Early. That’s the message of the Vineyard these days. Everything’s early and that translates to a kind of seasonal confusion. In the old days we didn’t need a calendar to tell the time of year. We knew the march of seasons on the Vineyard skipped from the chill of winter to summer, to autumn and back to winter and summer without so much as a pause for spring, always the missing season in New England.

Travel the trails of budding woodlands; stop long enough to notice the changes in old Island meadows and in the dunes along our never-ending shoreline. At the moment the Island boasts a genuine spring arriving during a year when we had no real winter to speak of.