In the Campground, a Feeling for What Oak Bluffs Will Gain

By CHRIS BURRELL

A splotch of fluorescent orange paint tags the trunk of a pine tree standing over what was once campsite Number 92 in the old Webb's Camping Area.

The tree is a survivor, proof that the chainsaws didn't make it this far and a sign that the southern woodlands in Oak Bluffs are truly an arrested development.

If you went tromping around this week on the wide swath of forest and meadow that stretches from Barnes Road to County Road, you couldn't help imagining that these woods might have been scraped clean for 18 holes of golf or hundreds of houses.

After all, the evidence of what could have been is more than just spray paint on a few trees.

Right next to Featherstone Center for the Arts, the clear-cutting of trees from earlier this winter has left portions of the land scarred and rutted, a landscape so scorched that you wouldn't be surprised to see a contingent of Confederate and Union soldiers picking the site for a weekend battle re-enactment.

In some ways, the vision and the metaphor it evokes couldn't be more appropriate. The southern woodlands became a political battlefield, embroiling Oak Bluffs in something akin to a civil war.

But this week, as the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank announces a deal that could conserve 190 acres of the woodlands, the land suddenly seems to bloom as a harbinger of peace.

"If this finds a solution and ends the rancorous controversy that's happened in town, it will be a magnificent achievement," said Priscilla Sylvia, a member of the Oak Bluffs land bank advisory board.

"When you look at an overlay map of Oak Bluffs, this parcel is so huge and so important to that portion of town that really has very little in the way of protected open space," she added. "It's a huge addition to our natural heritage."

In raw acreage alone, the addition more than doubles the land bank's property in Oak Bluffs. And with this impending purchase, land bank executive director James Lengyel said, "The land bank will own a higher percentage of Oak Bluffs than [its percentage of] other towns on the Island by a significant margin."

Oak Bluffs is a town already noted for its parks, but they are almost all clustered around the densely settled town center and more reminiscent of city parks, suitable for picnics or kite-flying, but hardly expansive enough for hiking trails and dog walks.

This fact may help explain the enormous popularity of the Trade Winds Field Preserve, a 71-acre parcel on County Road acquired by the land bank in 1989 that has become a haven for dog owners who want to let their pets run free.

Mr. Lengyel said the Trade Winds property, which also functions as a grass-landing airfield, is one of the most visited land bank properties, second only to its Moshup Beach preserve on the south shore of Aquinnah.

Like Trade Winds, the southern woodlands isn't particularly flashy. There's no beach frontage or pond access, and you can't get much of a bead on the property from the roadsides. And like Trade Winds and another Oak Bluffs land bank preserve - Pecoy Point Preserve on Sengekontacket Pond - the property is sandwiched between developed land.

That's one reason that purchasing conservation land in Oak Bluffs is no easy task, Mr. Lengyel pointed out. "It's close to ferries and to downtown, and therefore targeted for commercial development," he said.

What's remarkable then about the southern woodlands is that it's close to so much activity - the blinker light intersection, the regional high school, the ice arena, Martha's Vineyard Community Services, the elderly housing at Woodside Village - and yet seems so removed.

"You're up and over the hills and dales," said Mrs. Sylvia. "You feel so secluded and far away from everything there."

From Barnes Road near Featherstone, the southern woodlands appear only as headlands jutting up from the east side of the road. But once you enter these woods, you see why the land bank and the backers of conservation threw their energy into saving this land from development.

From the bluffs of the old campgrounds, the upper end of the Lagoon is visible.

The beech trees and their silvery branches give way to meadows and then stands of pitch pines and white pines. A light easterly breeze shuffles butterscotch blades of grass and makes the long pine needles flutter like green flags.

The coniferous forest around the old campsites has turned the trails into aromatic carpets of tawny needles. The shady spots were still, this week, covered by a layer of snow.

For Oak Bluffs, the proposed conservation of such a sizeable portion of the southern woodlands comes as something of a reward for good deeds.

"A lot of people in Oak Bluffs feel the town has so many of the community services - the hospital and the high school, for example - and we get the least of recreational and fun things," said Polly Bassett, a member of the town land bank advisory board.

Until seven years ago, Ms. Bassett had never ventured into the woodlands. Then she rode her horse there. "This is incredible," she said, of the tentative deal reached this week.

In her view, saving this land will help change the identity of Oak Bluffs. "This is a great treat to know Oak Bluffs does have something like this," she said. "Everybody thinks of Oak Bluffs as a place to party or go out at night. This expands our definition."