Late at night, a highway sign blinks on the bike path: No Thru Traffic, Lovers Lane Closed. Well, that’s one way to signal to all of us that this is the end of summer.
Time for asphalt to cure, time for sewer lines to be dug. Time for all the infrastructure improvements we have put off to resume. I am surprised by how hard the transition out of the high season is hitting me this year, how strange it is to see the traffic change from people and bicycles to modular homes taking tight corners as they clatter over the cobblestones.
In years past, I have been the one counting down to Labor Day, looking forward to the thinning crowds and the pale blonde color of beach grass as it goes to seed. This year, the humming throngs of people brought an energy that made me feel alive. I liked watching them, overhearing the ends of their conversations and picking up words they dropped, keeping them for myself to use later.
I needed this summer to be different, and I think I succeeded. I made things: out of clay, out of fabric, out of words. I took photographs, long exposure images of star tracks that reminded me of splattered toothpaste on a bathroom mirror. I rode my bike everywhere and have never felt more free in my life. I let myself be a tourist, or at least a traveler, in my own little world.
Every day riding home from work, I look at Gardner’s Corner compass rose painted on the side of an old building. H. Marshall Gardner, a photographer, created the mural as a tourist attraction. The compass tells you the distance to many different places across the island and across the globe. Not counting the island locales, I have been to just one of the world cities listed. Gardner had this painted in the 1930s to remind visitors—and islanders—how connected to the world this former whaling port had once been.
I used to think there was little reason for me to leave here. The whole world comes to Nantucket in the summer. But summer always ends. Now I am trying to figure out how to hold onto some of the lightness I felt as it gets darker outside. I have a rule when I am lucky enough to be out in a Dune Shack in Provincetown. You must light the lamps before the sun sets. It makes the transition into early dark easier.
But the light is more beautiful now than it was last month, a hint of the spare, pure white light of winter that will be here before too long. I hope to be somewhere else by then, just for a little bit, even though I know I will always come back.
