Toy landPage 2 of 2 -- They play close attention to the rhythms of the land and water. ''You have to live in a place to get a feeling for it," says Conroy. ''You come in August and you can't really sense that."
The hermit crabs that had disappeared from the Polpis Harbor inlet near their house are returning. Legend has it, he writes, that squirrels made it over from the mainland in the '60s. Dog ticks disappeared and lime ticks arrived, he says. And with the dog ticks went the evening ritual of deticking an animal over belts of gin and depositing the things in an old sherry jug filled with kerosene. (Speaking of gin, Conroy says Robert Benchley used to pour liberal amounts of it over bluefish and then set it on fire to burn off its oils.) Conroy has his favorite spots. Altar Rock, south off Polpis Road, is the highest point on the island. Height as a concept here is something of a hoot, but you get a spectacular view of the moors that reminds him of southern Scotland. (He writes that they represent a third of the heath lands in America.) What the moors don't do is remind anybody of the sweet fat green of Martha's Vineyard, its sprawling neighbor in Nantucket Sound, or the mainland. Aside from the American elm, zelkova, oak, and maple that grace Main Street, and a few other spots, Nantucket is a bald, windswept affair awash in what he calls ''a sense of the ocean." There is no escaping it, which explains Nantucket craziness. The island has always had its fair share of that. Like the Confederate women who ran plantations while their men fought Yankees, Nantucket women called the shots when their men were at sea. Things got interesting. There were newspaper ads like this one that Conroy cites: ''Nervous? I'll sleep with thee. 25 cents." Back in 1983, Conroy hatched a short-lived ''cultural exchange" with fellow writer Ward Just, a dreaded Vineyarder, to bridge the inter-island gap. ''People have been to London, Paris, and Rome, but not Martha's Vineyard, vice versa," he explains. The idea bombed after a few good meals: ''There's no reason to go, either for them or us." But staying just gets harder. Lentowski says another 10,000 houses could be built under current zoning laws, apart from the 45 percent of the island protected as conservation land, doubling the existing number of homes. We see the future of Nantucket, and it's an American tragedy.
Sam Allis's e-mail address is allis@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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