Of the many words I have wished I could take back, I keep remembering the time I blurted out to one of my closest friends, Colleen: “But you’re not actually an islander”¦”
Colleen and her family have spent every summer since I can remember here on Little Cranberry Island. Though she has never weathered a winter on an offshore island, my comment that she didn’t count as an islander was both hurtful and untrue. I have come to realize that the amount of time spent doesn’t qualify the bond between people and place. Especially when that place is an island.
The island girls in my immediate social circle are proof of this. We are a mix of born-and-raised year-rounders, longtime summer folk and girls whose connection with the island may have stemmed from one visit or one friend.
My friend Kate is an example of how the island can tremendously affect those who are new to it. Kate first came to Islesford four summers ago as the girlfriend of one of a longtime islander. But even after that relationship ended, Kate kept coming back, and she was adopted instantly into our group of island girls.
For Kate, Islesford was the first place she came to and stayed without her family. Her relationships with the people here have thrived.
“Somehow,” she admitted about the island, “it feels more like home than any place.”
When I asked Kate what specifically the island has taught her, she listed off a slew of unlikely skills, including throwing pottery, operating an excavator, rowing skiffs and painting houses. But more significantly, she said how much she learned about herself while on the island.
“Being here makes me feel empowered. I can be my own person,” she said.
Gretchen, who grew up next door to me on Islesford, agreed. For her, the island is “the only place where I feel like I’m actually myself.” She and her twin sister Frances also learned random island-related skills on Islesford, such as sailing and fishing, but even more valuable and impressive is the work ethic they have emerged with having grown up on an offshore island.
Frances has been the best babysitter I can think of since the age of 12, and Gretchen became the head gardener at the Islesford Dock Restaurant by the age of 16.
“[The island] taught me work ethic, to have pride in my work, and the drive to do well and get the most out of whatever I am doing,” she said.
Two years ago, we gathered as many of the island girls as we could over our college winter break to celebrate New Years on Islesford. Colleen had the idea to swap homemade Christmas gifts, and she wrote and framed a poem about the island girls. Gretchen knitted us perfect hats out of yarn scraps, Kate quilted stuffed animals with felt mustaches, Frances framed and decorated a photo of us jumping off the dock at age 11, and I managed to mangle a few pairs of knitted mittens and leg-warmers.
Standing and stargazing on a frozen ocean-front lawn with the four of them that New Years Eve, I was struck by how unlikely our friendships actually were. One verse of Colleen’s poem particularly summed up the unlikeliness I had been thinking about:
I think the pearly crescent moon
Nudged the little island down below, gently,
And the little island took the hint, and gathered us
Together like bursting blackberries in a pail.
Heather Spurling is a recent graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Oregon where she majored in English. She is participating in The Working Waterfront/Island Institute’s student journalism program.