Category: Islands From Away

The tiny northeastern seacoast island of Nantucket, 43 square miles, and the giant, “Upper 49th” state of Alaska, 663,237 square miles, are about as dissimilar as could be. They don’t share the same boarding house at all geographically, demographically, economically, and culturally. Yet the two lands, cherished symbols of pristine… SEE MORE

Let other people flock to Beaver Island’s white sand beaches, secluded forests, and scenic lighthouses in the summer, the busiest season for the tourist-friendly spot 32 miles off the coast in northeastern Lake Michigan. Pam Grassmick, one of the island’s 600 year-round residents, loves it there the most during the spring and fall, when the bucolic landscape is shaking off one season and welcoming another. SEE MORE

David Thomas, a fisherman from Little Cranberry Island and I are heading to Portsmouth Island, one of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, skimming across the top of the water at 15 knots in a flat-bottom boat. We bear northwest out of “the creek” on Ocracoke Island with Rudy Austin at the helm. He is assured and relaxed, much as his father Junius would have been in the 1950s and ’60s, when he ran people across to the Portsmouth hunting and fishing club. It is a quick crossing, 20 minutes or so. Through the crisp winter air we pass duck-hunting blinds, family-managed pound nets, and, on Casey Island, just off of Portsmouth, we pass a camp for fishermen who are “hiding from the wife” as Rudy puts it, laughing as if speaking from experience. We cross Ocracoke Inlet, with Pamlico Sound to starboard. Beneath us the shoal waters shift with the tides, while on the horizon a place frozen in time comes into view. SEE MORE