"Are you waiting for someone?"
"You using that whole table?"
"You leaving that parking space?"
New Yorkers. Martha's Vineyard is swarming with 'em in August - in the SUV-swamped towns to the east and along the rolling roads on the western end. The competition for space, for a better seat alongside the takeout shack, for a more picture-perfect island "experience." It plays better on East 42nd Street, where I spent my Monday like all other Mondays, back as I am from the beach.
"Trevor, that's not yours dear."
"Waitress, can we get some water?"
"Where do you get the fishing rods?"
Uh, we brought 'em, lady. From home. And over on the Ferry, and then down to Lobsterville Beach this morning. It's less crowded in Aquinnah and Chilmark, where a confluence of anti-development residents, an anti-development Native American tribe, land conservation groups, viciously strict zoning, and sheer distance keeps it low-rise and spread out - meadows and farms and dirt paths through scrub oak and pine. We're talking $5 million "farmhouses" and $2.5 million fishing shacks. But it does look great, and it feels wonderful with the sun shining and the breeze rolling down Vineyard Sound, up over the cliffs, across the beach and around the point to the Atlantic.
A week with no blogging, no cell phone calls, and occasional emergency peek at email. Fill in the empty space with: reading (a Richard Russo and two Henning Mankell's), hikes, long casts from the shore, naps, swimming, ice cream, lobster rolls, catch, cards, cooking, and lazing about in the sun. Took lots of pictures.
So now I'm back.
