It's Not Just the Ocean . . .

I’ve always been a water rat.  I grew up in western New York, and spent every summer day in our backyard pool, and loved our visits to Lake Ontario (Lake Erie, not so much back then . . .)  My skin would start peeling in June, and stop around late September (a thought that makes me and any dermatologist shudder today).  So for a long time I assumed that what drew me to the island was the sea.

My path to living in Massachusetts followed a very common pattern. I went to school here, and didn’t return to western New York.  I loved Massachusetts; it was beautiful, and there was interesting work.  Growing up around Buffalo, I didn’t consider it to be the Midwest, but I’ve been in the Northeast long enough to have adopted the Bostonian view of American geography.  And the land itself confirms that definition.  Driving west on the NY State Thruway, the landscape changes just a little bit west of Syracuse.  The land goes flat, and the sky just opens up.  I feel the change – it’s hard to describe, but it’s like a weight off my brain, a bit of a relaxation, maybe a feeling of home.  An open sky makes me feel . . .  open.

And I feel that very same sensation here on the island.  When I drive between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, I prefer the Beach Road route. Driving across with Sengy on one side, and the ocean on the other, and all that big sky above, it just feels . . . open.  Up on deck on the ferry, crossing between Woods Hole and the island, the sky is as ever present and impressive as the ocean.  The Oak Bluffs and Edgartown fireworks have the entire sky to play with.

The trees are shorter here.  The land is relatively flat.  Compared to the rest of Massachusetts, with its tall trees that block the sky, and the rolling hills that eclipse the horizon, this island reveals the sky and the horizon.  When I look at photographs I have taken, unless I’m focusing on something very specific, most of the scenery shots that I take are slightly more than half sky.  Martha’s Vineyard is Big Sky country, too!

I’ll never know whether growing up in the Midwest predisposed me to be sky sensitive, or whether it is just part of my DNA (or both).  But I’ve realized that even though the ocean gets a lot of the credit for this island’s beauty, the sky contributes at least as much. 

So it’s not just the land (and the sea), Katie Scarlett, it’s also the sky!