Now for Nantucket
If not literally a flying visit,
this 24 hour stay enabled by plane, boat and train encompassed the metaphorical.
Boston slows life to a walk after the frenetic pace of NYC.
On Nantucket’s shores it slides to near halt.
Once a whaling port, the island has switched from a dangerously hectic life for those whom had little choice to make it their home, to one where the those with more wealth and leisure time, hold second homes in use only for sunny summer days.
Houses with names such as Hedge Fun and Suture Yourself give a clue to those who live their during the summer.
Main Street
We arrived just as the season was starting. Everyone was preparing for the next weekend’s wine festival. Few cars were around bar pickup trucks and tradesman vans. Lawns were being manicured, clapboards painted. Flowers coaxed into regimented rows. Even the cherry blossom was out on cue.
Cherry Trees
Between small towns, the island has been left to nature. Natural scrub resonates with bird song.
Scrub and Shore
Brambles and burrs clashing with the order of humanity.
Siasconset
Just as the blossom, the weather knew the island’s timetable and hung low cloud over our first day. Still we caught a bus to Siasconset.
The first bus route of the season to open on its first day of the season. We could go nowhere else. No other routes were open. On the western shore the ocean waves were eating chunks off the island.
Siasconset
Houses had fallen seaward and the light house moved. Wooden houses looking rather grim and austere when abandoned to their inevitably fate.
Nantucket Harbour
Perfectly on cue, day two blue sky appeared and the grey paint which previously blended to nothing, shouted its vanity.
Waves lapped lightly at the shore and ropes of Nantucket harbour clinked in quiet anticipation of the boats yet to arrive.
Just as we had to leave.
Stayed at the hospitable Jared Coffin house
And ate delicious food at the Oran Mor Bistro
