To step onto the pier of Harbour Island means a shift in time. The village is much the same as it was on my first 1976 visit. I returned in 2015. After that, I could not resist an annual visit.

The little houses with brightly colored shutters on their dormers drew my eye along Bay Street where the small curb can find itself in the shallow waters beneath the Buttonwood trees. What made my painter’s heart beat fast was passing over the big tropical dunes unto the pure, pink white sand of the island’s endless stretch of beach.

Top that with the cerulean sky, and the ever-changing cobalt turquoise to Prussian deep blue of the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Colors bold while sheer.

This is a watercolor painter’s paradise. Winslow Homer agreed.