hour and 16 minutes to Bay Shore, New York. Then ditch the car at the ferry docks, and hop aboard the Voyager for a 30-minute boat ride across Great South Bay. And there you are: Fire Island, a seaside sweep of beaches, dunes, and stilt houses connected by raised boardwalks and sand paths, not roads.