January Days

The whole Island, it seems, has got a case of the winter blahs. Of course the weather hasn’t helped — gray, rainy, icy, bitter cold, snowy — pull up the covers and make another pot of tea. Many down-Island storefronts are shuttered, recalling the year when Jaws II was filmed on the Island and Hollywood experts transformed Edgartown in July into a winter streetscape, complete with mud-splattered shops and great billows of manufactured rain and fog.

It’s like that for real now.

Except there are bright spots. A playful otter has been popping up in the Mill Pond in West Tisbury over the last two weeks, eluding newspaper photographers with the skill of a circus performer. At the Agricultural Hall a lone golfer has been out in the field practicing his long game. And now conditions favor skating and sledding again.

All good cures for cabin fever.