A Backstory is Often the Real Story (Part 2)

September 2023 Newsletter

A Backstory is Often the Real Story (Part 2)

This is Part 2. Click here to find out why I wrote this story in two parts.

As I stood on the deck of our small island camp in Maine at the end of what Maine calls summer, I saw a great blue heron raise its silvery wings for takeoff from a seaweed-camouflaged boulder. It took flight out over the cove and headed towards Hurricane Island, across the channel. 

I felt alone, isolated, almost abandoned, as one of the last summer residents of the island had packed up and moved along. Our humble camp on the island has witnessed generations of comings and goings, much like the vast Maine tides, that swoop up and over the sand before surrendering to the moon’s gravitational pull, spilling back into the dark blue sea. The blue heron was just one of the last to move on. 

We arrived on the island during the 1980s, not to escape the mainland or modern contemporary culture, but to explore, find some adventure, and to satisfy some irresistible curiosity that drew us to find out about islands in our view from our summer home on the mainland: