It begins with a hiss, rises momentarily toward a cathedral organ blast, then fades to an echoing cry — ancient, urgent, soulful and powerful.

Before the end of the month, if all goes well, Vineyarders and visitors alike will hear this wail calling across Vineyard Haven harbor and, at other moments, along the Oak Bluffs shoreline for the first time since the late summer of 1973.

Helen Lamb, the indomitable Englishwoman who dreamed up a summertime Brigadoon for the mentally and physically disabled when she created Camp Jabberwocky 58 years ago, died of natural causes Friday at her home in Oak Bluffs, where for six decades she had been a seasonal resident. Her death fell one day shy of her 97th birthday, although her children realized later that since she died at 7:30 at night and was born in England, her death had in fact occurred on her birthday, which was her wish.

Bright Waters, Shining Tides: Reflections on a Lifetime of Fishing, paintings and essays by Kib Bramhall, Vineyard Stories, Edgartown, 2011. 96 pages. Hardcover, $29.95.

I know of three painters who are also enviably good writers, all of them Vineyard men by birth or choice.

This spring, the captains of the Chappaquiddick ferry have taken to calling the older of the two ferries the On Time II and a half.