The Vineyard has many ponds, small and large, saltwater and fresh, and these relatively calm bodies of water are used year-round by Vineyarders and visitors alike. The great salt ponds are places for gathering oysters, quahaugs, and scallops, for kayaking and mucking about on a day boat. When the weather is warm, the freshwater ponds are tranquil spots for walking, trout fishing, and picnicking, or just getting away from the summer crowds.
But in winter when the freshwater ponds freeze hard, they draw the skaters, hockey players, ice fishermen, and iceboaters. The ponds become the Island’s winter playgrounds. Parents bring their children and children bring their parents. The hockey players bring enough friends to get a game going. Many bring hot chocolate and some bring their dogs. The ponds in winter are communal scenes.
Skaters watch the thermometer and gauge the thickness of the ice the way surfers check the winds and eye the swells, waiting and hoping for the right conditions. Sometimes (after a long cold spell) a great pond freezes hard enough for skating, creating a vast playing area with a vista open to the ocean. For those who love the ponds in winter, this is an unforgettable experience.
Whether describing skating, playing hockey, ice fishing, or iceboating, it is clear that those who like to get out there in the winter are talking not just about a great way to enjoy the Island but about some of the best times of their lives.
A sportsman’s paradise
“I guess the best part of living on the Island is that it really is a sportsman’s paradise,” says Mike Jackson, who’s lived in West Tisbury for the past eighteen years and grew up in Vineyard Haven fishing, hunting, skating, and playing hockey. As a high school sophomore in 1983, he played on the first varsity hockey team on the Vineyard, scoring the first goal and the first hat trick in the school’s history.
“I don’t love summer as it is crowded and can be hot,” he says. “And beach access for fishing can be tough.” Mike’s favorite season on the Vineyard is fall. “The weather is still good, the crowds go away, the golf courses are in good shape and open, the fishing is good, and bow hunting begins and early duck season,” he says.
But Mike likes winter on the Island too – “except March,” he says. He likes the winter “because of ice hockey at the arena, pond skating, and ice fishing if it’s cold enough. The [Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank Commission] trails are also empty and the ticks are gone, which can be a problem with my black Lab. She loves duck hunting, ice fishing, and chasing pucks also.”
When he was four or five, Mike started skating on the pond at Mink Meadows Golf Course, which was near his house.
“We would walk through the woods, down the eighth fairway, across the ninth fairway to the pond. It was a popular pond for a lot of kids in the area, and it always seemed to freeze early. I remember walking home after dark with my two brothers and friends after skating all afternoon and being frozen, but it wouldn’t hurt until we got home when our hands and feet started to thaw.”
Seth’s Pond in West Tisbury was also a popular spot for pick-up hockey games. He would get dropped off and spend the entire day there and get picked up as it was getting dark.
Mike likes ice fishing too, both on the freshwater ponds and the salt ponds when they freeze hard enough. He sometimes goes ice fishing with Todd Goodell, of West Tisbury, whom he’s known since they were on that first varsity hockey team together – Todd was captain. They’re usually the first out there to check the ponds for safe ice, Mike says.
“We either chip a hole in the ice or use a hand auger that drills a six-inch hole. You can fish with a small spinning rod and jig through the hole, or you can use a tip-up trap, or tilt – this is a device with a spool of line that sits in the hole with a baited hook; the spool turns and sets off a flag when you have a hit….Sometimes when the ice is good, you can spread out the traps and skate to the flags when they go off.”
The key to enjoying the outdoors in winter, Mike says, is good warm clothes and warm rubber boots.
An Island kid
As a fourth-generation Islander, Callie Jackson has deep roots on Martha’s Vineyard, and she learned early to enjoy the outdoors life.
“I started skating when I was three and playing hockey at four and fishing when I was five years old,” Callie says. “My uncle Mike [Jackson] taught me how to ice fish and skate, but I was in the MV Youth Hockey program since four years old, so I have to give them some credit.”
Callie lives in Vineyard Haven and is in the eighth grade at the Tisbury School. She likes summer on the Island because there is no school, and she gets to hang out with her friends at the beach and go swimming. Callie also goes fishing in the summer at South Beach, Wasque, and Lambert’s Cove for bass and bluefish. And she plays on a softball team.
But Callie likes winter on the Island too. Because it is not so busy, she gets to spend more time with her family and she gets to play hockey, and go ice fishing and skating on the ponds. She says that she enjoys being on the ponds in winter, because it gets her outside and she gets to spend time with her uncle Mike.
“Learning to skate was difficult,” Callie says. “I started on hockey skates so that was hard, but I caught on in no time.”
Callie’s favorite ponds for winter sports are Sengekontacket, Seth’s, and Tisbury Great Pond. She also likes to get out on the ponds when they are not frozen and go kayaking.
“I guess you can say I do winter sports, because I get to hang out with my uncle Mike and Bee [Mike’s dog]. They are a lot of fun.”
Free figure skating
Genevieve Hammond, who was born on the Vineyard and grew up in West Tisbury, likes figure skating on the Island’s ponds. She was determined to become a good skater at an early age.
“My mother started taking me to Whiting Pond [in West Tisbury] when I was four,” says Genevieve, a junior at the high school. It took her a couple of years before she started feeling confident. “I taught myself everything I know about skating. I just find something I know I want to master and just go out there every day. I can work at it for hours until I’ve got it.”
Whiting has always been Genevieve’s favorite pond for skating. “It’s a small pond, so it freezes quickly,” she says. “There really isn’t much else you can do at Whiting in the other seasons. It’s a very pretty pond to look at, but that’s about it unless it’s winter and frozen.” Genevieve can walk to Whiting from her house carrying her skates. Sometimes she used to go with her friends, but as she got older she decided she wanted to go skating either by herself or with her mom.
For Genevieve skating isn’t just a pastime but something she’s always wanted to work on and excel at. “I prefer to go alone, so I can just focus on skating and not be distracted,” she says. “It’s more of a hobby than a serious sport. I just love the feeling of soaring across the ice with the cool wind brushing my cheeks.”
Genevieve says that if she had to choose either summer or winter she’d probably have to pick summer. “If it’s a good skating season then I love winter. But if not then it’s just another boring gray winter on MV.” She goes out skating whenever she can when the ponds are frozen. She doesn’t particularly like skating in the ice arena – “in a circle with tons of people.” She’d rather be outside in the fresh air where “you can do your own thing,” she says.
Genevieve sometimes skates on Seth’s Pond too but not often. Twice, she says, she has been able to skate on Tisbury Great Pond, which doesn’t freeze often, and she enjoyed the open space of such a large pond.
“Skating is definitely a workout,” Genevieve says. “It’s hard work. But the thrill when you’re up in the air or just gliding on the ice is such an exhilarating feeling, it’s worth the workout. Skating definitely just lets you go and forget about everything and just be in the moment.”
The next generation
Isaac Taylor has been playing in the water and on the ponds in all seasons on the Vineyard since he was little, and now he has a son to share that with. “I just became a father and my wife, Noli, a mother to our son, Emmett. He is the twentieth generation of my mom’s family on the Island.” Although Isaac admits that technically he wasn’t born here: ”I think the anesthesiologist was on vacation, so they flew my mom to Hyannis. So I was born there, raised here.”
Isaac grew up on Lighthouse Road in Gay Head (now Aquinnah) and now lives across the street from his childhood home. “I love surfing and kite-surfing up-Island,” Isaac says. “I love swimming in Menemsha Pond. Nothing eases the mind better than the crawl, repetitive visions of water, then sky, then water.”
He has been skating, playing hockey, and ice sailing for as long as he can remember: “I think I was one or two when I was dragged out there on the ice with my father. There was nothing else going on, so a lot of folks would come out to play, and sail, and hang out.”
Isaac played some organized hockey: “I was the one with the real crooked ankles on the Mites team,” he says, “but I think my best memories were on the pond behind the Aquinnah Library after school with all the kids in the neighborhood.” Sometimes they would just slide around on their boots, no skates, and maybe knock a puck around if they felt like it.
There is a little pond behind his house, Cat Pond, and sometimes Isaac clears the snow off of that and drags his twin nieces around on sleds, which he says really gets the girls laughing.
And Isaac likes to sail iceboats on Squibnocket Pond. “Squibby Pond has such a modest entrance,” he says, “but once you go around the bend, there is such a vast expanse of ice, like being on the moon.”
Traditional iceboats were used for transporting people and goods over frozen water, but most often in use here are smaller racing boats with two thin blades in the stern and one in the bow that steers the tiller. Some are factory made and some are home built and rigged.
“I don’t know how fast they go,” Isaac says, “but it feels like a bazillion miles per hour – super fast, cold, no friction.
