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This photo was taken during one of our recent cold dips, at my friend Leslie’s summer place. The real story, though, begins in 1980. On my first day at UMass Amherst, I was hanging a nautical chart of Vinalhaven in my dorm room, trying to anchor myself in a campus of 25,000 students. My new suite mate walked in, looked at the chart, and said, “Oh… Vinalhaven. I go there in the summer.” I turned and said, “I go there in the summer.” Leslie lives in California now. We don’t see each other often. But every so often, our paths cross again on this same stretch of island shoreline. The island is small. The world is large. And somehow, this place keeps weaving us back together. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of this story. Someone mentions Vinalhaven in the most unexpected place, an airport, a classroom, a dinner party halfway across the country, and suddenly there’s a thread. A shared person. A shared dock. A shared stretch of granite. It happens again and again. If you have one of those stories, I’d love to hear it. Where were you when someone said, “Vinalhaven? I go there…”? Tell me. I have a feeling there are more threads out there than we know.
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