Isles be seeing you

BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Long before19th-century tourists discovered the healthful and restful rewards of island sojourns in New England, Native Americans were summering on them, following the fish and the cool ocean breezes. Other island appreciators include the 11th-century Viking explorers -- runic markings of their stopovers still exist on some islands, such as Maine's Matinicus. And in the early 1600s, John Smith (he of Pocahontas fame, also often referred to as "Captain Jack," thereby spawning a school of eponymous seafood restaurants) touched down on several Maine and New Hampshire islands after his exploits in Jamestown, Virginia. When Samoset greeted the Pilgrims in Plymouth, he spoke a fractured English learned from fishermen on Maine's Monhegan Island, where his Pemaquid tribe spent their summers.

Thus, any modern-day exploration of an island, especially along a rocky shore or deep within a woodland, has an almost primeval ambiance. Not that centuries of wave action or forest growth haven't changed both landscapes considerably, but you sense a kind of quiet continuity. You know that the ocean still sounds the same, the undergrowth in piney woods still smells the same, the sun and wind feel the same on your face. And if you're on the high point of any island, especially Mount Cadillac on Mount Desert Island, you know that you're seeing the same glacial layout of land and water that the earliest visitors and settlers gazed upon.

Because of that glacial action in the last Ice Age, when large masses of land and rock were pushed into the sea, there's tremendous variety in the thousands of islands that line the New England coast. Some, like Monhegan and Mount Desert, have rocky headlands; others, like Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Block Island, have dunes and sandy beaches. Many have a mixture of both.

Block Island

Rhode Island's big-draw tourist island, Block Island -- though it checks in at only 11 square miles -- offers a range of terrain, from moor and hollow to bluff and beach, from kettle holes and freshwater ponds to saltwater marshes and pounding surf. It's been named by the Nature Conservancy as one of the "Last Great Places in the Western Hemisphere," and indeed, through a mix of private and public conservation, almost one-third of the island has been restricted from further development. The islanders' own emphasis on protecting wildlife habitat -- Block Island hosts more than 150 species of migratory birds each fall -- and hanging onto open space has led to very specific forms of tourism.

Although there are terrific public beaches on the island (all free), there are no golf courses. On the water, sailing, canoeing, kayaking, and fishing are popular. On land, visitors ride horses, bicycles, and mopeds, though the town limits the rental of the latter to 170. But most travelers to Block Island, at some point in their stay, resort to the island's most popular recreation: walking.

The Block Island Greenway has developed approximately 25 miles of trails at different spots on the island (pick up a map at the Chamber of Commerce office, just up the street from the ferry dock). They run from steep headlands to berry-laden thickets, from meadows and bogs to dunes and sand. A favorite is the Clay Head Trail, at the northeastern end of the island, about a three-mile bike ride from the ferry. Along the way, your eyes are filled with gray stone walls and gray-shingled houses, your nose with the scent of wild roses and honeysuckle, your ears with warbling birdsong. If you'd like to put names and colors to the bird calls you hear, you can visit the collection of 173 stuffed birds at the Block Island School, all gathered from accidental deaths and organized by the late ornithologist Elizabeth Dickens, who kept a daily bird count for 51 years and taught bird lore to schoolchildren for 48.

Along the eastern side of the island, there's a long crescent of wide beaches, with consistently great body-surfing waves on Scotch Beach and Mansion Beach and a very gently sloping edge (good for crumb-crunchers) at Fred Benson State Beach. For the more adventurous, there are tucked-away pieces of beach at the foot of the 163-foot-high Mohegan Bluffs or beneath the clay cliffs at Black Rock Point (both on the island's southern edge), and at Dories Cove, Grace's Cove, and Charleston Beach, on the western edge.

As with most islands, Block Island's history is tightly linked to its lighthouses, the North Light and the Southeast Light. The current North Light, made from large granite blocks, is the fourth such structure to sit among the dunes and swirling tides; it's well worth the ride all the way up Corn Neck Road. The Southeast Light, however, has achieved more fame, because, in 1993, all 2000 tons of it were moved 200 feet. Erosion had brought the lighthouse within 60 feet of the cliff at Mohegan Bluffs before the red-brick Cottage Gothic was slipped onto rollers and edged back from certain doom. Its lights are now visible up to 35 miles at sea.