Are Islands Just Small Continents?

August 2023 Newsletter

Are Islands Just Small Continents?

As I peer through my tent flap, the fog that has settled in the cove begins to filter through the mosquito netting to fill the interior of my nighttime lair. I feel the cool salt air and hear the screeching of seagulls, and the rumble of diesel engines of the lobster boats passing by. All this, amplified through the small slit in the tent fabric where I can view the landscape from the warmth of my sleeping bag. I’m camping on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine.

My tent sits on a rocky point that juts out from the granite cove. Granite once provided the livelihood for the island settlers, along with whaling. Both industries petered out by the early to mid-1900s. Our family has been camping on this island for almost forty years now. We’ve huddled around beach fires and fog-bound days in front of our fireplace inside a small camp cottage at the head of the cove. My husband and I, eventually two children, a few dogs, and now all of us, including new family members, enjoy our rusticated island life during Maine summers. A rusty iron ring attached to a granite stone along our beach is all that remains from the early occupiers of this bucolic isle.

Islands are both magical and mythical. Maine has almost 5,000 islands, if you include some that lean inland. The rocky granite coastline was the subject of a documentary film I recently produced called The Long Coast (view on Amazon or Vimeo).

While we didn’t dig deep into island life, we did notice how the hard surfaces, and intemperate weather shaped a coastline populated by resilient, rugged, and imaginative individuals: