For almost 10 years, we have been gathering stories, images, letters, documents, records, and artwork about the history of Hog Island. We are now completing an inventory, and will soon be looking for your help in identifying photos and editing transcripts. Interested? Sign up for e-mail notifications, and we’ll let you know when documents ready. You may also contact us if you’d like to learn more.
Sunset over Hog Island
Beginnings
The 1940s and ’50s
The 1960s and ’70s
The 1980s and ’90s
- The memorable second choice
- The reach of the humanities
- Sea kayaking around Hog Island
- The island would remember me, too
- Leaving Hog Island
- The camp that changes people’s lives
- The future: Hog Island needs you
The 2000s
- Appreciating syzygy
- "A beautiful and special place"
- Sustaining the legacy of Hog Island
- Memorable days of childhood
- A choice determined long ago
- "My expectations were surpassed"
- Discoveries
- Puffins, up close
- Echoes in winter
- Remembering Rick Ylagan
- Community at Hog Island
- Lasting images of Family Camp
- The tradition continues
- To taste every morsel
- Invested in the island
- On the right track
The 2010s
- What a 75th celebration it was!
- Happy birthday Hog Island, from a grateful family
- Good news to share
- Steve Kress receives National Audubon honor
- New video captures the spirit of Hog Island
- There’s always a rainbow at Hog Island
Thanks to Tom Schaefer for collecting and editing many of these stories as editor of the “Across the Narrows” newsletter from 2000-06. Thanks to David Klinger for stewarding our historical materials through much of the last decade.
2 Comments
In the summer of 1982 I was not quite 11 years old and I was excited. For the first time I was going to get to go away to Boy Scout Camp. My mom also told me that she had signed me up for the Audubon Youth Ecology Camp at Hog Island, Maine. I would be going there for 10 days then coming home for a week, then going on to Boy Scout camp for a week. I was not that excited. It seemed like an obstacle between me and Scout camp, something to be endured while waiting to go to that awesome place where I’d get to swim, play games, participate in archery, earn merit badges, etc.. When the time to leave rolled around we packed up a foot locker and loaded it into the car for the drive up the coast from Massachusetts to Bremen, Maine. I was prepared to endure my time while thinking of all the fun things I’d be doing in a few weeks when Scout camp finally arrrived.
The truth, of course, was exactly the opposite. Nearly 30 years later I still recall my first glimpse of Hog Island across the mist shrouded bay as I was dropped off on the shore with the other kids. It’s seemed like another world, and it was. There was hiking, learning about the coastal ecology, boat trips, exploration, amazing meals, and nightly presentations and singing songs in the Fish House.
In the end, I can’t recall much of what I did at Boy Scout camp, to which I never returned, but I did go back to Hog Island in 1983 and 1984. After that I was too old for the youth camp, but I never forgot it.
Years later I thought to look it up again in hopes of sending my daughter in a few years. I was sad to see this camp is no more. I would pay dearly to have her go and experience the magic of that island in Maine.
Ethan-
I’ve made your comment into one of our Voices of Hog Island, here:
http://fohi.org/2011/02/08/the-memorable-second-choice/
Please be sure to read Juanita’s comment with the good news that Hog Island is open again this summer. Hope to see you on the island!
-Jay