The five women range in age from 66 to 84, and their goal is to hike every single one of the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank walking trails. Thus far they have checked off twenty of them, even repeating a few favorites.

Last Sunday the women allowed this reporter to join their hike. We met at 9 a.m. in the parking lot of the Up-Island Cronig’s. The temperature that morning was 29 degrees.

By HOLLY NADLER

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Boston funnymen and women, heralded as The Boston Gold Rush of Comedy, arrived on the scene shortly after New York comics showcased at famous clubs such as the Improv and Catch a Rising Star, and Los Angeles comics appeared at the West Coast Improv, the Comedy Club and the Laugh Factory. Boston’s boom of small comedy clubs, some lodged in back rooms in restaurants, produced big stars such as Jay Leno, Louis C.K., Dennis Leary, Janeane Garofalo, and Vineyard habitué Lenny Clark.

Robert Taylor (1868-1942) graduated from M.I.T. in 1892 with a professional architecture degree, becoming the first fully accredited black architect in America.

His father, Henry Taylor, a freed slave from Wilmington, North Carolina, had turned his expertise with naval supplies into a thriving business that led to his reputation during the era immediately following the Civil War as “the wealthiest black landowner in the state.” His success enabled him to send all five of his children, girls and boys, to college.

When thinking about tattoos the old cliché of the tattoo dive in a port-of-call and the drunken sailor who staggers inside is never far away.

It’s the most famous Island landmark hardly anyone has ever seen. Built in 1895 as a marine hospital, the old plantation-style manor, with gray shingles, white trim and a sweeping balcony, on its 4.4.-acre hilltop, once commanded a view of Vineyard Haven harbor. At some point over the years the building acquired a white clapboard façade, enhancing its resemblance to Tara in Gone with the Wind. Across the broad lawn, a ring of pine and oak trees grew tall, obscuring the water vistas, and, at the same time, the long deserted building too.