On a recent Sunday after noon, the wind notwithstanding, I went for a walk along the west bank of West Tisbury’s controversial Mill Pond. I spent childhood summers at East Chop. There, my great-grandfather, a French teacher at the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Institute, had fallen in love with the Vineyard. He had a house built on Arlington avenue near the bluffs. I would happily fall asleep listening to bell buoys ringing and the West Chop foghorn bellowing.

There were occasional trips up-Island to climb the clay cliffs at Gay Head that is today’s Aquinnah, or to fish for scup from the Menemsha docks. Mid-Island, however, was only a place to picnic on the big rock at Indian Hill and see the ocean waves tossing in the distance. After that, we would stop for ice cream in North Tisbury. There, under a big tree that still stands, a cow grazed. My father insisted that the cow ate the tree’s peaches. Her peach-flavored milk then went into the ice cream that my brother and I so enjoyed.

It wasn’t until 1970 that my husband, Tom Cocroft, and I moved year-round to West Tisbury and I learned that the tree was only an oak.

As it turned out, Tom and I moved into what was then the West Tisbury Congregational Church parsonage. It overlooked the Mill Pond. We would often sit by the pond and look to its end where swans nested. Longtime animal control officer Joanie Jenkinson regularly fed both them and the mallards and Canada geese that were frequent summer Mill Pond residents.

We would sometimes sit at the pond’s end, near the West Tisbury-Edgartown road. There, we would see occasional otters cavorting. Sometimes, there were eels. More often, box turtles and painted turtles would crawl by. Occasionally, there were snapping turtles. Of course, when Tom and our calico cat, Groucho, climbed down from the parsonage to the pond’s west bank walkway, they took pains to avoid them.

In those days, the full Mill Pond sparkled so brightly that the late Harold Tinker, a former Choate School master of English, who had retired to New Lane, called the pond “the centerpiece of West Tisbury.” He applauded Donald Campbell of Chilmark — whose family had owned the mill (now the Garden Club) and the pond that supplied the water the mill needed to run — for giving both to West Tisbury. Mr. Campbell only asked that West Tisbury keep the pond dredged for all — humans, birds, fish, eels otters and turtles — to enjoy.

Mr. Tinker, in an article written for the Gazette in 1971, recalled the words of the Irish-English poet Oliver Goldsmith describing his “loveliest village of the plain.” For Hal Tinker, West Tisbury was, “the loveliest village of the Island.”

Sadly, however, today’s lovers of West Tisbury’s Mill Pond fear that it may soon be gone.

On my walk, where the swans have always nested at the pond’s end, I could see only a gray mass of water willow. Elsewhere in the pond waters, ribbon leaf pond weed, coon tail and nitella are now growing. On the west bank, where two benches have been placed to invite visitors to rest and watch pond life, there is now almost nothing to watch as the un dredged pond fills up. Pondside residents no longer see turtles and ospreys, and the eels and fish that they have so long been accustomed to seeing. Though there is still a park-like walkway, the bench that honored the late, longtime West Tisbury selectman, Allen M. Look, has lost its plaque bearing his name.

The late Island naturalist Gus Ben David not so long ago said sadly, “West Tisbury without the Mill Pond? I can’t imagine it. It’s the highlight of the town! It should never be allowed to become a swamp.”

But conservationists are opposed to the dredging that West Tisbury voters agreed to do when it accepted Donald Campbell’s gift.

At a gathering on a recent weekend at the West Tisbury Library, paintings and photographs of the Mill Pond in its heyday were on display, and will continue to be so until the end of the month. At that gathering, Martha’s Vineyard Museum historian Bow Van Riper spoke of the history of the Vineyard. He talked of its whaleship days, its farming days of sheep and cows, its manufacturing days when today’s Garden Club was a mill that produced satinet cloth — some of which went into uniforms for Civil War Yankee soldiers.

But today’s Martha’s Vineyard, he said, is no longer a fishing or farming or manufacturing Island, It is a soothing getaway for weekend vacationers —for well-to-do home buyers, for past U.S. Presidents and First Ladies, actors and singers and musicians. For such seasonal visitors, a beautiful Mill Pond, deep enough to be again the habitat for fish and birds otters and turtles is, surely, what makes West Tisbury “the loveliest village” of Martha’s Vineyard.

Next month, at the annual town meeting, an article on the warrant will seek approval to appoint a Mill Pond Preservation Committee to protect this West Tisbury treasure. How I hope voters will join me in seeking approval of that article.