Legend has it raccoons were brought to the Island as a front for hunters to, as they say, “jack” deer at night. As the story goes, if a warden caught someone hunting at night, the hunter would claim he was after raccoons rather than trying to stock up on some after-hours venison.
In the long run this ploy did not work out so well for the rest of us. Raccoons tear apart our garbage at night and, more devastatingly, they go after our chickens with reckless abandon.
Asked in an interview about five years ago to name his favorite spot in Chilmark, my grandfather almost instantly responded: “The Keith Farm, Middle Road.” He then recalled his process of clearing that land, lamenting that he never had the right tools and remembering how he worked late into the evenings with his tractor clearing stone and trees. He always made sure you knew he barely had enough to make it work, though as he told me the stories I could see in his eyes his conviction that all greatness is achieved with some degree of hardship.
