Vintage Nantucket

On a September evening, under a waning moon, my wife and I went for a walk through the heart of Nantucket.The town was still. Our footsteps echoed down the long cavern of India Street... Even more than in the light of day, we could sense all around us Nantucket's ages of history. It is in the evening that Nantucket's ghosts walk with you."So begins a lyrical stroll through the history of one of America's most fascinating islands. And what a history it is, alive with the dynamic men and women of Nantucket: prolific old Tristram Coffin; Quaker William Rotch, the island's wartime conscience; the shrewd, stubborn Tory, Kezia Coffin; Maria Mitchell, the outspoken astronomer; Captain George Pollard, whose tragedy inspired Moby-Dick, and the island visitor Herman Melville himself.You don't have to be a Nantucketer to enjoy Vintage Nantucket,with its wide range of island lore, from Muskeget's special species of mouse to an excursion to the fragile barrier beach of Coatue, "warm and beckoning in the afternoon sun... a miniature of the Nantucket that for four centuries has been a lodestar in the lonely sea.