From 1961 to 2009 on Martha's Vineyard We camped. We rented houses in town, up island and down island. We flew in on Burge's small plane. We arrived in overflowing cars on the ferries. One year, we walked from Lambert's Cove all the way along the north shore to a cottage in Menemsha. Like the woodland tribes of an earlier era in the Connecticut River valley, this was our annual summer migration to the shore.
Is there ever a better moment than that summer morning when the ferry pulls away from the mainland and heads out for the islands?
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1994 Vineyard Haven 3
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1976 Richard & Derek arrive
1977 Sandy & Linda arrive
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2009 Chilmark Middle Road 7
2009 Menemsha Hills Trail 8
1977 Clare, above Lucy Vincent Beach
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1977 Lucy Vincent Beach
1980s 12
1980s 13
1982 Burge 14
1980s at Lucy Vincent Beach - Burge loved the sightseeing. Mac, above, was not particularly interested.
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1997 Libby 16
1986 Art on the beach 17
1986 at Lucy Vincent Beach 18
1981 at the Gay Head Clay Pits 19
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1999 Mac at Wasque
1976 Sandy
Derek 1979 21
1990 Marcie & Laney 22
1981 23
1983
1983
1980 North Shore sand cliffs 28
1998 Laney & Nora at Wasque 29
1982
A Sense of Time and Place Time stretches out long and slow in an island summer, but it picks up speed as you watch your children grow up and yourselves grow older. Every year.even though the dunes erode further, baby horseshoe crabs still swim in the shallows, gulls follow the ferry snatching bread from your fingers, and light spills out on the water from the Yacht Club. It it feels almost the way it always did but like a recurring dream, not reality.
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2009 Allen Farm, Chilmark 33
1984 Chilmark screened porch 34
1985 Missy and her daughters, ongoing jigsaw puzzle 35
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1996 Chilmark
1996 Grandchildren,Nora, Ana Clare & Laney 37
1989 Naptime in the hammock 38
2000 Francie, Nora & Ana Clare 39
1991 3 sisters, Marcie, Francie & Missy 40
1991 2 brothers, Mac & Jesse 41
1990, but it could have been any and every summer. A tomato juice bath was supposed to remove skunk odor.
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1981 Island Theater
1981 Coast Guard Station
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SUMMERS 1960s -1990s At ease in the hazy light and salt smell of the sea, we were not completely oblivious to the world around us. These were years of tremendous change, and we tried to keep up as pages of the New York Times blew on the windy beach. Cellphones were not yet common, but transistor radios brought the news of the daring Israeli raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda (1976), and dozens of people jumped up from their towels in joy. The Pill changed behavior among all young people, including ours. Martin Luther King and "I Have a Dream". The Beatles landed in New York. The Vietnam War ended, Tienamen Square.. Nelson Mandela and the South African election. Glasnost and the Soviet Union breakup.... The enviroment was deteriorating. it was harder to see the stars at night, but in those sweet summer mornings you could still hear boboliinks in Chilmark's old pastures, dig clams in the ponds and, of course, the skunk families flourished along with deer ticks, clouds of mosquitoes and swarms of mopeds.
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1993 Chilmark 45
2009, off Gay Head
1992 Wasque Point
1977 Menemsha, Links in the Food Chain 48
Menemsha 49
1982 In honor of Rachel Carson 50
2000 Chappaquiddick 51
1981 West Tisbury Pond performance 52
1966 Richard at the Lagoon 53
1997 Chilmark
MENEMSHA We strolled around in the early evenings, admiring the fishing fleet, watching sailboats run aground at low tide in the channel, drinking milkshakes, waiting for the the sun go down, always hoping to see the final green flash.
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Menemsha Harbor 1985
1983 Menemsha harbor
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1995 Menemsha Town Beach
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1982 Gay Head Lighthouse
1982 Menemsha
1982 Menemsha Harbor
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1998 Edgartown Harbor
1999 Water Street, Edgartown
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1999 Edgartown
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1999 Fourth of July Parade in Edgartown 68
1976 Fourth of July bicentennial, overlooking South Beach 69
2009 along the North Road
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2000 Chappaquiddick Butterfly Weed
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2000 Canoeing on Pocha Pond 74
2000 Testing kayaks, Chappaquidick 75
2000 Chappaquidick
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2001 Jeffers Lane, Chappaquidick
Burge took this picture, among others in this book, and it's my favorite.
This is a limited edition, excerpts from a memoir for my family, made in loving memory of my husband, Burge, who died in August 2008. He loved the Vineyard in summer, the feeling of sun on his skin, and he admired all the beautiful young women on the beach, our own as well as strangers. Clare Brett Smith
August 2009
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SUMMERS ON THE VINEYARD, © Copyright Clare Brett Smith, August 2009
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