The Colder Island

Thursday May 11, 2006

My other home is also an island. Martha's Vineyard Island floats about seven miles south of Cape Cod on the coast of Massachusetts. It is a lot bigger than Isla Mujeres - approximately 100 square miles in area. The off-season population is about 15,000; in the summer it swells to 100,000 - counting daytrippers. At those times, the island is in danger of sinking into Vineyard Sound. If you saw the original "Jaws", you have seen Martha's Vineyard - it was filmed here in 1975.

Native Americans (Wampanoags) have lived here for at least 2,000 years. Europeans "discovered" the island in 1603, Bartholomew Gosnold named it for his infant daughter Martha and for the wild grapevines that covered the land. By 1630 (ten years after the Pilgrims landed), Martha's Vineyard had colonists. During the Revolutionary War control see-sawed between the British and the Americans. After the war, fertile fields and sheep farming, as well as abundant fishing and shellfishing, supplied those living on the Vineyard and also provisioned the ships passing along the east coast of the U.S. For a time, whaling was a large industry based here as well as in New Bedford and Nantucket. Tashtego, the harpooner in "Moby Dick", was a Wampanoag from the island town of Gay Head (now known by its original name - Aquinnah).

In the mid-1800s, Martha's Vineyard became a vacation destination. Many of the original visitors came for religious revival meetings which were held in a field in Oak Bluffs. The tents became small, closely packed cottages with "gingerbread" woodwork trim. About 200 still survive in an area known as "The Campground". In the center of the campground is a roofed open air church called the Tabernacle. Now this space is used for summer concerts and high school graduation ceremonies.

The Island has six towns: Vineyard Haven, Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, West Tisbury, Chilmark and Gay Head (Aquinnah). It is reached via ferry or air. We have beautiful beaches, but unlike Mexico many of them are private. The water is more steely blue than turquoise and it never gets warmer than 70 degrees F. We have great fishing and boating too.

We have lots of celebrity visitors and homeowners, but most of them come here because they will be ignored by the locals. Because of the Vineyard's popularity/notoriety, the cost of living is very high (can you say $4/gal for regular gas?). Yet many of us who call the island home are NOT wealthy and most of our children cannot afford to buy homes here. We joke that soon we will be ferried in to do our jobs and then ferried off-Island at the end of the day. When I read about Isla Mujeres' people protesting that their land and homes are being bought by outsiders, it sounds very familiar and I sympathize.