The Martha’s Vineyard magic began in 1971, the day my prepubescent self swung open the door of our shiny new Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser and set foot on hot, squishy, South Beach sand.

In a flash, my scrawny, knob-kneed body was racing along the surf, hair flying, arms flailing in glee, waves crashing and our black lab Charlie galloping full-tilt by my side.

It was our family’s first camping trip to the Island; I was only 11.

How could I have known that over the next 54 years, my soul would be called by the genus loci, the numinous spirit of this place, to often return alone?

That these solo journeys to this seabound, wind-swept sanctuary, untethered by the needs of others, would yield gleaming garnets of memory I would treasure forever?

Like the long-eared, white-tailed rabbits that emerged in the gloaming from beneath blackberry bramble, keeping me company just outside my window as I wrote into the night at my friend’s place at the top of Ocean View Road.

Or the Harlequin romance with a handsome, salt-of-the-earth sea captain who as it turned out, had a conquest in every port.

Those adventures with Clouseau, the Webbs Campground resident skunk, who with priestly power and precision made nightly ritual rounds to every site, nonchalantly terrifying his camp parishioners, impelling them to leap to the tops of their picnic tables as he passed, and delighting in the morsels of hot dog and Hamburger Helper hurriedly left behind.

The time I entered my Chilmark B & B frazzled and was warmly greeted by four farm-fresh eggs in a basket, burnt-orange marigolds and a small square jar of beach plum brandy, all artfully arranged by the host on the kitchen butcher-block table.

Midnight mystery walks to the deserted Menemsha fishing docks, where silvery moonlight played on inky waters and massive battered trawlers loomed, groaned, and rocked against the pier.

Coming upon clouds of blinking, twinkling fireflies floating in a sleepy West Tisbury meadow. Stars descended from heaven.

Marilyn Marks lives in Northampton.