If you want to meet islanders, go to an island.
Now before you send a letter to the editor complaining about the dumbest sentence you’ve ever read in your life, let me explain. I had that admittedly room-temperature insight recently, on the barnacle-crusted shore of West Gosling, one of a pair of little islets tucked alongside Lower Goose Island in the northeastern reaches of Casco Bay, a few miles from Freeport. East and West Gosling, as well as part of Lower Goose, are owned and maintained by Maine Coast Heritage Trust and offer a few sites for tent camping and a roomy, protected cove for mooring or anchoring boats.
I was in a sea kayak, or rather I had just stiffly pried myself out of a sea kayak, after a 13-mile paddle down the bay from Peaks Island that I had only expected to be 10 miles. It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in June, so I wasn’t surprised to see a family already set up in the campsite I had hoped to snag. All I could do was walk up with a smile and ask if there was room for another tent.
It wasn’t a surprise to find myself on another island, either. Many people love to visit an island, but in my experience none more so than islanders. I know several Peaks Islanders who vacation on Monhegan, and my family has been among them. We’ve also been to Block Island, Michigan’s Mackinac Island, and Hilton Head Island. It’s a rare family vacation that doesn’t find us on a distant ferry for one reason or another. I’ve canoed out to numerous postage-stamp-sized lake islands while hiking in Baxter State Park, and stopped for lunch on Clifford Island in Tennessee’s Watauga Lake while on an Appalachian Trail kayaking side quest. If there’s an island to be visited, chances are I will visit it.
In fact, I paddled out to the Goslings as part of training for a sea kayaking expedition later this month on the northwest coast of the world’s largest non-continental island, Greenland. I hope I’ll have more to say about that in a future column, but in the unlikely event I don’t make it back, at least know that I died doing what I loved (being eaten by a polar bear). Assuming all goes well though, later this fall my wife and I have a trip planned in the Canadian Maritimes, where of course we’ll visit Cape Breton Island, Newfoundland, and the oddly situated French island of St. Pierre.
Back on West Gosling, a group that I interpreted to be a mom, a dad, and a young teenager sat in folding chairs around a fire pit and looked up as I called out “Hello!” I crunched up the gravelly beach in my kayak skirt and bulky lifejacket. “Is there any room around here for one more tent?” The mom got up and walked down to meet me, looking dubious and explaining that they had more family coming in for the evening. First-come-first-serve camping is always a delicate negotiation, so I asked if she knew of any other spots nearby. She started to describe the options, and then stopped, took off her sunglasses, and squinted at me. “Huh, she looks familiar …” I thought, just before she said, “Is that Rusty?”
It turns out this family used to live on Peaks, and my youngest child, Ash, spent weekdays at their house as an infant when my wife and I were both working. Her face clicked into place as soon as she introduced herself, although I don’t think I’d seen her in a decade or more. But of course they were visiting an island; they were islanders. The campsite negotiation immediately got quite a bit friendlier as she directed me to a lovely spot on Lower Goose, just across from West Gosling and overlooking the boats moored in the cove. I told them about the Greenland trip, and they seemed duly impressed that I had just paddled all the way from Peaks.
I thanked her and waved to the family, and as I headed back to my kayak for the very short paddle across the inlet to Lower Goose, I thought: “If you want to meet islanders, go to an island.”
Rusty Foster lives on Peaks Island and writes the email newsletter Today in Tabs. He can be reached at rusty@kuro5hin.org.
