The report from an engineering consulting firm that parts of East Chop Drive have been deemed unsafe, possibly even for pedestrians, is sad news. Some of my happiest early memories are of walking there.

In the 1890s, my great-grandfather, Jean Baptiste Meras, came to the Vineyard to teach French at the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Institute. Soon he built a red-shingled house he called Mon Repos on Arlington avenue in the Highlands near the institute, which by then had some 700 students from 35 states and was known for its (new at the time) Berlitz language program.

I spent my earliest Island summers in the house next door to Mon Repos. That house was Sans Souci, owned by Madame Chatelaine, another teacher at the institute. Both houses were a three-minute walk through the woods to the bluffs — not counting stops at blueberry and huckleberry patches en route.

In those days, I would run next door to my great-grandfather’s after supper in search of my grandmother, who was his daughter in law, and her mother. My French great-grandfather and French grandfather, my American-born grandmother and my German-born great-grandmother summered together in Mon Repos — all looked after by my American-born aunt.

In what I now know was a typical European after-supper tradition, the two grandmothers and I would walk to the bluffs. There we would settle on a green bench and listen to the Vineyard Sound waters lapping on the rocks below. Whenever we had friends or family leaving on a steamship, we would also hurry down to the green bench at the top of the bluffs to wave a farewell white handkerchief to the departing guests. Now of course I doubt that even from the top deck of the venerable Naushon my little white handkerchief could be seen. But then I was sure that it was. There was plenty of room in those days too to skip along the blufftop on the grass.

By the time I was six, we stopped summering on Arlington avenue. My father had bought his own house — the turreted former Baptist Reception House on Monroe avenue not far from the East Chop Tennis Club. Though it was a slightly longer walk from the bluffs than Arlington avenue had been, it was within sound of a clanging bell buoy and the West Chop foghorn, and was closer to the East Chop Lighthouse. And we had no need for a pretentious French sign like Mon Repos or Sans Souci. The house came with a big black sign with gold lettering on it that informed the neighbors that our home had once been the Baptist reception house. It had been moved from the Baptist Camp Meeting Grounds that once were behind today’s Ocean View Restaurant. But the Baptists had failed to attract the high number of camp meeting attendees that the Methodists had, and their camp ground had not prospered.

We had a collie and a white cat with black spots and a withered ear. They substituted for my grandmother and great-grandmother on evening strolls. The collie, Jock, reveled in chasing rabbits that hid in wild rose patches near and on top of the bluffs. Domino, the cat, followed us on our walks, but disdainfully watched Jock’s awkward attempts at rabbit-catching. She knew much better how to creep up on the rabbits as they hopped in the woods close to our house. My brother John, a fisherman and sailor, always insisted that Domino had a withered ear because she had climbed down the bluffs and eaten what remained in scallop shells fishermen had hurled over the bluffs. (I never believed that that was the reason for Domino’s withered ear, but a Gay Head fisherman told me, and Everett Poole of the Chilmark Chandlery in Menemsha confirmed, that John may have been right. The slime in tossed scallop shells can wither animals’ ears if they eat it.)

In any case, the blufftop continued to be my favorite place for strolls. It was favorite place too for watching the lighthouse flash its warning beam to boat skippers heading into Vineyard Haven harbor.

Later when I was a teenager, the blufftop was the perfect spot to go with a male companion to watch the moonlight over the water The road was also a fine place for bicycling in those days. And when my brother and his friends, Steve Chamberlain and Jack Hathaway, went on all-day sails in our catboat Ted, the blufftop had another use. It was the place where my Colorado-born mother would nervously stand at day’s end, hoping to see the Ted sailing home. Admittedly $15 to $20 million is a sizable sum to shore up the bluffs, but after all they have given Oak Bluffs its name — and aren’t they a scenic landmark worth trying to save?