Eleven summers, me and Charlie (and Suzi, until this year) have walked this special place together. This morning, we returned. We are not staying in Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard for the first time in years. This year we are in Edgartown. So, I needed to wake early and drive me and Charlie to our hike of the Menemsha Hills to the beach, to Great Rock Bight. And since this is new, driving to this place instead of walking from where we were staying, I have to navigate a new way around the Trustee’s trails. I park in the wrong spot. We hike for a long way and I’m wearing, breaking in, my new Vibrams, my favorite footwear for this rocky beach. Charlie remembers everything about being here, and he is joyful in the water. We hike to the Brickyard––yes, the osprey is circling her nest on the great brick chimney. We keep going, we cross the fresh water Roaring Brook, and we get to Great Rock Bight and I take my dip––cold!––and sweet and happy. Then we hike to the parking lot, but my car isn’t there. This isn’t the right parking lot, not the right trail. Ooops. I have to use my “find my car” app! I’m a 25-minute walk from it. And I must return to the main road to get there, and walk up North Road, a narrow road with cars that pass going fast, and bicycles, going fast, and walkers, it’s a bit challenging with Charlie (and that was Ted Danson, I bet, you just biked past me from his home in Chilmark), and we get safely back the car and Charlie is tired. Poor guy. Still, we’re both happy, satisfied in a deep way. We have many more hikes here ahead of us. And the rest of the day with Frank on the beach, and I took another walk, but Charlie wouldn’t budge. I am listening to The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese, and it’s a wonderful novel, beautifully enacted. Thirty hours long!