Signs of Autumn on Nantucket
by Mary Bergman
On a rare windless day, I am out in my kayak. One of the joys of being a truck person is that I can bring the kayak to any access point and slide into the harbor. The sounds of fall echo across the water—new construction in Monomoy, or the cheers from a Whalers football game on a Friday night.
Now that there are just a few hours of daylight after work, I have been staying closer to town, exploring the mooring field. Out there, I am a tourist. Just like the people who wander the Bluff Walk, the path that winds through people’s yards in ’Sconset halfway up to the lighthouse—the rest of the walk has eroded away—I am practically at the doorstep of all these watery homes.
Roaming through the anchorage is a lot like walking the narrow streets of town in winter. It is rare to see a light on. Only a hearty few remain through September. By early October, you can count the live-aboards still on their moorings on one hand. The leaves fall and the boats thin out.
All over the island there are signs of autumn. On the bike path from here to Wauwinet, the cloyingly sweet smell of wild grapes has finally relented as the last overripe grapes fall off the vine. We are seeing the first of the big storms, boats cancelled for a few days, flood advisories at high tide. On the last holiday weekend, wedding people were huddled waiting to see if the boats would run again, or if they’d be stuck here forever like the rest of us. Nantucket is terribly romantic, until it isn’t.
I like the tourists this time of year best. (Except for the wedding people, who come from off island to celebrate their love.) Most people who are here are here now because it is cheaper, because they want to take walks on a chilly beach, or because they want to go scalloping. People who come on my weekly tours of ’Sconset this time of year are wanting to find the real Nantucket, such that it exists anymore. They go scalloping and stargazing, they go fishing out at Great Point. I admire people who are here for only one week and spend a few hours of that vacation on a history tour.
On the day before the last big storm blows in, I head out for what could be my last kayak through the mooring field this year. It is low tide, and, floating above the scallop beds, I try to see through the water column in the low light to figure where is a good place to come back and go scalloping. I can’t look too far over, or else I’ll fall in.
Now there is only one live-aboard left. A surfer’s—or maybe a scallop diver’s—wetsuit hangs on a hook, ghost-like, waiting for his return. Coatue is in the distance, the thin spit of sand that runs along the horizon, creating the safe harbor. You know what they say about thin places, where the veil between this world and the next is just a thin scrim. I wonder how many ghosts are out here in this watery world. Maybe to the ghosts, we are all just tourists.
