The other day, in Edgartown, I found I had some time to spare — and a parking space. Let me put that another way: I had found a parking space so I took some time. When we see a space, our modus operandi is to take it and go from there. Where we have managed to stash our car is how we will allot our time; can we lug a big bag of books to the Thrift Shop from there? Would there be time to look in on a friend in one of the shops? Parking in a tight spot on Main street (any Main street) with three cars on your heels is triumph enough.

(Especially when your 16-year-old granddaughter is in the car and says “Cool . . .”) Sometimes things work. They often don’t, in my boxcar of an auto; it has no grace. There are places; everybody knows a few. “You shouldn’t leave your car in there,” says my husband, an honorable man. “That’s for library stuff.” “Well,” I said. “I did library stuff . . . I’ll stay for just a few minutes.” There are one or two others, but I can’t say where.

I went touring with all the rest of the folks; it’s still the season, the shops are all dazzling, full of treasures (and people), like a miniature midway without the cotton candy. (I miss the hardware store.) It was sunny and clear, what I used to call a transparent day — the flower pots and hanging baskets all looking fresh and bright, and the tall leafy trees dappling the sidewalks with sunny shadows. I walked past some shops and into some others; Vintage Jewelry always tempts me, so does the bookstore. By now I had resisted ice cream twice. Then a little side trip down Water street, to look at the glorious houses, and back down to the slip where Mad Max ties up, and over the boardwalk to Memorial Wharf.

Here was a sight, and an occurrence I haven’t figured out yet: A motor yacht was moving away from the pier, so large that it seemed to be the wharf itself floating away. It had stopped briefly to let off a passenger a fellow onlooker told me. I could see the name Freedom on the side. No one else seemed to know a thing about it. I looked it up online later, finding more pages and small print about the continuing “restoration and resurrection of the 1926 wooden yacht Freedom” than I could possibly digest. Since it couldn’t be in our harbor, and being restored at the same time, I am at a loss.

My walk continued back up to Dock street. Still strolling along, I stopped to look in a window at an enticing assortment of scarves and bikinis, alongside a young woman who was studying a map. After a minute she asked if I were a visitor too, or could I help her. We walked off, visitor and nonvisitor, visiting with each other, exchanging names and dates and places, getting acquainted in about five minutes, as women will, and my thinking of what best she would like to see; she had never been to Martha’s Vineyard and had only heard of Edgartown about an hour before. She was the nanny on a big yacht out in the harbor and had been brought in to the dock with an hour to visit. One hour! Could I talk whaling and widows’ walks and architecture, local tales and colorful goings on when this lady had one hour? Not really. And asking what she would most like to see or do didn’t work because she had never heard of any of it before. Ah, but she had. “Could you help me find the Black Dog please?”

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll go with you.”

Gazette contributor Jeanne Hewett is a fabric artist and freelance writer who lives in Edgartown.