In the early spring of 2014 I blogged about a new sign in the neighborhood. The sign — DRINKING WATER SUPPLY AREA • PLEASE PROTECT IT! — bugged me. It bugged me because it was completely unnecessary. Nothing was being done in the vicinity to threaten the Vineyard’s sole-source aquifer.

It bugs me less these days, one, because I’ve gotten used to it, and two, because it’s now pretty well concealed by leaves. The trees are having their way with puny human interventions. Go, trees!

Lately I’ve been noticing new signs in my neighborhood and in the areas I wander frequently and contemplating their significance. Here are a couple of them.

Pine Hill is a dirt road. On an off-islander’s map or maybe GPS it might look like a through way, but it’s not — unless you’re on foot, bike, horseback, or an all-terrain vehicle. Only two houses have motor vehicle access from Old County Road. My hunch here is that the year-round residents of #43 (with whom I have a nodding acquaintance) got tired of UPS and FedEx drivers pulling into their driveway and asking how to get to a house with a much higher number. How often can you say “You can’t get there from here” without losing your patience or your sense of humor?

Within a couple of weeks of my landing on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1985, an overnight parcel — something editorial — arrived for me. I had no fixed address at the time. Maybe two people total knew I was here at all — so I thought. Otis, the UPS driver at the time, stopped at Alley’s General Store, where the main West Tisbury post office was then located, and asked how to find me. He was directed to the house where I was staying, back in the woods off State Road, and there my package was delivered. I wasn’t officially on anyone’s radar, but they knew whom I knew and thus where I was.

Those days are long gone. I miss them.

Every three weeks I do my laundry at the Airport Laundromat. While my clothes are washing, Trav and I stroll around the airport grounds. The sign above appeared earlier this year. My immediate reaction was “WTF?” We’re not talking about runways here. To the right you can see the sign in its natural context.

In other words: Yeah, right. Any aircraft operating in this area is going to have more trouble than a couple of trespassers. Trav and I ignored it. A couple of times we’ve run into dog walkers from Animal Health Care’s kennel. We look at the sign, then we look at each other, and we wonder what the hell those sign posters are trying to prove.

Within the last couple of weeks street signs appeared on the Dr. Fisher Road, the beloved road whose ruts, moguls, and monstrous puddles I’ve documented a few times. Street signs! on the Dr. Fisher Road! Mind you, I wouldn’t love this road so much if I lived on it or had to drive on it. As it is, I just walk on it — frequently — with my dog.

Now there are street signs at either end, one on Old County Road, the other on the Old Stage Road across from the dump. Any passerby with eyes will now know where the Dr. Fisher Road is.

Everyone who’s lived on Martha’s Vineyard for 10 years or so has their idea of when exactly the island started on the long, slow (or short, fast) slide to hell. Mine is when street signs went up on either end of Lambert’s Cove Road, so newcomers didn’t have to ask anyone which was the upper end and which the lower. The signs told them. Oldtimers became superfluous. New arrivals no longer had the thrill of finally getting it straight.

The slide, slow or fast, long or short, continues. There are signs at either end of the Dr. Fisher Road.