island hopping: indiantown

walking into spiderwebs

He’d never been to Indiantown, didn’t understand how a place could change a person, so she showed him with words.

Go at dawn when it’s quiet, she said, before the wind and the current and the tide shift, when your kayak floats above water that’s as smooth as green sea glass. Tie up at the dock and find the hollow spot on the spongy, moss-covered earth where the forest shimmers and ripples, when you’re lost in the moment, when you’re cloaked in gossamer spun by unseen inhabitants and then, only then, will you see the world as it could be.

Accessible only by water, Indiantown Island, Maine, has a rich history. It was used extensively by Native Americans as evidenced by significant artifacts found during an archaeological dig. The late naturalist Rachel Carson summered in the area and immortalized the island in a 1972 essay “An Island to Remember,” in which she evokes the voice of the hermit thrush, calling it the “forest spirit” that sang of eons past when our forebears walked the land.

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