Nantucket: Seasons on the Island

--Mark Wilson, Boston Globe, April 1995
To the wandering photographer's eye, Nantucket shimmers on the mind's hoizon -- a jewel at sea that speaks of another country. It is easy to forget that Nantucket is in Massachusetts.

Yet what can seem so tempting, so seemingly easy to pick, may take on the proportions of a mirage if you've suffered a crowded 2-1/2-hour ferry ride with barking dogs and screaming babies on a humid August day.

Better to come back in the less crowded months to soak in the moors, painterly skies and sheltered harbors.

Failing that, pick up a copy of Cary Hazlegrove's Nantucket: Seasons on the Island. This talented island photographer (she now splits her time between the island and Texas) has been photographing the island since 1978.

Her three projector slide shows show the tourists what they might see if they hung around for the other 11-1/2 months.

Coskata Pond, Great Point, Polpis, Cisco, Siasconset, Main Street, Madaket, Surfside, Sankaty, Quidnet, Miacomet -- it's all here. The book doesn't dwell on people. In only a few photos -- mostly beach scenes -- people may line the shore. But whole chunks of the book depict only the tracings of people in an island setting.

.... Hazlegrove goes about the business of island light and island scenes with an open eye. Winter brings the warmth of town lights, the loom of storm clouds over a vacant, snowy beach, a frozen harbor hard by an icy jetty.

There is a special magic in the wintertime, says Jo Godwin, innkeeper, on a chapter opener on winter. It's a little bit too windy and a little bit too cold, but I need that time to figure out where I've been and where I'm going.

Spring brings daffodils, forsythia and budding trees. Spring often arrives late, the cold ocean cooling the island while the mainland bakes in the spring heat.

The sky says spring is here and the air says spring is here, but the temperature doesn't say spring is here, says firewood dealer Faith Vollans. Summer, of course, is beaches, dune grass and lots of roses.

Fall brings the cranberry and vegetable harvest and the warm hues of the moors. With fall comes a warmth that can linger into November as the mainland shivers from the killing frosts. Warm ocean extends the season on the island, perhaps paying back what warmth was stolen from spring.

Any photographer working on Nantucket has dues to pay -- the long winters, the difficult access, crowded summers, exorbitant summer rents, scarce winter jobs. Any photographer willing to weather these hardships will be rewarded with subjects in a light often missing from mainland locales.

Hazlegrove has felt the tug of Nantucket and has had a long steady hand in discovering her light, her time.