Commentary
It is often said that our strongest memories are evoked through our sense of smell. For many, the delightful scent of our native summersweet, Clethra alnifolia, calls to mind summer on the Vineyard. At the peak of the season, summersweet’s scented white flowers perfume the air with their sweet fragrance. Adapted to flowering in deep shade as well as in full sun (with sufficient moisture), large colonies of this native shrub occur in natural areas throughout the Island.
The routine of an early summer morning goes like this: I come downstairs escorted to the porch door by two expectant cats, who trip up me and themselves in their eagerness. They have to wait while I check the outside temperature and open the skylights (it rained last night), and then we all emerge into the early sunshine. They jostle me and each other gently as to who gets out first (an eager pup would have knocked us all over by now), and we stand a moment at the top of the steps and take a deep breath.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
We can finally put paid to this old joke because the answer, after visiting 17-year-old Cord Bailey’s 11 chickens and single rooster on State Road in Vineyard Haven, is that none of his chickens has ever crossed the busy road, nor even set claw on the sidewalk.
“They know their own boundaries,” said Cord, although the band of fowls also takes a proprietary interest in the lush, shaded lawn next door. “The neighbors don’t mind,” he added, “In fact, they like the chickens!”
If you haven’t heard about the latest incendiary human who used an arsenal of firearms to blow away a dozen Colorado moviegoers as well as injure nearly five dozen more, then you must be living under a rock. And if that’s where you are, then if I were you, I’d stay there. That’s probably the last safe place in America.
As I sat with my family Sunday, eating blueberry pancakes under piercing blue skies at the Katama Airfield — along with dozens of others outside the small restaurant there — it occurred to me that what makes this such a popular spot is our continual fascination with air flight. In an age of routine jet travel and near-routine orbital space missions, we still get a kick out of seeing small antique planes huff and puff along the bumpy grass airstrip and pull themselves up above South Beach, and then set down only a few yards away from us.
I woke up early the other morning to perfect conditions for kayaking. The brackish water of Stonewall, Quitsa and Menemsha ponds was so still it looked solid until, that is, I made that first push from shore. Below me I could see sidling crabs and the eelgrass yielding to the direction of the outgoing tide. The surface of the water reflected the detail of every wisp of cloud so I felt as if I was floating and flying. The top half of a boat mooring that rose above the water was reflected in an optical illusion suggesting a perfectly round ball sitting on top of the water.