Burton Balkind, known to many as just “Spruce,” is the president of the Nantucket Coastal Conservancy, a highfalutin name for a grassroots, volunteer nonprofit on the island that has given itself the task of monitoring the mostly pristine beaches that surround it. Nantucket, of course, has become a premier summer playground for many of America’s richest and most powerful, from Stephen Schwarzman to Eric Schmidt to David Rubenstein. “We have great arts and culture, and we have amazing restaurants and a beautiful harbor,” Balkind, who has called Nantucket his home for the past 25 years, tells me. “But, really, the draw to Nantucket is our beaches, and I feel like one of the most important things we can do as a community is protect our beaches.”
Now retired, Balkind is an avid outdoorsman. He’s a surfer, a photographer, and a birder. He’s a member of the rescue team at the Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket, which recently performed a much-publicized autopsy on a rare sperm whale that had washed up on the beach in front of the Nantucket house of private-equity mogul Paul Salem. He’s also a part-time ranger for the organization that seeks to protect the large spit of barrier beach, known as Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, that curls around Nantucket Harbor.
