Island time

Yow.  I know my goal is to write here weekly but that it’s usually more like once every couple of weeks.  I’ve never missed a whole month.  Until now.  Sorry about that.  

But know that life has been rich.  I was able to spend two of the last five weeks on stunning Hog Island in Maine.  Most of that time was spent scrubbing pots in the kitchen, but it was done with good people for a good cause:  feeding moms ‘n dads ‘n grandfolk ‘n kids that made up Family Camp.  That means about 60 folks for each meal, including the big lobster feast their last night on island.  

Lots of silverware and plates went through the Hobart.  I took it upon myself to sweep the dining room after every meal, which meant lifting a raft of heavy chairs first, then sweeping, then lifting them all down.  I almost always got help from one or two folks moving chairs, which was much appreciated.  And, it should be noted, my sweeping technique proved to be quite effective, if I don’t say so myself.  ;-)

Aside from the busy days at the Hog Island Audubon Camp, I did take time off from my volunteer responsibilities for some personal island meditation -- and came away a bit different from when I came aboard.  Islands can do that to you, I’m told.  Still, this was a special stay on Hog Island for me.  

It was thirty-two years ago this July when I made my first visit to the Audubon Ecology Workshop in Maine on Hog Island.  With a non-scientific brain in a very scientific atmosphere, I made some good friends and discovered a piece of Emily Dickinson history that would impact the rest of my life.  

As you know, I am writing a second book of Hog Island history, once again focusing on the family of Mabel Loomis Todd.  Miss Todd, as all Dickinson scholars know, is the person most responsible in the world for our being exposed to Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters. She brought important pieces of Emily’s poetry into a public place where we all can grapple with their complexity and beauty.    

And, oh, some of those letters are as rich as the poetry.  We have Mrs. Todd to thank for saving them. 

Eighteen years after the publication of that first volume of Poems by Emily Dickinson, Mabel Todd went in with a friend from Boston to purchase huge tracts of Hog Island, which was said to be one of the largest pieces of spruce island wilderness left on the Maine coast.  She would come to build a compound of summer buildings on the west side of the island that she would call her Camp Mavooshen, a term celebrating Native American influence in the region.  She spent many summers there.  

Mabel Todd and her husband, David, spent time most every summer from 1909 on in the Hog Island area.  First they stayed at the summer camp of the other Hog Island investor, Etta Glidden, who had a summer place of her own at Martin’s Point, located on Bremen Long Island near Friendship.  Day trips on the water took the Todds to Hog where they climbed, hiked, waded, had lunch, and marveled at the beauty of the place. 

By 1910, the Todds spent weeks at the Point Breeze Inn and Bungalows, also located on Hog Island, but on the developed small, northeast peninsula.  The Point Breeze opened as a summer resort in 1908 and was the proud home of a small group of New York and New Englanders wanting a place out of the heat where they could read, listen to music, commune with nature, and find some peace in America’s vacation land of Maine.  

By 1915, the Todds occupied buildings at their family compound and took on the tasks of improving the property and living a comfortable summer life there.  And they did.  

In any case, on the two days when different groups of campers trekked the island, I asked if I could meet them at Camp Mavooshen.  There I talked with everybody about the family and what went on there.  I ended up going on a bit too much about Emily, as it turned out, but it felt so good talking about the Todds in that place that meant so much to them.  At another time that week I read aloud Mrs. Todd’s unfinished essays about the island, The Epic of Hog.  I concluded it was most probably the first time in decades that writing was heard in that place.  Felt pretty damned good.  

Near the end of my time on Hog Island, I found myself on a Sunday afternoon composing my eleventh new poem of this road trip.  I very creatively called it ‘Hog Island 11.’  

I leave it with you today.  

Today’s elder idea:

Hog Island 11

The most vivid memory of my first 

coming to Hog Island long ago 

is sitting behind the Fish House

on huge expanses of exposed granite 

watching a yellow orange sun 

rise over Bremen Long Island while 

the bay was still morning still at mid-tide.  

The only sound was silence

and the occasional lobster rig’s diesel 

and cawing American crows

announcing the day and direction overhead. 

It was transformational.

I remember.

Here I am again on the east side 

just south of the Slade cottage, 

only now on a Maine-cool August

afternoon thirty-two years later, 

loving how the sun spotlights Crow Island, 

while this side of Hog experiences

the first sensation of dusk. 

Little water traffic this blue sky Sunday.

Not many birds, either.

A second cormorant takes off, 

slapping water with wingtips 

as speed and lift build in the cooling air currents.  

No gulls, no loons, no warblers, no osprey. 

No seals. 

The lap of rising tide on granite

headdressed with sea wrack the nearest sounds.  

Crickets have begun their evening discourse.

Now a red squirrel rattles.  Other of Nature’s people, 

unrecognized, add to the Natural conversation.

I try to be grounded here in paradise,

wanting to know what new life is born 

of this visit:  

          the hope to be more prepared 

to tell Mrs. Todd’s story fairly and with color -- 

animating dear David & Millicent & Mr. Lailer -- 

seeing the Mother move about her island life 

seeking to shed New England tensions and find peace 

astride this spruce covered eruption of rock and soil

bringing loved ones’ lives to ‘God’s own heaven,’

where circadian rhythm adjusts all quieter

and, after a morning of hard work, able to savor 

an hour prostrate on a forest of moss 

or lying prone in the hammock behind the main house

bordering a universe of ferns, watching 

treetops dance in the afternoon breeze. 

Tom Schaefer

on Hog Island 

25 August 2013