A few weeks ago I went on a bike trip to Woods Hole with a group from The Anchors in Edgartown. We rode the bike path to North Falmouth and back, a pretty ride past a stretch of beach and a varied landscape of woods, fields and cranberry bog. As I pedaled along, shifting my 18 gears, a helmet planted firmly on my head, I remembered my first trip to Martha’s Vineyard. I arrived then on a three-speed Raleigh with an army surplus saddlebag slung over the rear fender and nothing but hair on my head.

If you’d gone out to the right fork at South Beach on any sunny summer afternoon in the last 40 years, you would have seen her. Dressed in long shorts and shirt, a wrinkled white hat, thick socks and sneakers, Ellen Kendrick would have been there, crouched on a towel, talking to friends. The stories were familiar to the group that met at the same place in the sand all summer.

There’s a squirrel hanging about in my yard, and I’m not pleased to have him there. Once, I saw squirrels as playful creatures with fluffy tails and great enthusiasm for life, leaping from limb to limb, bounding over lawns, searching out acorns. All bushy tailed and beady eyed, they were amusing characters in the story books of my childhood. But my feelings changed.

The picture on my computer screen shows four grandchildren dancing at the edge of the water on South Beach. Madeline stands knee deep in surf, her hands lifted above the froth. Lindy is half turned from the incoming wave, ready to run for higher ground. Her cousin Burns faces bravely forward, feet firmly planted in the running sand while Liza, poised on one foot with the other kicked up in the spray behind her, welcomes the waves.

On almost the last day of summer my husband and I loaded our kayaks on top of the car and found our way to the entrance of Squibnocket Pond for our last waterway exploration of the summer.