Home for the Summer:
~ A Season Begins ~

By JULIA WELLS

Just a few weeks ago the Island was still wrapped in the quiet of winter, the coastal landscape bleak and beautiful, broken only by flocks of hardy sea birds, mottled gray clouds slung low in the winter sky and the occasional fisherman working his solitary craft from a small skiff on a saltwater pond.

Now, suddenly, summer approaches and the landscape has changed. Jonquils, lilacs and wild apple blossoms dot the dooryards and green meadows of the Island. Shopkeepers clean the winter salt spray from glass storefronts; they paint shelves and window boxes and throw open the doors to a new season. Fishermen along the waterfront are in shirtsleeves, many of them readying their boats for the coming charter season.

And solitary is no longer an appropriate adjective to use.

The Steamship Authority ferries are full; look around during one trip on the old Islander and observe the mix of humanity which is uniquely summer.

There are college students, arriving by the hundreds to form the backbone of the summer work force on the Island. There are casual visitors dressed in summery togs, cameras strapped to shoulders, maps and guides stuffed in pockets and daypacks.

There are seasonal residents dressed in favorite old jeans and sweatshirts, eager to get back to the Island and open the summer house. Their cars are fairly buried in bikes, fishing gear and books for summer reading. In one the family retriever hangs his head happily out the window, lifting his nose to sniff the salty air. His expression speaks for all who return to the Island each year with the joy and ritual of a homecoming. Because for many of them, the Island is their true home. Chez Vineyard!

Summer is the season when all the rhythms change, a breathless time when the Island runs at top speed for weeks on end. It is a time of great complexity and also great simplicity. A trip to the grocery store means fighting a crowd and standing in line, but is balanced by a trip to Cape Pogue with a clam basket, a fishing rod and a paperback novel.

On a sparkling blue pond in Chilmark, three kayakers pursue their meditative sport, paddles working in unison as if they had been choreographed for this sport. Half a mile away a flock of sheep graze on coastal moors against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean.

On a farm field in West Tisbury, the earth is dark and wet from an evening rain the night before. Corn, pole beans and sunflowers outdo each other in a race for the sky.

At State Beach in Oak Bluffs sun worshippers lie cheek to jowl on the stretch of shore which fronts Nantucket Sound. Young mothers keep a watchful eye on their toddlers as they splash in the clear sea. In the distance, a fleet of small sailboats race around marks and buoys, their mainsails and spinnakers dotting the horizon like so many colorful flags.

At Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary young children learn about the natural world around them. They tramp wooded trails and study the names of plants underfoot and trees all around. They cast seine nets into the shallows of Sengekontacket Pond and capture crabs, starfish, eels and small flounder for close examination.

Island hype gets a generous assist from the mainland press. Nearly without exception, these stories center on the celebrities who come to the Vineyard, and in recent years the celebrity ogling rose to new heights when the Vineyard received visitors like former President Clinton.

But the mainland press never gets the Vineyard right, and this gawkish lens pointed solely at the famous people who visit the Island is at once a source of annoyance and amusement to Island residents, summer and winter alike.

Famous people have visited the Island for as long as it has been a summer resort – like nearly everyone else, they are attracted to the beauty and simplicity of the Island. But there is one more thing: The Island people have always graciously allowed famous visitors to have their privacy, and with the invasion of the mainland press in recent years, all of that has changed.

But no matter. The Vineyard still has the summer, and summer is different things to different people.

Welcome to summer.

Invitation to the Season of Summer

Raise the curtain: it's show time

Summer stands in wait, on the near horizon, just around the bend in the trail, the one that leads from season to season and binds the life of this Island community together. Come walk with us along the road to summer, with stops here and there and nowhere in particular. We offer you an invitation to summer, to this Vineyard now in bloom again.

Signs of the new season are everywhere. They float on the incoming mists off Vineyard Sound, near a lonely stretch of beach at Cedar Tree Neck, that extraordinary wildlife preserve of old woodlands and moorish uplands measured in age only by wind, water and time. The sounds of summer. You will hear them at a shipyard on the Tisbury waterfront; boats that make an Island fleet ready for launch. And in many Vineyard homes the conversation turns to yet another season, when generations young and old renew their ties to this land in the sea beyond the land.

Summer is the time for renewal here, for friends returning after a long winter away, for strangers arriving for a first visit, for all who care so deeply about the quality of life in this special but fragile place called Martha's Vineyard. Travel abroad into town centers and the countryside in search of the business of summer. It is there at each turn: in the still muddy fields and low meadows where Island farmers prepare for the opening of crowded rural markets; in the rising parade of shoppers from the Chilmark Store to the main streets of Vineyard villages.

Listen to the talk. You will hear of Tall Ships coming to the Island later in the summer, and of busy schedules full of theatre, music, dance and art exhibits. The art of summer, that is what the Vineyard is all about at this time of year. Already the phone rings with queries about Illumination Night in the Oak Bluffs Camp Ground, about the annual county fair in West Tisbury, about the Tisbury Street Fair.

It was once written that any visitor to Martha's Vineyard becomes "proprietor of the ocean, overlord of space, free citizen of nature." And if that smacks of exaggeration — well, come and see.