When I was a child, growing up on the small Island of Martha’s Vineyard, I lived in a house on Farm Pond in Oak Bluffs. The door to my family’s home was painted a deep, teal blue: a mirror of the lapping water nearby. In a stroke of incredible luck, my best friend, Hallie Mia MacCormack, lived next door to me. We were chronic explorers, often running off on our own in an attempt to soak in a still new world.
As a child, I saw the world as a place to explore, not one to hide from. The ocean was our favorite place of all.
But much like the deep, wide, waters that we’re ever-presently surrounded by, the Island is not all good (lone star ticks are the most recent glaring example, but aren’t the only ones). Still, I do see Martha’s Vineyard as a place worth the care that goes into it.
As we all reflect on the 250th year of America’s founding and the values that have survived (or haven’t) since, that undercurrent — a home that’s not always safe for all — is front and center for me. The question I’ve been asking myself is: When does the work feel worth it when there’s no immediate result? Living here as an adult, it’s clear to me that I’m not the first person to ask that.
Several homes that I would walk past growing up were first built or purchased by Black families who escaped tenement homes or indentured servitude in the late 1800s. Oak Bluffs is a community made up of many loving neighbors — an echo of the hands that built it. And I felt as a child, and still do now, that the town was built with the declaration of freedom and pursuit of happiness in mind.
And while the tourism history, with Oak Bluffs being the first resort hub for an initial wave of summer visitors in 1860, held a seed of prosperity that’s grown ever since, the implications of high-end visitation have sprouted in equal measure. Wealth disparities are stark, and some locals have suffered the consequences of that difference.
In the same woods that some meander through on a leisurely walk, others set up a tent to live out the summer and work. The same ticks that some tweeze off themselves after a long beach day plague others with dozens of bites on their arms and legs after a day of work landscaping or gardening. The Island runs on the many people and workers who brave the nuance.
When I was growing up, Hallie and I would kick off the shoes that our parents had Velcroed to our feet and run into downtown Oak Bluffs. Along our journey, we would spot all manner of miracles: an abandoned house on our street that we would peek into, our bare toes hovering over the damp grass outside as we whispered ghost stories to each other about who haunted the halls; a mouse that my cat brought in, whose injuries we mended painstakingly; snakes in tall grasses that we squealed and ran from.
But the Vineyard has changed over the 30 years I’ve been alive. Businesses have shuttered, attitudes have shifted, and the year-round population has grown substantially. But the aspects about Martha’s Vineyard that feel as free as a child scampering barefoot through neighborhoods have always been here, in one form or another. The community has kept that alive. And the truth is, that sacred feeling of home that many of us year-rounders have come to love about this place has always carried a responsibility with it. There is no wading to the sandbar at Inkwell Beach without participating in a beach cleanup in March, hands gloved and frozen.
To many who live here, the Island is a place to vehemently defend. One reason for this is a constant awareness that not everyone who wants to live here can, something I witnessed as a child but didn’t quite understand. Even those who were raised on the Island struggle to afford, or even find, housing. The separation from the mainland means higher costs, and for a lot of Islanders, that’s a life living paycheck to paycheck, or wondering how weekly groceries fit into the budget. That perseverance is deeply woven into the history of the Island.
The positive parts of this place exist among the dramas, qualms, and real-life issues. But the choice to protect the people and places that matter is a form of freedom to me. Taking one small action at a time, even if we aren’t the generation to benefit from it. Just like a broken-down Volkswagen Bug that was overgrown with vines on my street growing up, the land makes space for us, and here, we are tasked with adjusting to it. There aren’t many places where that’s the case.
Sarah Shaw Dawson is an Islander, journalist, and musician whose work explores community, belonging, and the enduring spirit of Island life.