A day at the beach stretches into the late afternoon, when the sun drops low in the sky and the wind backs off in perfect synchrony with a falling tide. Coastal ponds around the Island are full of quahaugs and blue claw crabs. Striped bass and summer flounder swim in the deeper waters in Nantucket Sound. In the harbors, osprey fish for their dinner. Some days, out on the barrier beaches at around dusk a stillness falls over the landscape, a profound quiet broken only by the occasional voice of a tern or an oystercatcher. It's August on the Vineyard and the natural beauty of our surroundings shows itself off around every turn.