NYTimes By COLIN MOYNIHAN
ATLANTIQUE, N.Y. — John Maier stood inside the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Fire Island cabin recently and described waking up there during the summer.
“It’s amazing to get up, go right outside and see egrets or great blue herons,” said Mr. Maier, a club volunteer who helps run the cabin. “This place is one of a kind.”
Generations of club members have paid nominal fees to use the rustic cabin, which sits on 1.4 acres facing the Great South Bay. But now the club, which has about 100,000 paid members nationwide, is thinking about selling the property that members say includes land donated in 1928.
This month the club, which is based in Boston, said it had new concerns about the cabin and its location on a slender barrier island between the bay and the Atlantic Ocean, citing “the residential character of the surrounding neighborhood, limited flexibility in lodging options and access and its proximity to rising seas.” After an outcry by members of the New York-North Jersey chapter, a vote on the proposed sale was delayed.