01/10/2026
Crossman’s friends and admirers were legion, and none were particularly surprised when in 2009 he proposed to undertake an expedition no one in Vinalhaven’s 250-plus-year history had thought of. He decided he would walk every foot of the island’s 273-mile crenellated and indented shoreline. Further he took immense pleasure in referring to it as his “circumambulation,” delighting as every single person thus informed had to ask what the word meant. Classic Phil.
When a giant oak of a man is felled on an island everyone hears it instantly and feels the loss deeply and personally. Phil Crossman, Vinalhaven writer,
