Criehaven

Then there was one brief time when I was not confined to the bored drowsiness of suburban New England. It started on a boat and ended on a boat, and in between was an experience that was hard to forget. But I only felt an inkling of that as I stood in the back of the little boat, leaning over the guardrail and watching as the harbor of Androscoggin receded into a pinprick on the horizon. The water was crystal blue, the clouds thin and wispy. I breathed in the salty air, thankful to be out of the car at last, no longer cramped in the backseat with my three year old sister and a battery dead Walkman. We were finally on our way; Criehaven, farthest island off the coast of Maine.

“Excited?” my dad asked, coming up behind me and taking a spot on the rail.

“Yeah,” I said truthfully. My summer vacation at Dad’s hadn’t been all that exciting yet; he and my step-mom, Cindy, worked, so for a lot of the time I was on my own. Which wasn’t that bad; it’s hard to get bored when your a minute from the beach. But it had been really relaxed, and I was ready for some adventure. I’d never gone this far from the mainland, except in an airplane, and the prospect of getting as far out as one could go was tantalizing.

The captain, Jim, called us in to look at the map of the islands that was taped to the cabin wall. He had named his small boat Mary Jane, after his daughter. It seemed like a sweet, run of the mill way of christening your craft, but as I was about to find out, everyone around here had a story. Jim’s was full of emotion, and he knew how to tell it: He and his wife had divorced shortly after Mary Jane was born, and, after a messy court battle, she had gained full custody. He had tried on and off for years to get his daughter back, never succeeding. Finally, when Mary Jane was 15, Jim got a phone call, picked up, and was shocked by the query on the other end; “Dad?” His ex-wife, it turned out, had told her her father was another man, one she had been seeing for a short time during Mary Jane’s infancy, and it was only when an aunt had spilled the beans to the teenager that she knew the truth. So she had tracked him down, and the rest is history.

Well, almost, Jim amended, his eyes never moving from the frothing surf in front of the plexiglass. His daughter is in college now, and he stopped giving her as much money as he had been, thinking that it was time for a job. She retaliated by distancing herself from him, but he knew she’d be back. “I love her,” he said in his thick Maine accent, “and she loves me. She won’t stay away.”

When we arrived in port half an hour later, I was out first, eager to take in the island. It’s actual name is Ragged Island, Criehaven being the little town next to the harbor. It’s really nothing more than a cluster of homes and a library no bigger than your average kitchen, but its quaint beauty is astounding. It looks like it’s right out of a postcard, evergreens and limestone cliffs all around. I loved it immediately.

After depositing our fiberglass kayaks at a easily accesible spot near the water, we schlepped our bags up to the cottage that was to be home sweet home for the next week. My sister and I opted for the back of the pickup in which many of the bags were stowed, driven by a permanently tanned and hardened islander named Dan, with a cowboy hat on his head and a smile on his face, and his wife Erin, who was happily plump and had so much makeup on that without the island backdrop you would think she was some New York aristocrat on her way to Tiffany’s.

When we got dropped off, I took a tour of the house. It was surprisingly roomy, with big windows that accomodated the sun, homely furnishings, and a view like you can’t imagine. I almost felt spoiled, like I should be out pitching a tent and rolling out my sleeping bag. But then again, I could forgive myself, because the idea of making this place my place was tantalizing. Reading by candlelight, taking naps on the deck, finding the sunniest spot on the floral-print couch that looked out over the frigid water.

After a relaxing day of settling in and a simple dinner, I made my way to bed; tomorrow Dad and I were going kayaking, circumnavigating the island to bring the boats to our inlet.

Ten hours later we’d set out. The sky was thick with fog, and the water was choppy even near the shore, but that just made us want to go for it all the more. As we set out, paddles slicing easily through the waves, Dad pointed a finger at a tiny sliver of rock, almost completely obscured by the fog. “We’re going out there,” he said decisively, with a trademark Steele grin. I couldn’t help but smile too, and as I looked back on the island that I already loved, I knew it didn’t matter how far out we went. Home was only a paddle away.