Year: 2014

Old map penobscot bay

Island Journal

Your First Atlas

Not one of the lands written into your destiny will speak to you the language of your first atlas. —from “The First Atlas,” a poem by Primo Levi On April 13, the printing presses producing traditional paper nautical charts permanently closed down at NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey. Demand had… SEE MORE
illustration of men shooting rats at a dump

Island Journal

The Island Dump: An Elegy

On an early morning last fall, one of the two attendants at the Vinalhaven Landfill and Transfer Station arrived to find that a raccoon had climbed into the big trash compactor and couldn’t get out. The attendant retrieved a gaff he kept handy for just this purpose, propped it up… SEE MORE

Island Journal

Unfinished Island

The ledges path leads from my back field in a southeasterly direction toward the sea. On a small island in Maine, all paths lead ultimately to the sea. This one cuts through a spruce forest where deep mosses fill in the spaces between old trees that are falling away; it… SEE MORE

Island Journal

Youth as Conservation Catalysts

Youth as Conservation Catalysts Friday, July 21, 1882. Immediately after breakfast all members of the camp sailed out of the harbor and over to the seawall . . . About two hours were spent on shore, Townsend and Spelman with their guns and Clark with his hammer, confining their attention… SEE MORE
Fred Moore III waits for sunrise as the full moon sets behind him at Pleasant Point Reservation on Passamaquoddy Bay.

Island Journal

The Passamaquoddy Alternative

On a moonless November night, the rain-swollen St. Croix River flows unseen through the forests of eastern Maine and western New Brunswick. The river passes through the darkness almost by feel, and dozens of female American eels—silver eels, as they are called—snake along the bottom with the current, their noses… SEE MORE
The seafood producers plant in Sitka.

Island Journal

Alaska’s Silvery Gold Rush

Every ounce is valuable. So valuable, in fact, that those difficult first cuts, if done poorly, will leave dollars on the floor. It’s mostly a mechanized process, but the head and tail are removed with a handheld knife. Then the fish’s glistening body is placed on a short conveyor belt… SEE MORE
green coastal landscape

Island Journal

What Scotland’s Islands Taught Me

Sally, our 17-year-old Scottish waitress, shyly replies to a question about the logistics of island education. “It takes an hour and a half on the school bus to get from my house to my school,” she says, taking a moment between customers at this tiny inn in a remote part… SEE MORE
Clint Jones, the island mechanic on Chebeague.

Island Journal

The Island Mechanic

The median age of Maine islanders is far above the national average. As for the median age of most Maine island cars, well . . . it’s a good thing the odometers on many of them stopped working long ago. Take Chebeague Island, for instance, home to a fleet of… SEE MORE
The North Haven boys take the court.

Island Journal

The Winter Game — Basketball on Maine Islands

The water pipes on Vinalhaven have frozen. Well, they may have frozen. No one really seems to know what happened, but an early January bitter cold stretch—daytime highs in single digits—has put some kind of hurt on the municipal water system. One explanation is that so many homeowners’ pipes have… SEE MORE
Gary Allen

Island Journal

The Art of Perpetual Motion

He sets off at a lope, elbows carving wide circles, with a gait that hints at decades of making room in crowded fields of runners. His shoulders are rippled with lean muscle, brown. Over the first few yards, he loosens, straightening, getting imperceptibly faster. Passing the graveyard, he points out… SEE MORE