To the beach, to the beach these hot summer days! It doesn’t matter what beach or what time of day. What matters is taking advantage of cool water and stretches of sand that are clean and inviting. Depending upon the choice of beach, one may see cormorants drying their wings on a raft, earnest ducks fishing for breakfast, terns angered at human intrusion, or a sluggish horseshoe crab.
Those fortunate people whose homes are on the water can plunge into it as soon as they roll out of bed on a summer morning. Menemsha and Chilmark ponds, the Lagoon, Lake Tashmoo, Squibnocket, Uncle Seth’s Pond, and Edgartown’s Fuller Street Beach all lend themselves to such early morning plunges. The water is especially invigorating then and there is no better way to start a summer day.
But early morning is not the only time to enjoy Island sand and water. Toward midday, if one likes company, there will be plenty of it at Edgartown’s Bend in the Road Beach or at Katama’s South Beach. Children at Bend in the Road will jump up and down in glee at the water’s edge – and, running into it, they swim and spout like whales until they are blue with cold. Handsome youths, who generally prefer surf to the lapping waters of the Sound, will be diving through the breakers at Edgartown’s South Beach with grace and agility.
And then there is the afternoon beach contingent. After marketing and other chores have been attended to, these swimmer-sunners will head for the water to cool off. Perhaps they will snooze a little on the sand, or work up an appetite for dinner by swimming a lap or two to a destination like a jetty or a moored boat.
Evening swimming should not be overlooked. When moonlight streams over Chilmark’s Quitsa Pond or the Lagoon in Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven, and phosphorescence dances in the water, those two ponds are at their most enticing. They have that same stillness of early morning.
And so the cry of summer is: “Off to the beach!”
Text excerpted from In Every Season: Memories of Martha’s Vineyard by Phyllis Méras, with illustrations by Thomas H. Cocroft and Robert E. Schwartz (Schiffer Publishing, 2012, www.schifferbooks.com).
