Edey Grant

The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation has been awarded a $5,000 grant from the Edey Foundation for the creation of an environmental education curriculum at Cedar Tree Neck Sanctuary.

The foundation aims to have the outdoor curriculum completed by Oct. 31 and ready for use in the spring of 2013.

Traipsing through the woods in search of the perfect Christmas tree is a holiday scene so quintessential in nature it seems it could only exist in a painting.

A bit of the spectral from early Gazette editions:

Near the north shore of the Island just inshore from Cedar Tree Neck is what is left of the Crying Swamp. Here today is a small cranberry bog, surrounded by swamp bushes just like a hundred similar spots on the Vineyard.

Years ago even grown folks hurried past the place with a feeling of dread after dark. To all the neighborhood the swamp was known in a queer, supernatural way.

Visitors to the Cedar Tree Neck sanctuary might see a brilliant blue starflower, a state-listed box turtle, or a chestnut-sided warbler. If they are very lucky, they could spot a rhinoceros beetle, which is rarely still found on the mainland and with its characteristic horns can lift objects up to 850 times its own weight, making it one of the strongest animals on the planet.