The two girls sat at the bench, waiting for the NRTA. One held her chin on her fist, the other leaned back and took in the passing traffic. They had been tanned, bleached a bit, and had absorbed as much of the island as they could. They wore jeans, strappy little sandals, and carried three suitcases each. Their summer was ending.

In an idle corner of Massachusetts, Route Two dips along the Connecticut River for a moment, rises to a point in Turner’s Falls, pauses at a flashing red light, than just as fast swoops past Greenfield and out into the the hills of the Berkshires. At the light, a gas station has spread across one corner, a snow mobile dealership goes out of business on another, and a Polish food truck opens on the weekend. On the last quarter, a growth of trees spreads along the high bank of a river forested until Route Two turns into Greenfield. I spent an afternoon amid all of those trees and rocks.

The youngest and I went off-island to take a driver’s test. Nature might be healing from Covid but it takes the Registry of Motor Vehicles a little longer to get back to up to speed than the rest of us do. The brewers were up faster than the restaurants, the restaurants before the health clubs, and the Registry comes dawdling at the end of the line. So, the office in the town building remains shortstaffed, and Registry business either comes zapping over the wires or steaming across the water. So we steamed. 

We have had a run of beach days. A puddle of relatively cool and dry air has sat over New England and spilled out over the Atlantic to about a hundred miles south of the island. Sitting on the shore, the southern press of clouds massed and slid by on the southern horizon. The island lucked into a cool pocket, under light northern winds, through the end of the week and the weekend. 

One recent morning, the good fishermen of Madaket woke up to a Land Rover Discovery. It was discovered off the end of the Jackson Point Ramp, in eight feet of the North Atlantic. The owner described it as stolen. And sunk.

On a June evening full of weddings, we drove out to the Sconset Market for an ice cream. The fog remains ascendent in Siasconset, wrapping the homes, the hedge and the trees in winter’s packing. While town was lit with rehearsal dinners and bachelor parties, Sconset slumbered still.