Dawn breaks, flooding the eastern sky with the first burnished light of the day. Ground fog clings to the hayfields up-Island on these late July mornings, a wisp of something cool before the heat settles in. The first cut of fresh hay is a distant memory now; the fields are studded with bright blue chicory but otherwise dry and dusty following two straight months of little rain. Canada geese, invisible but hunkered down in a grassy corner somewhere, break the silence with their soft honking. Awake and stirring, but not in flight yet. A little like the Island at this hour, at the start of another summer day.

On a north shore beach, an overnight high tide has erased all traces of footprints in the sand. Tiny shorebirds work the wrackline. They are alone, but not for long.

July ends the day after tomorrow. Traditionally this has been called the changeover weekend, the time when July people leave and August people arrive. But the ebb and flow of summer on the Vineyard doesn’t really follow such predictable patterns any more — people come and go all the time.

And this summer they have been mostly coming — in droves. Year-round Islanders know it from the telltale signs of house guests and grandchildren — there’s sand on the kitchen floor, tracks from tiny shoes in the mudroom, wet beach towels and bathing suits on the clothesline, dishes put away in all the wrong cupboards.

Town centers are crowded, beach days have been endless, and by most accounts shops and restaurants are doing well. Confirming anecdotal trends, traffic on Steamship Authority ferries has been well up this year. And yet despite the crowds and traffic, so far it has been a summer mostly marked by civility and cooperation. With so much turmoil in the world at large, the contrast is striking. Call it the summer of content on the Vineyard.

To date the most heated argument may be the one over the long ferry lines to Chappaquiddick. Neighbors on Simpson’s Lane are agitating for the town of Edgartown to do more to solve the problem. And the town is working on it. But it’s also true that in many ways the Chappy ferry lines are the micro-symbol of incremental growth and changing lifestyles on the Vineyard. People are building bigger houses with more amenities, indoors and out. That translates to a demand for more services from tradesmen such as carpenters, plumbers, landscapers and pool maintenance workers. It all adds up to more traffic to and from tiny Chappaquiddick.

We can’t unbuild the houses (or won’t, not yet anyway) or turn back the clock to a time when the Island was less populated. We can only look forward.

In the short term that means August.

Nature writer Hal Borland once wrote of July: “The light has already begun to change. You see it at midday as well as at dusk, and if you are an early riser you see it clearly at dawn. It’s still the light of summer. Even without a calendar, one would never mistake it for spring light, or the light of fall. But the shadows lie a little differently now than they did a month ago. The distance has a feel, if not an actual look, of gathering haze. August is in the offing. Sunset loses its June clarity, tends now toward brassy color. The dazzle of rain-washed air is more pronounced now after a shower.”

On Martha’s Vineyard we can add our own singular August notes. This is the month of visiting presidents, the Agricultural Fair, Illumination Night, Chilmark Road Race and the Oak Bluffs fireworks. It’s the month when the water temperature is finally perfect for long swims in the ocean (although beware of riptides on the south shore). It’s the month for reflecting on nature: wild blueberries have been mostly a bust; the jury’s still out on beach plums and grapes. Flowers too are having their intermezzo: roses have lost their blooms, hydrangeas are drooping, daisies mostly gone by. Sunflowers dominate the farm stands. Next up are black-eyed Susans, Rose of Sharon, dahlias and early asters.

Summer turns a corner now and heads into the home stretch.

Time to slow down a little, and savor what’s left.