Salt in My Air, Please, and Sand in My Shoes

But I leave the JAWS anniversary celebrations to the festive folk.

Jun 22, 2025

Up the sandy path past rugosa roses fragrant and papery pink, past the spartina and the beach plum and bayberry, past the pond where the box turtles live and that old barn on the hill stands watch, to the crest of the dune where the north wind meets us head-on and sea green rollers crash over smooth stones below us, and we are there.

There is a driftwood log to sit on. The beach is empty of people. The sky is crystal clear, Carolina blue. The sound of the waves rushing back out to sea over piles of rocks is like popcorn popping. I pocket a few slipper shells and sit closer to him. Closing my eyes, I point my face to the sun and feel the wind whip my hair around.

Even after all these years, it is hard to believe we live in this beautiful place. That we can get up from our desks on a Friday afternoon – on this Friday afternoon when down-Island is swarming with Jaws fans – get in the car, drive a few miles to the north shore and down the very long and extraordinarily bumpy dirt road named Obed Daggett, and be in the parking area at the trailhead of Cedar Tree Neck Sanctuary. And there is literally no one else there.

Among magical Island places, this is one of my favorites – top ten, maybe top five. The trail we take most often starts high up in the woods and winds down to the path to the beach. A few furlongs down the beach, the trail goes into the dunes again and up to a lookout on a high bluff, where you can see the Elizabeth Islands across Vineyard Sound and the rugged cliffs of the north shore of the Vineyard to the west.

These are the cliffs where World War II soldiers practiced for an amphibious assault on the beaches of Normandy. This is the shore where piers used to stand, where red clay bricks and sheep wool and cranberries were picked up and shipped back to the mainland. Like the rest of the Island, the cliffs have eroded quite a bit since then. And the piers are long gone.

Looking down from the bluff you see the waves crashing over black rocks that just now remind us of giant shark fins. We are skipping the festivities surrounding the 50^th anniversary of the release of Jaws (which, of course, was filmed on Martha’s Vineyard, aka Amity, in 1974, and released on June 20, 1975), but that doesn’t mean we’re not in shark mode.

You can almost imagine the shark out there. Except that at this point, everyone on the Island (and certainly all of the Jaws fin-atics who have traveled here for the anniversary), knows that the shark, nicknamed Bruce, was actually three mechanical pieces that broke frequently. Hence, the 26-year-old director (you’ve heard of him – a guy named Steven Spielberg), opted for a Hitchcockian approach in keeping the “monster” off-screen until an hour into the movie.

We have seen seals on this beach, from this bluff, but never a shark.

The trail turns into a narrow path as you loop around the bluff back to the beach. Despite the glorious bloom of daisies in the scrub, poison ivy laps the edges of the path and bare summer feet and ankles must beware. You are also required to share the path with confused teenage bunnies who emerge from the hedges and can’t figure out where the entrance back to the warren is.

The loop brings you under a canopy of twisted, arched oaks, past the pond again, and out onto the soft sand once more. You make your way back down the shoreline looking for the break in the dunes that signals the trail to the woods up the hill back to the car. But you stop from time to time, to watch the sparkly patterns of sun on the water, to breath in the salt air, and to dig your toes into the warm sand with each step. (Then you put your shoes back on.)

The sea and sand cure is one I forgot to mention a few weeks ago when I wrote Ten Ways to Cure a Case of Early Summer Melancholy. You’ll be happy to know that I am not melancholy anymore, probably because I’ve spent at least three hours a day outside gardening in the last couple of weeks. Very cobweb-clearing. (I hope you are doing okay, too, but if not, please go outside and absorb some sun rays wherever you are.)

But last Sunday I also went to a recovery meeting on the beach. It was the first time I’d been to this meeting since last summer, even though a few hardy souls keep it going through much of the off-season. It was so windy that the group met on the pond side of Beach Road (a ways down from where some of the beach scenes in Jaws were filmed) instead of on State beach. On a narrow strip of sand between the edge of the pond and a Rosa rugosa berm that buffered the wind, we huddled our beach chairs together and each, in turn, talked about how our week had been and how the tools of recovery had helped us negotiate the highs and lows. I had a wool sweater on. Such is the variable weather on this Island.

For a moment I sat back (in my ratty beach chair that I’d had to search through a serious mess in the garage to find) and closed my eyes, listened to the wind whistle on the water, and breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Nothing would be required of me for the next hour, but for a short share.

I have to remember that when I packed up my things and basically ran away from home (and a marriage) in 2008, I picked a place surrounded by water – a sandy rockpile that requires a ferry to get to it – for a reason. I was one year sober and my search for serenity had begun in earnest. I needed quiet and beauty, a slower pace, less stress – and a place where the water was never far away. Here the dunes and the shore reminded me of childhood summers, of safer simpler times, of time spent on the water and on the beach in peace and wonder.

I came for my mental health and for my physical health, and that’s why I’m still here. (And why I’m not downtown with the Jaws crowds this weekend.)

I still need the sun and the sea air to help regulate my wonky endorphins. I have to remember that when I’m at my desk, or even out in the garden checking off a list of tasks (as enjoyable as they are to me). I can take a few minutes to go sit on the shore, poke around for shells or sea glass or shark’s teeth (yes, they’re here), soak up the sun and salt air, and feel like a new person.

Well, sort of. Something we say in recovery: wherever I go, there I am. Work in progress! 🧜🏻‍♀️