Often when I travel, I am beset by irrational fears the
night before we leave. This year, I am
concerned that our very overloaded car will cause the Woods Hole-Vineyard Haven
ferry to sink. Or, that the last person
will get in it in our driveway, and all four tires will just give up and
deflate simultaneously. Or that we will
forget the ferry tickets. Or a child.
It is with great relief that I report now that none of these
disasters came to pass.
How do you write a journal about a vacation you’ve taken
before? This could be very short, or
very boring, or both. I await my muse of
fire.
In the meantime, here is what was new on Day 1:
-
Instead of our traditional game of Geography
during the car ride to Woods Hole, we listened to Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvelous Medicine. This was a brilliantly read, darkly funny
story about a boy with a horrible grandmother, and what happens to her. (Don’t worry grandmothers, nobody got any
ideas, but this old bat really had it coming.)
The best part was hearing Isabel guffawing in the back seat.
-
And here’s something really new: we didn’t even discuss which exit to take
after the Sagamore Bridge, we just took the correct one!
-
We were on a DIFFERENT FERRY this year, which is
a big deal since as you may recall from previous journals the ferry is a big
part of the attraction for me. The
Governor is one of the small open boats so we all just stood around on the deck
among the cars, watching the Island approach.
The swell was a bit heavy on our crossing, but that didn’t stop various
cabin cruisers and sailboats from apparently playing chicken with the comparatively
ponderous ferry, causing our captain to have to toot his horn several times. I still love the ferry, big or small.
-
This being our first visit in a couple of years
that did NOT coincide with the Obama’s summer vacation, our crossing did not include
an armed Coast Guard escort.
-
There are always a few big yachts moored in
Vineyard Haven but this year there is a massive tub called the Vango, complete
with a carefully wrapped up helicopter on a back deck. Rumors abound as to ownership: Oprah is favored by many but others claim it
is auto dealership mogul Larry Van Tuyl, whoever he is. Bill wonders if it is Larry Ellison, but
since he just bought Lanai, we figure he’s already got an island. We know, of course, that it really belongs to
Blofeld.
-
Instead of lunching at an outpost of the Black
Dog, our usual if slightly mediocre stop upon arrival, we went to the Net
Result for far more satisfying take-out fish fare. Leaving the NR, we were hailed by Tricia, mom
to Peter’s great pal Fiona, who is on the Island this week for a family
reunion. A big wave from her family as
we sped off to our house, and we felt that the party had started. This week we expect to see Fiona and family,
Isabel’s friend Eliza and family, and of course myriad Londons.
-
Major new stuff at our house this year: the owners have enclosed part of the deck and
created a very nice and comfortable sun porch.
I believe that 50% of the time we have spent in the house already has
been spent in this room. They have also
helpfully labeled many light and fan and AC switches and remotes, and almost
every kitchen shelf, including the spot where the “whine glasses” go.
-
What up with the mussels in Seth’s Pond?! If you are patient, you can actually see them
moving through the sand. We’ve seen the
trails before, but never the mollusks themselves. We wonder if they are edible, but note that
the pond is not posted for shellfishing, and you need a permit anyway. Fortunately there is a person knowledgeable
in the ways of shellfish at the London’s (John Petersen) so we can ask
him.
Here is what is not new:
Cronig’s out of everything on a Sunday evening. I manage to get the last jar of Dijon mustard
but am at a loss for mayo.
Here are some key items to bring to Martha’s Vineyard with
you: lots of books, swimsuits, a pound
cake, wine, your exquisite Western Slope peaches, Advil, and a sweater. The Advil is because your neck might be
really stiff in the morning, if you don’t normally sleep on a tempurpedic
mattress. If you were really thinking
ahead, you would have brought a heating pad.
You might wonder what we talk about on vacation. All sorts of interesting things.
Peter: “Yeah, I just
don’t trust that whole international date line thing. It doesn’t make sense. Because if you go to the North Pole, you can
walk around the North Pole and in doing so, you would cross all of the time
zones, so eventually you would cross the International Date Line. Depending on what direction you went, you
would gain or lose a day. If you did it
enough, you would essentially time travel.”
But then he disproved his theory because of course everyone knows that
the earth spins fastest at its poles.
The next two weeks will go something like this.
8/20
Isabel whispered to me this morning, when we both got up
early: “I slept so well last night!” Shockingly, she has only brought four loveys
to MV: Squashie (a bear), Sawyer
(another bear), Toto (yet another bear), and Catty (not a bear but a cat). Toto (so named because he is actually covered
in maps of the Boston T, so T, To, Toto) had the good fortune to join us on our
touring about this morning, and Isabel recorded his presence in many trees at
the Menemsha Hills Reservation, as well as on a couple of fences and by some
funky-looking mushrooms. He may become
the Flat Stanley of this trip, except that he is in reality quite plump.
Let it be known that Toto (along with the rest of us)
ascended to the highest point in the Island this morning, 307 feet above sea
level.
Here’s where you should go for cookies, esp. shortbread and
chocolate-chili: the Scottish Bakehouse.
Here’s where you shouldn’t go for lunch unless you have the
patience of a saint: the Scottish
Bakehouse.
The SB is a terrific bakery and take-out restaurant. They have beautiful baked goods, interesting
mains (Brazilian plate or turmeric freekah anyone?) and super cute
t-shirts. I love the SB. But the signs advising “Please be patient –
All our food is cooked to order!” should be heeded, esp. if you show up during
the lunch rush. Because then, for just
an hour, I hate the SB.
It should be noted that flaky pastries requiring dry air to
retain their shatterosity, don’t tend to do well on the Island. You just can’t keep a croissant crispy in
this humidity.
At last we make our way to our local and favorite beach,
Lambert’s Cove. Where we are greeted
with a lovely surprise: “Summerland – An
Island Renga.”[1] The path to the sea is festooned with poems
and pictures hanging in the trees, little installations of seashells, and
marvelous nature- and literature-inspired sculptures. It seems that a bunch of island poets and
artists (or maybe kids, who knows) put this all together, and it is in place
for just a week. There is actually a LOT
of poetry, so we don’t read most of it.
Our favorite sculpture is a great branch on a tree, made out of young
twigs and vines, and jutting across the path so realistically that you don’t
even notice it if you are not paying attention.
Farther on, there is a teeny bookcase with some books, and a poem, and
two little Indian figurines (feather, not dot), which Isabel immediately notes
reminds her of the The Indian in the
Cupboard. As we near the ocean,
there is a piece on the fence, felt silhouettes of running dogs and
fishes. And paintings, swirls of blue
with a touch of white, maybe the sea, maybe the sky, all hung over and around
the path. The whole effect is magical,
and everyone emerges on to their favorite beach with a smile on their
face.
Here is what we’re all reading.
Bill: that Steve Jobs
biography by Walter Isaacson. According
to Bill, Jobs is a smelly weirdo, even if he is brilliant.
Peter: who can keep
up with the vast volume of books that Peter Laskin consumes? Right now it is Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos.
Isabel: Have a Hot Time, Hades! Again.
Lisa: finished the
surprisingly satisfying Still Life. I’m now trying Caleb’s Crossing, a higher-brow departure from my usual fare, since
the setting is so appropriate. But I
fear it may be a little still for my current frame of mind, and there is the
latest Andrea Camillieri – a great Sicilian mystery writer – burning a hole on
my nightstand. That takes place on an
island, too.
8/21
I saw a hummingbird this morning, right in the Rose of
Sharon!
Check one more off of the traditional list: bike from South Beach to Katama General
Store, back to beach, have wave-blasting fun at beach, return home salty sandy
and exhausted. Our trek to Katama’s
South Beach today was exciting in all sorts of ways. The bike ride has gotten
dramatically faster, now that Peter is so much bigger and faster, and this year
is not encumbered with post-crash trauma.
We hit the beach to hook up with the family of Freckle Free Fiona the
Fearless French Fry.[2] But the Saxlers, being newcomers to the
Island, sensibly asked for directions and ended up at a big parking lot ALL THE
WAY DOWN THE BEACH which it turns out is the actual parking lot of South Beach. We are glad to know about this parking lot,
since it gets to a great stretch, but it is about a mile from where we usually
park and so we had a little walk with all of our gear. Still, Fiona was thrilled to connect with her
pal, and it was fun to meet her many aunts and uncles and grandparents. Not quite as charmed by the massive surf as
Peter was, Fiona waited patiently while he was tossed and churned in that heavy
rinse cycle, first with one parent then with the other. Isabel even came in, clinging to her dad, the
straps of her blue goggles flapping and making her look like some distant azure
cousin of Yoda. In addition to the wave
jumping, Isabel and Fiona were buried in the sand, and P and Fi got immediately
into form, chattering away non-stop. All
in all, a good beach day, and something to add to our New Experiences list.
South Beach is quite near the tiny Katama airstrip, with its
grass runways and non-stop plane tours and flying lessons. They take off toward the ocean, so all day
long the little planes buzzed overhead, and were eventually dubbed The Periodic
Planes by P and Fi. But in the
afternoon, we hear a deeper rumble and look up to see a silvery old DC-3
lookalike zoom over our heads, fly out over the ocean, turn, and roar back over
the Island. Everyone practically
cheered. We think it just might have
been The Plane to Lisbon.
The day was not without a frisson of terror, however, as a
youngish person appeared to injure himself pretty badly in the surf, and had to
be transported off the beach by dune buggy.
It took a few more seconds than anyone would have liked to get the lifeguards’
attention, which does not instill confidence in the South Beach guard
staff. Still, once they leapt into
action the response was impressive – the guy was in an ambulance within ten
minutes – and the guards looked pretty chastened afterwards. You can see how a head or neck injury, which
this was, might happen: the surf is rough,
and the drop-off steep and rocky, so if you don’t know how to ride the waves,
or aren’t paying attention (or were looking for a thrill ride all the way on a
wave up the beach) you could really get bashed up. Both Peter and Bill proudly sport their
battle scars of beach rash, but Bill finally came out for good when the scratch
on his head started bleeding into his eye.
I myself hauled a scared girl out of the waves, after she ran in despite
her mother’s opposition. I couldn’t tell
if the look on the girl’s face was terror or determination, but when I told her
how to swim back, and she said “I can’t!” I gave her a hand and a wave helped
toss her back on the beach, sobbing in mom’s arms. Moral of that story: LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER.
It only took two back-to-back trips to Cronig’s to make
dinner tonight. Bill finds it poetic
that the next list is written on the back of the last Cronig’s receipt.
8/22
It is 7 a.m. Isabel
wants to play Uno, which children really like but grownups find
INTERMINABLE.
Best MV breakfast: an
egg roll from the Egg Roll Lady, and a mango lassi from Mermaid Farm and Dairy,
all at the West Tisbury Farmer’s Market.
Even better shared with Peter, even if he did just come along for the
egg roll.
Today was Isabel’s turn to entertain a friend, and we
invited her pal Eliza (and Eliza’s parents Eric and Joanne) to Lambert’s Cove
for the day. A happy if exhausting day
was had by the girls, and let it be known that Peter was a very good sport
about playing with them. He is
developing a new character: Chef Pierre,
The Shirtless Chef. Chef Pierre gives
lessons on how to cook tasty treats with seaweed, sand, and rocks. He had the undivided attention of those girls.
We think Lambert’s Cove is pretty fabulous, and we basically
try to show it off to visitors whenever we can.
We hear the Saxler clan checked it out last night for sunset, and we
know this because Bill ran into them all at Menemsha this afternoon, where they
were apparently following more of my proposals.
Clever people.
On beach days, we get home, shower for about an hour, then
all collapse in heaps and read for another hour or two. Then, we watch movies, or I should say, the kids
watch movies while Bill reads some more on one of our many porches, and I make
dinner. So far we have watched:
Star Trek (the new one, where all the classic characters are
introduced)
E.T. (I managed not
to sob for the last half hour of the movie as I usually do.)
Casablanca (Which no one except me and Bill really liked,
although the kids were happy to learn what that Plane to Lisbon business was
all about)
BIG NEWS: we did not
go to Cronig’s today.
8/23
The jury is still out on that Tempurpedic mattress. It is extremely hard to get out of, so that
is kind of weird. But you feel pretty
good when you do. Yesterday I was so
buried in it and the puffy comforter that Bill did not even know I was still
there. No memory foam could contain him
this morning, however, as he is off on a bike ride all the way to Menemsha and
back! It is shorter, distance-wise, than
he usually rides at home. But much
hillier, so we hope he survives.
Of course, Bill did survive, arriving home sweaty and ready
to hit not just any wavy beach, but THE wavy beach, a.k.a. the Trustees of
Reservations property over at Long Point.
This is one of Peter’s favorite beaches in the world. It used to be his only favorite, but South
Beach, with its rougher surf and more massive waves has currently claimed that
place in his affections. Big mama was
not in the house today at Long Point, but the relative calm and shore break did
not stop Peter from honing his body surfing skills (this time, I am happy to
report, without bodily injury). The
water temp is just about perfect these days, not tropical, but surprisingly
easy to get used to and completely refreshing if you don’t mind the prickle of
salt on your back as you dry off in the sun afterwards. Given our recent shark activity in Massachusetts,
not so very far away from MV, I will confess to just a moment of concern when a
seal head popped up well out to sea.
Because you know, where there are seals . . . and this is the land of
Jaws, after all. My concerns are quickly
silenced by my husband however, who bade our son stay in the water and of
course he was right.
But you know, even if we visit the same beaches every year,
they are never the actually the same.
Weather, time, and tides all leave their mark and inlets are created or
closed, sandbars appear and disappear, one year the salps rime the wave lines,
another year they are absent. This year,
on a tip from Eliza’s dad, Bill, Peter, and Isabel trek down the beach toward
Chilmark in search of the mythic breach between the ocean and one of the many ponds
that line this side of the island, which promises a water-park like experience. They find it, love it, and promptly dub it
the Tide Ride. Apparently you can get
into the water at the ocean end of the outlet, where it is pretty deep, and the
current will draw you spinning into the pond at the other end (so right now, I
think we’d call it an inlet). It’s all
tide-driven, and I guess that as the tide is going out, maybe you can ride it
from pond to ocean. The whole ride takes
about 45 seconds. Even the Wavy Beach
has something new to offer.
The bird life out here remains the same: posing, squeaking ospreys on their nest near
the parking lot, and the Swallow (or maybe Swift) Spectacle over the scrubby
bushes on the dunes. Fewer little stilty
shore birds, tho.
Isabel is finally done with Have a Hot Time, Hades and has moved on to Say Cheese, Medusa! These
are all from the Myth-O-Mania series, and she really likes them. Of course she and I are making our way
through the third in the Anne of Green
Gables series, and right now we about ¾ through Anne of the Island (how fitting).
We love these, and really really hope that Anne gets her head together
and figures out that Gilbert is the man for her. Bill is still with Steve Jobs, who has become
a real jerk, and Peter is plowing his way through his stack of books, just
finished Everlost. He has a system where he reads his books in
the morning when he wakes up, and before he goes to sleep, but reads whatever
is in the house in the afternoon, so as to make his own stack last longer. Yesterday it was The Encyclopedia of Baseball and some more of last Sunday’s
Times. I can report that I have made the
leap into Caleb’s Crossing, and it is
quite excellent. Particularly so when
you are reading a scene in the very spot where it takes place! It is a must-read for fans of the Vineyard,
and of course a lot of it takes place in Cambridge too, although as the
protagonist Bethia writes “Cambridge is an unlovely town.” (106)
Last night’s movie:
first part of Easy to Love, an Esther Williams classic. Isabel knows every scene – “can I just stay
up until the part where she falls asleep?” – and then chortles heartily at all
the goofy bits.
8/24
How did it get to be Friday?
I wake today with a swollen lower lip that I can only attribute to salt
and sun. The beestung-lips look works
for some, but not so much for me. I can
report however, that I have not worn my watch for about four days now, so that
is something.
We took a break from the beach (this morning) and
perambulated around Oak Bluffs, as we usually do. The main drags of OB are a bit close with
sightseers, and it is a hot day and all feels like a bit much, but then you
enter the Camp Meeting grounds, and you are in a green oasis of calm and cool. My son asked me if I had a gingerbread
cottage fantasy house – it is disturbing how well he knows me. (I do not, by the way.) Meanwhile, Isabel, thoroughly
delighted with her birthday present camera, takes a number of quite good snaps
here.
Lambert’s Cove this afternoon was just a little
crowded! When we came off the beach at
5:30, the parking lot was still full. Even
though he claims it is not as much fun as a wavy beach, Peter stays in the
water pretty much the entire time we are there, even when Izzy goes off on a
long walk with Bill and Kathy. He floats
around in the calm water for hours, looking like an inquisitive little sea
monster with just his head sticking out.
His fingers and toes are like raisins.
From time to time he runs over to deposit yet another comb jelly in the
bucket. Before we leave, he returns them
all to the sea from whence they came.
A few celebrity sightings on our way off the beach: Bill spies Robert Brustein (former artistic
director of the ART) and I see Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic and some other books) and Geraldine
Brooks (March, Caleb’s Crossing –
yes, she lives here – and some other books) who are actually married to each
other, all heading down to the beach for some sunset time. The Horwitz-Brooks are carrying a pizza.
Friday nights in Vineyard Haven you can find one of the best
bargains on the Island: Grace Church lobster
rolls. This is a fundraiser for the
local Episcopal Church and it is wildly popular but Bill correctly predicts
that if you go on the late side, you don’t have to wait in line. For $15, you get a lobster roll, chips, and a
drink (lemonade or iced tea). If, like
the smallest member of our party, you prefer a hot dog, that will only set you
back $3, and a piece of pie (several varieties) will cost you another
$2.50. This tasty meal is served to you
– for here or to go – by the minister, a distinguished-looking gray-haired gent
complete with collar, or by one of the many cheerful volunteers wearing a “Have
you hugged an Episcopalian today?” apron.
(Isabel points out that someone in the kitchen is also wearing a Smith
College School of Social Work apron, and we nod approvingly.) If you want to take it far to go, they will
even pack the lobster separately from the rolls so you can make them up when
you are ready to eat them, which I think is quite considerate. This all takes place in the community room,
but if you look through the open doors you can see that they set up a sort-of
auxiliary kitchen in the church itself, with tables where they plate the pies
stopping just short of the altar. It is
all quite charming. But more
importantly, these are the best lobster rolls evah: just lobster and S&P and a bit of mayo, no
crunchy stuff, no fillers, no nothing, and did I mention that they are
enormous? There must be almost a pound
of good lobster meat on there. Peter
can’t even finish his – he made the fatal error of actually eating some of the
roll itself, which is the only thing that could be improved (by toasting with a
bit of butter) – so I have to show him how it is done. I am sorry that I did not take a picture of this
magnificent King of Lobster Rolls. Maybe
we will go back next Friday.
8/25
Second best MV breakfast:
mango lassi from Mermaid Farm and Dairy, and a popover from Kitchen
Porch. The Saturday West Tis Farmers
Market is way more hopping than the Wednesday, with more bakers, and music, and
a couple of meat purveyors. I choose to
buy my potatoes from the grumpy looking old guy at the end who is not getting
much business, eschewing the terribly perfect organic farm truck from which I
usually buy them. A couple of loaves of
Orange Peel Bakery bread, some hummus from the Kitchen Porch, and 20 ears of
corn from Morning Glory Farm, and we are set to have 15 Londons over for dinner
tonight.
But first – a NEW BEACH.
We head over Aquinnah way and nab one of three non-resident permit
parking spaces at Lobsterville Beach, which is an Aquinnah town patch. It is not the greatest beach in the details –
the entry to the water is rocky, the sand is coarse and seaweedy and there is
the occasional bit of trash. But it is a
perfect golden arc stretching from Gay Head to Menemsha on a bluebird day, and
there is no one there. Since the road
ends at the bike ferry, there are almost no cars on the road directly behind
the beach. So all you hear, all day, is
just the sound of the waves and the wind.
It is immensely peaceful.
A spin by the Gay Head Light at Aquinnah reveals that it is
open for visits, which it has never been before so of course we have to go
in. We growns pay our $5 (under 12 are
free, Peter is still a kid!) and all climb up to the operations deck, where we
can go out on an alarmingly rusty balcony to take in the perfectly gorgeous
view. There are the famous cliffs to the
right and left, and behind is rolling dusty green low forest and scrub of this
end of the Island, dotted with blue tidal ponds and of course the ocean all
around. Even better, however, if you
climb the ladder from that level, you can go up into the light house itself,
standing with your back pressed to the glass as the giant light (a 1000 watt
bulb, Peter informs us) swings by, searing you with first yellow then red
heated light, spinning and spinning. The
guide describes, and finally we get it, that the keeper used to have to haul on
weighted pulleys to keep the lens spinning, and keep the lamp full of oil,
because it was of course just an oil lamp until fully electrified in 1957. So, finally, we get it about Fresnel lenses,
the original one from this light which you can see at the MV Museum in
Edgartown. A high-grade Fresnel lens,
with its facets and mirrors, could make a single oil lamp visible 20 miles
away! This is important here at this end
of the Vineyard, because there is a shoal known as the Devil’s Bridge, just
offshore. The map of shipwrecks around
the island that is hanging here shows a particular concentration off Gay Head
(including the foundering of the City of Columbus,
see MV 2009, “Barack’n the Vineyard” for more on this tragedy). The guide also confirms that it is a 1000
watt bulb and shows us the (relatively) teeny thing that gives off all that
energy. We all leave enlightened.
But we’ve got seven pounds of bluefish on order at Larsen’s
for tonight’s gala dinner chez nous, so we’ve got things to do! The extended-but-not-quite-complete London
clan fills our house with good cheer.
Not surprisingly, the small set is the highest spirited: Isabel is thrilled to get silly with Luke,
Lili and Danny, led by Peter the Pied Piper.
The older kids – Julia, Maya, Emily, Ben and Max – are somewhat more
sedate but amuse themselves and the wee ones by filming the hijinks. The grownup contingent includes Emily,
Barbara, Kathy, Nancy, Ramon, Tom, and Linda.
We feast on tuna tartare, said bluefish, corn, an eggplant salad from
Kathy and a Caesar salad from Ramon, and pies (blueberry and blackberry) and
Enchanted Chocolates. “I’m sure you’re
tired” I said to Isabel as I put her to bed, “you know it!” was her groggy reply.
8/26
Bill is feeling particularly chuffed because his wily
experience totally dominated the youthful energy of less-than-half-his-age Ben
Rucker on the tennis court this morning.
One constant of a Vineyard vacation is sand. Sand is everywhere. It is in our bathrooms, it is in our
beds. It is in our car, it is in our
shoes. It is in Isabel’s loveys and
blankets, it is in our books. It is in
our hair, it is in our bathing suits, it is in places that we really cannot
figure out how exactly it got there.
Sand is everywhere. I could have contributed
this to the renga.
But the renga is gone, vanished as if it had never been
there. No poems glowing in the dim
forest light, no faux branches to amaze, no shell arrangements to wonder
at. The path is just the path again.
After a histrionic start to our day from the smallest member
of our party, we finally end up at Lambert’s Cove around noon, and stay until
sunset, only dispatching Bill at 5 to pick up some dinner from the admittedly
delicious if jaw-clenchingly inefficient Scottish Bakehouse. We swim and sun, read and laze. Isabel makes some new friends (Sydney, her
little brother Henry, and their oddly androgynous friend Felix) at Coca Cola
creek, Bill reads and reads and finally finishes the Steve Jobs biography,
Peter and I walk to Split Rock, and touch its crystal-y side to confirm our
accomplishment. We pick up rocks that we
think will amaze Isabel, but of course, once they are out of their watery homes
they lose their luster and appear somehow diminished in our hands. So, we return them to the beach. Today LC is as close to the Caribbean as New
England gets: soft white sand, clear
blue sky, warm(ish) clear water. But
better, we think. The sunset is
mesmerizing, as always. And then it gets
damp and chilly so we hurry up the now even dimmer path to our car, and hot
showers, and pajamas.
8/27
Moshup Beach is a very beautiful beach out Aquinnah way, the
very far western tip of the island and basically the extension of Long Point
and South Beach. Bill rode his bike all
the way out there! The rest of us came
more sedately in the car. We all arrived
at roughly low tide, which revealed many big boulders in the water, and left
perhaps just before high tide when all was covered by crashing surf. In between, the waves were perfectly sized
for Isabel to have a breakthrough wave-jumping afternoon. Turns out that letting go of Mom or Dad or
Peter’s hand makes it way more fun, and if it is shallow enough that you can
stand, you can really show those waves who’s boss.
You know about ol’ Moshup, right? He’s the benevolent giant who made Noepe,
later dubbed Martha’s Vineyard by the English.
The story is that he was striding toward the Aquinnah cliffs, where he
lived, and being tired, his foot dragged heavily in the earth. The waters filled in the hole, and presto, an
island. Moshup, they say, lived in a
cave in the cliffs with his wife, Squant and a passel of children. When he was hungry, he’d wade out into the
sea and catch a whale, then bash it against the cliffs to kill it. (That’s where the colors in the cliffs come
from, red whale’s blood, etc.) Then,
he’d tear up some trees by their roots (that’s why there are no tall trees at
this end of the island), make a fire, and broil up said whale, because everyone
knows whale is better broiled.
Moshup is responsible for many things on Martha’s Vineyard,
including the Devil’s Bridge. He was
apparently building a bridge between Cuttyhunk and Noepe, when a giant crab
latched on to his toe! Angry and distracted,
he abandoned the project and the remaining boulders became the treacherous
reef. I wonder what became of the crab,
but Peter tells me that Moshup tossed it away into the ocean, where it became
the island just off the southern coast of MV, Nomans Land.
We saw neither Moshup nor Squant today, but you do see a lot
of people at the Aquinnah cliff beaches, and I don’t mean that it is
crowded. The area down the Town Beach
end of things is where the action is, if you are a naturist or an aging hippie
or just someone who doesn’t care where the sand ends up. Isabel and I started down that direction on a
walk, and let it be known that I did warn her about what she might see, and ask
if she wanted to continue. Yes, she
said, assuredly, but all it took was one naked man and “OK, I’m ready to turn
around.” Was that scary, I ask? No, it was just gross, she replied.
We stayed at the more family friendly end of the beach, and
kept our suits on.
8/28
A rainy day (finally).
It is so humid that my glasses fog up when I leave Cronig’s.
Our standard rainy day itinerary includes Edgartown, but
this year we got out of our MV Museum rut (seen one Fresnel lens . . .) and
instead checked out the Edgartown Light.
You can climb up to the top of this one, as well, although it is not
quite so impressive as Aquinnah, since the light only needs to be a beacon for
the harbor itself not for the entire coastline.
It’s solar-powered, too! The
current structure actually came from Ipswich, floated around the Cape in
sections, in the late 19th c.
The light is out on a spit of land across from Chappaquiddick, which
includes some nice harbor beaches.
Apparently the land is relatively new:
back in the day, the light keeper had to row out to the light which was
just on a little pile of rocks in the harbor.
But of course that’s a lot of work, and not particularly efficient, and
a problem when the weather is bad which is when you really need a light in the
harbor. So, they built a wooden bridge,
but that also proved problematic in bad weather (kept getting washed away), so
they finally built a stone breakwater.
Over the years, sediment and sand have built up around the breakwater
and the light and made for a nice little peninsula. The base of the light is surrounded by
something called the Children’s Memorial, which is basically bricks with the
names of children who have died on them.
Really, and people come and visit the children, apparently. It’s pretty morbid, and the volunteer at the
Light agrees with me on that.
We also went to Vineyard Haven to drop Peter and Izzy off
for a movie date with London kids, but first we stopped to see the wonderful
Stanley Murphy murals in the Tisbury Town Hall.
We’ve seen them, but Peter reminds us that he in fact did not see them
with us two years ago, because he was mad about something and so stayed in the
car. What he was mad about, no one can
recall. Anyway, the doors are locked,
but a scruffy guy driving an ancient yellow Mercedes station wagon suggests
there may be a “stairway out back ‘cause they’re painting you know” and then
hails an equally scruffy looking fellow, telling him that these folks want to
get in and see the murals, and it’s locked.
Scruffy #2 says, sure, follow me, and takes us through a downstairs
warren of town offices and up some back stairs into the theater. “It’s OK” he says “I’m a selectman.” We drink in the lovely seasonal scenes of
Vineyard life.
This year, I did not wait meekly for an invitation, I just
asked (politely) if Ramon might make paella . . . and he did! And it was delicious, of course.
8/29
The Polly Hill Arboretum seems to specialize in placing
cryptic signs roadside. Last week it was
“HERBAL TALK WEDNESDAY 7:30.” Is that a talk about herbs? A fragrant conversation? Today’s sign:
“CLIMATE CHANCE.” I always say,
give climate a chance.
A quick stop at the West Tis Farmer’s Market to stock up on
egg rolls and cookies and honey, and we are on our way to THE Wavy Beach, to
meet up with a car full of London kids.
It is a perfect day, sunny but not hot, wavy but not crazy. Peter does swim disconcertingly (in my
opinion) far out, and stays there, bobbing on his boogie board near some
surfers, waiting for the perfect wave. I
just wish he did not look quite so much like a shiny little seal. This time, I experience the Tide Ride, made
even more terrifying by the outgoing tide, which means that it dumps you not in
the tranquil pond but in the raging ocean waves, pretty far out, and you must
swim right or left to have any hope of getting back to shore. Still we ride and ride until we are cold and
tired and hungry. It is fun, but you do
end up with a bathing suit full of sand, and I can report that a lot of that is
in our house right now.
I’ve mentioned that I read Caleb’s Crossing, but didn’t say that now that I’ve finished it,
Bill is reading it, and it turns out that pretty much all the Londons are
reading it too. Well, it really is the
thing to read if you are here, since it describes the Island so beautifully,
and if you’ve got a Cambridge or Harvard connection then that is another level
of interest. Tonight, the author,
Geraldine Brooks, was part of a roundtable discussion at the Wampanoag Cultural
Center about some changes that she made for the paperback version, at the suggestion
of the Wampanoag here on the Island. She
removed the word squaw (which is apparently like using the N word to describe a
black person), and added some text to the afterword about how this represents
the views of the English in the 1600s (which seemed obvious to me, but others
felt that perhaps a less-enlightened reader would need that explained). Bill and several Londons attended this, and
found it quite interesting. I took the
kids to eat at nearby Faith’s Seafood Shack, succeeded in grossing out my son
by eating steamers in front of him, and then watched the truly spectacular
sunset from the Aquinnah cliffs with, oh, say, forty or fifty new friends. We all clapped as the last sliver of red-gold
sun slipped into the sea.
8/30
This morning, the sign at Polly Hill read “CLIMATE
CHANCE WEDNESDAY 7:30.” Today
is Thursday.
We supported Vineyard artisans, as is our wont, at the
twice-weekly Vineyard Artisans Festival, at the Grange Hall, which is
apparently not to be confused with the upcoming Vineyard Artisans Festival at
the Fairgrounds this weekend. We were
pleased to pick up the latest book of doggerel from our favorite printer and
rhymer Dan Waters, and some of us are especially delighted with our purple
leather whale doorstop, dubbed Moby Grape by Bill.
State Beach is a nice beach, with clear, calm water that is
a bit too calm for our taste. We like to
ride our bikes along it, though, since it is nice and flat, and you can go from
Oak Bluffs to Edgartown quite easily. But
State Beach has one thing that no other beach on MV has: a bridge.
This bridge, officially the American Legion Bridge, but also known as
the Jaws Bridge because they filmed the “shahk in the estuary!” scene there, is
a favorite place for young people to leap off of into the channel below that
runs between the ocean, and Sengekontacket Pond behind the beach. For years, Peter has eyed this activity with
a combination of envy and fear, but this year he overcame the latter and
conquered the bridge jump! I didn’t
watch, but Bill tells how he marched up, took in the scene, and then, the very
picture of determination, climbed up on the rail and JUMPED. Peter relates that in fact he was scared but
he knew that he just needed to do it and he’d be fine. Then he jumped two more times, and Bill
jumped too! They say it’s easy, the
current isn’t very strong, and as long as you go straight down it doesn’t hurt
at all. But don’t flop.
As if that wasn’t exciting enough on an otherwise rather
lazy day, Izzy and I each caught a brass ring on the SAME RIDE of the Flying
Horses. She would like it known that we
were riding right next to each other.
Did we want to take our free ride, the attendant asked? Bien sûr!
It looks like we won’t get to the dining object of my
interest this trip, the hyper locavore-ish State Road in West Tisbury, but we
did have a great meal at the aggressively funky Red Cat Kitchen at Ken ‘n Beck
in Oak Bluffs. You know this kind of
place – mismatched chairs, wildflowers in Ball jars on the table, a bar with
interesting cocktails, and blues played just a little too loud. Bill and I gave in to the waiter’s injunction
that the chef does a lot of chef’s-whim type of preparations, and no one really
knows what is in all the dishes, so if you order the Chef’s Imagination of
Line-Caught Yellowfin Tuna you need to just relax and roll with it because who
knows what you might get (although please tell us if you have any
allergies). Yes, it sounds like an
entrée at the Maison de la Casa House, but could not be further from that in
reality: we can report that the chef’s
imagination for yellowfin tuna involved a huge portion of very rare and
excellently grilled tuna on a potato purée with a bit of curry oil and then a
big pile of a cantoloupe/watermelon/pickled turnip/feta salad, all in teeny
dice, and it was delicious! Bill also
had something called an Island Fresca, which is an unnecessary name for a fine
hot soup of corn broth, tomatoes, basil, and parmesan. Peter ordered from the “small plates” portion
of the menu, which brought him a ginormous skewer of beef tenderloin and a
similarly large plate of tasty onion rings for about $15, which may in fact be
one of the better deals on the Island.
While he could finish neither of these, he was apparently able to find
room for a malted chocolate crème brûlèe, the dish of which he licked
clean.
We emerged from Ben and Bill’s (ice cream – Isabel not
finding the Red Cat’s desserts to her taste) to see a big golden moon hanging
over the ocean. And one of these years,
we will get to Back Door Donuts at the Martha’s Vineyard Gourmet Café and
Bakery, but this is not that year since our stomachs were stuffed and the line
was long. If you are in Oak Bluffs after
7:30 pm, the thing to do is to line up at the back door of this bakery, where
they sell hot donuts and apple fritters, until 12:58 pm. Don’t be late or you will miss them.
Every evening when we return home, we startle a bunny in our
driveway. We are not sure if it is the
same bunny, or many. We do know that one
met its end in a rather grisly manner, right in the lawn near the house,
perhaps at the teeth of a fox. But
still, there is that bunny every evening hopping across the drive and into the
brush. Run bunny run!
8/31
Since we are on vacation, sometimes we have pie for
breakfast. Sometimes we even have poundcake,
or leftover paella. It’s all good.
I broke my streak and put my watch on this morning! Horrified, I quickly took it off.
We are all over the Island today: Menemsha for a t-shirt from Beetlebung for
Izzy, Chilmark for chocolates from the pleasurably quirky Chilmark Chocolates, Vineyard
Haven for an aborted sail (too windy) and lunch, Chappaquidick for see below,
Oak Bluffs for our reward at the end of the day.
Everyone loves the Chappy Ferry, it is like a Zamboni that
way. It is a three-minute ride. You barely have time to get out of the car
before you have to get back in and drive off.
One ferry is named the On Time II (because it was delivered from the
builder on time) and one is named the Amity, homage to Jaws of course. They both start from their respective sides
of the channel at the same time, and angle sharply so that the strong current
carries one in to its landing, while the other chugs hard to reach its
side. Sometimes you have to wait
forever, because it only takes three cars at a time, but today we have no
line.
Going to Chappaquiddick is kind of a production, because you
have to go all the way to Edgartown, then maybe wait in line for the ferry,
then drive all the way across the island to get to the ocean beach side. But of course it is totally worth it and our
handy Trustees of Reservations card gets us into all kinds of places free. First we check out Wasque Point, the bottom
right corner of the whole of Martha’s Vineyard, which used to connect to Katama
via a massive bar until a break during a storm about five years ago. They say the breaks here follow a 50-60 year
cycle, and that this one may close up in another 15 years or so, then open up
again in another 30 years. The surf is
so treacherous at Wasque however, with swirling currents and sand bars and
breaks, that swimming is strictly verboten.
It is very windy and wild, too, and there are barely any people. So we head slightly north to East Beach,
which is right by the infamous Dyke Bridge, and it is calmer over here, good
for swimming although the beach has a relatively steep drop off.
At 6 pm we join another family in a covered pickup truck,
for a Trustees of Reservations twilight tour out to the Cape Pogue Light. All of Cape Pogue, except for a few private completely
off-grid homes out by the light, is a Wildlife Refuge. You can take a car with an Over Sand Vehicle
permit out there, and you can camp, but it is mostly about six miles of sand
and dune and salt marsh and low trees and birds. They say there are also deer and river otters
and muskrats and raccoons and voles and skunks, but we see none of them. It is slow going through the thick sand, but
this allows us to see flocks of egrets along the ponds. We learn about the different kinds of gulls,
and we see a pair of oystercatchers with their bright orange bills. Along one stretch of the cape there is a
stand of American Cedars, apparently fed by a freshwater aquifer under the
land. Deep within its bug-infested,
poison-ivy wrapped, brush-clogged interior, there is a graveyard of those souls
who died during a smallpox epidemic on the Island in 1763-64. They set up a pest-house out here for the
afflicted, and if you survived, you returned to the main Island, but if you
died, you stayed on Cape Pogue forever.
Apparently the gravestones were last seen in 1960, but finding them has
become so treacherous that they are now left in peace.
After bumping along for half an hour or so, we reach our
objective: the Cape Pogue Light. Gay Head was brick, Edgartown iron, but this
one is clapboard outside, solid wood and plaster inside. It has guy wires holding it to the ground
because it just stands on a platform, there is no foundation. Have I mentioned how windy it was today? Crazy blowy, but inside the light all is all
remarkably weather tight and cozy. And
unlike the other lights, this one has a graceful spiral staircase all the way
up to the platform below the light itself.
It is unexpectedly elegant. We
learn about the lightkeepers who lived out here in terrible isolation from
1801, until the light was automated in 1943.
We see where the light was moved from in 1987, now a platform crumbling
right in to the sea. We see the sun set
in a rose-red ball over the Island, and we see the Blue Moon – really pink
right now – rise over the ocean. The air
is heavy with sea mist, but the colors are all soft and twilight-y, and of
course the views are spectacular, back to Chappaquiddick, on to the main
Island, lights of fishing boats coming on in the distance. We drive back as the moon rises higher and
turns more golden, and the stars come out, and we ponder whether that is a
plane or Mars or a maybe satellite, and we see (we are told) a black night
heron on the way. It is pretty hard to
do this experience justice in writing, but suffice to say that everyone is
thrilled to have this new and unique perspective on our favorite island.
Our day didn’t end with the moon and the herons,
however. Bill decides to reward us all
by taking the long road home through Oak Bluffs, and joining the crowd at Back
Door donuts. We growns have apple
fritters as big as our heads, and the small fry just have normal donuts that
they claim are good but not quite as good as Verna’s. What loyal sons and daughters of Cambridge
they are.
Donuts for dinner, that is not a bad way to end a great
day. Last night, I’d bet Bill a nickel
that we’d see the bunny when we came home.
Tonight he doubled down and lost big time because we saw TWO bunnies.
9/1
Unfortunately we did not see three bunnies, and Peter is the
only one who remembered to say Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit today. Well, there goes September.
Today was really just sort of a perfect Vineyard day. Farmer’s market breakfast (egg roll and mango
lassi), a sail on the lagoon in Vineyard Haven, afternoon at Lambert’s Cove, last
trip to Menemsha for lobsters for dinner, and of course an Esther Williams
movie, this time “Thrill of a Romance” with Esther and Van Johnson.
It is apparent that unlike just about everything else at
that venerable institution, Peter’s sailing instruction at William Lawrence
Camp has not been everything it could be.
“You sure do know all the old salt lingo, Dad!” he announces happily,
after being constantly reminded to come up with the tiller because he was
falling off the wind and to please say ready
to come about instead of prepare to
come about because prepare implies a jibe whereas ready implies just a plain
old coming about. It is also apparent
that Isabel needs to hone what nautical genes she has, because she found her
first experience in a sailboat not at all to her liking. First, she is bored and wants to help. So, fine, Bill shows her how to trim the
jib. Then the boat (a 15 foot American)
heels and she is tipped rather farther back than she is comfortable so now it
becomes scary. Then she just wants to go
in. Well, we have some work to do
there. But for a lovely hour, Bill
skippers us around the lagoon, and Peter gets (a little) steadier at the
tiller, and we check out all the really big sailboats moored there, admiring
the sleek lines of a wooden one, and wondering how a boat out of California got
here.
We end with Bill’s end-of-Vineyard-vacation ritual: watching Jaws. After we’ve come out of the water.
9/2
And so we come to the end.
We’ve read a lot of books, watched a lot of movies, eaten a lot of
peanut butter sandwiches, and spent a huge amount of time outside. We are all brown and a bit peely, except for
Isabel, who just looks like a blonde child goddess. Everything we own is a little salty, a lot
sandy, and still kind of damp. We are
all sad to leave the Island and return to our more fraught urban lives, where
school and work and hurricanes and lessons and travel plans will consume us
once more.
Disaster struck Kathy London this morning, in the form of a
thrown-out back while packing her car.
So we volunteer to drive her car back to Cambridge, leaving on a later
ferry. That means I get to stay on
island an extra couple of hours, so I wave goodbye to my family on the Island
Home as it chugs out of the harbor, and pretend that I live here. “Bye bye kids, see you next weekend!” A few littlenecks at Net Result, a lobster
cobb salad from the Waterside Market, the New York Times by the harbor, and it
is hard to get in that car and leave. See you next year!
[1] But
what is a renga? Originally, a form of
Japanese poetry (think Buddhist nuns), collaborative in nature, where one
person writes one verse, another writes the next, then back to the first and so
on. They used to have very precise
structural requirements. Modern rengas
have more people involved, and as you can imagine, the hyper-connected world of
the internet has made for some pretty interesting rengas. Apparently the themes are often pastoral,
having to do with the seasons, and nowadays, people just add on their own verse
or form of artistic expression, linking thematically more than rhythmically. Yes, I looked it up on the internet and you
can too, at Wikipedia and poets.org.
[2]
a.k.a. Peter’s buddy Fiona, this is her pirate name. If you want to know, Peter is Pickle Face
Pete the Pirate Prince. They maraud
about the seas on the Nefarious Noodle, and are sometimes joined by Horrible
Harry the Heavy Hindrance and Irridescent Isabel the Invisible Inchworm.
