At the head of the bus rotary at the Steamship Authority terminal in Vineyard Haven, David Donald mans the Visitors’ Center for the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce. This is his eighth season at the post. Before this, he taught chemistry at the Island high school for twenty-six years, so he’s used to explaining things in detail.

The magazine gave David a disposable camera and a day to photograph visitors to the Visitors’ Center. This young man – David does not recall his name – had arrived from Stockholm three days before and was staying at the youth hostel in West Tisbury. In that brief period, he’d fallen in love with the Vineyard and decided he wanted to stay here full time. He was planning to get a job and a permanent place to stay.

Over the years, David has refined his responses to the questions he’s asked, helping visitors make the best use of whatever time they have on the Island. Occasionally he gets frustrated with people who try to argue the facts. “People want to go to South Beach and I tell them it’s a forty-minute bus ride. They ask, ‘Why is it so far?’ I want to answer, ‘They dragged it away,’ but I can’t do that.” He always keeps in mind the fact that he is often the first person a tourist meets on Martha’s Vineyard after he gets off the boat.