I am not Peter Wells. Truth is, I may never be. But I am Brad Woodger, your warm season alternating columnist. And I’ll just have to do.

I am not a scientist. I spent 90 per cent of high school chemistry focused not on the periodic table but at Melissa Barnaby, hoping she’d glance back at me (she didn’t). So I can’t speak intelligibly to the effects of atmospheric pressure on the human psyche. But I’m guessing that there is a relationship between ions in the air and atoms in the brain. This hypothesis is based on the inertia experienced during dreary Chappy days. I want to get lots of stuff done. I need to get lots of stuff done. But. I. Just. Can’t. The world gets closer without the endless blue sky, the fog settling in to embrace me and keep me still.

Our return to Chappy was ill-timed to coincide with the closing of the Chappy Ferry to car traffic (it is open now). We had tried to delay our arrival by laying over in the Berkshires, but after 40 hours of air travel with a one year old, we were anxious to get back onto solid, familiar footing. We had a plan though. We would arrive at Edgartown point with both our vehicles, transfer enough the contents of our truck into the space left vacant by Etienne and Arlene to accommodate the aforementioned pair. The truck could then travel over-sand to our home on the other side. I didn’t anticipate the relative chaos, however, at the ferry parking lot, so I wasn’t prepared for the audience of humanity watching our hassled shuffling of worldly goods between vehicles. I may be in the minority, but I’d rather not have the inner workings of the management of our personal effects witnessed by my neighbors. But any port in a storm, and off we went (a thought just occurred to me —I have yet to re-inflate my deflated tires to their proper psi...darn atmospheric pressure).

Twenty years have passed since I last traveled the beach route to Chappy. I no longer stay out past 7 p.m., let alone midnight. And I’m certainly not clamoring to leave Chappy before 7 a.m. Still, I was confident in my ability to navigate us safely home. Or semi-confident. The unfamiliar always makes me question my memory, and over-sand travel is nothing if not unfamiliar. There is an other-world quality to driving next to the sea on a medium not intended for vehicular traversing. I am at once soothed and unnerved. I am not very good at concealing this insecurity. Maybe it’s the knitting and unknitting of my brow. Maybe it’s the audible gulps. Whatever the case, my passengers most assuredly are not fooled by my reassurances that I’m in command of the situation.

I remember many (many) years ago providing transportation via this route to a couple of young ladies who had overstayed their Chappy curfew. I could not have been a more innocent or innocuous chauffeur, but by trip’s end there were sincere doubts by the ladies that they might ever see their families again. I do know many men (and women) who blithely and confidently blow over the sandy track, laughing at the plight of their 4x4’s battle with the loose earth. I am not one of them. I know that I have an innate capacity for messing up. And now I was carrying a child. My child. My son. And sure, my wife too. All was going fairly well though (it helped that wife and child were securely packed into the back seat by the surrounding luggage). I was doing it. I was the master of my universe. A real man. But then I came to Wasque Point, and then I went past Wasque Point. Where was the turn off? Wasn’t there supposed to be an exit? Did I miss it? Is it no more? Where am I?! Am I still in Massachusetts?! What’s going on??? But I saw tracks, wonderful tracks I wasn’t entering uncharted territory. And then there was the Dike Bridge, the glorious Dike Bridge. Kennedy tragedies aside, this was a most welcome sight. Then pavement, then hard sand, then home. Home.

Perhaps I’m too much the fatalist, trusting destiny to deliver me wherever it is that I am supposed to be. Or maybe it’s a wisdom that no matter where I go (Manila, Pittsfield, L.A., Wasque...) I will always end up back home. Chappy. Like a piece of dandelion fluff, I am taken by the wind to parts unknown, where I temporarily root before being pulled by the hand of fate to be reborn in the place that I started.

I am, we are, glad to be home.

Send Chappy news to ibwsgolf@aol.com.