This island has been abandoned three times in its history. Overgrown, half-hidden middens of clam and mussel shells speak of a native American presence recorded in no other way. An early European explorer spotted foxes on the islands around what is now Hurricane, and named them the Fox Islands. Later, as fishermen settled the offshore islands, Hurricane became property. In 1870 Deborah Ginn, sold it for $1000 to a retired Civil War general, Davis Tillson.

From a distance the island’s profile resembles a great whale. It was ground into that shape by continental ice sheets. Its beauty is breathtaking – to us who used to spend our summers here, heartbreaking. But Tillson and his partners weren’t interested in its beauty. An excellent engineer and entrepreneur, Tillson saw a business opportunity in Hurricane’s smooth, creamy gray granite. In fairly short order he opened quarries equipped with steam power and rails for transporting the stone from the quarry pit through finishing sheds to the wharf. He determined early that there was more profit in finished stone than in rough quarry blocks; so he imported master stone cutters, mostly from Italy, and before long a town of over 1100 people had sprung up on the island.

Tillson was not a gentle master. He paid poorly, and not in cash, but in credit redeemable at only his company store. He cut the pay of workers who read the pro-labor Rockland Opinion, and demanded they vote Republican This arrangement couldn’t last too long, considering that his imported Italian workers were active socialists and union organizers. At one point, frustrated by Tillson’s intransigence, they even sent a delegation to Washington to visit President Hayes.

After the turn of the 20th century, concrete began to replace granite in public construction (not fortuitously, Tillson owned limestone quarries and cement plants on the mainland). The island quarry business was flaring fitfully like a dying fire. Then in November 1914 one of the company’s granite scows foundered in Rockland harbor. Two weeks later the superintendent of the works died of typhoid fever. The very next day the owners ceased production and informed the workers and their families that all operations would be permanently suspended. They could stay and starve, or take a ferry; but the ferries would be suspended in a few days, too.

Tools were left lying where they’d been dropped; tables set for the next meal waited eerily for families that would never return; pictures hung on the walls of abandoned homes. Slowly, over the next several years, a few remaining people, including a large family hired by the owners, carefully picked apart the buildings and carted the materials down to the pier for homes and other projects elsewhere. The island was silent again.

Then 50 years later, in 1964, an Outward Bound program leased the use of the island and began putting up dozens of buildings: kitchen and dining hall, offices, a huge boathouse, tents and cabins for students and staff. When Mother and I arrived here in June of 1965 with two kids, we were greeted with, “Your tent platform isn’t built yet, but there’s your lumber in that pile.” Over the summer, as I enjoyed one of the best jobs I’ve ever had – seamanship and navigation, rock climbing, initiative tests, drownproofing, and the famous morning run and dip (into 45º water) – Mother carefully built a house inside the tent. When we took down the tent in the fall, all her built-in furniture remained. She later became equipment manager, and we returned for several summers

Now Outward Bound is abandoning the island, as well. The expense of an offshore facility has become unsustainable, and the program operates 14 other sites all up and down the East Coast. The boats and kitchen and office equipment are gone, but the huge buildings remain, already looking derelict. So Mother and I came out here yesterday, probably for the last time, to remember and to visit the quiet ghosts of the island. We arrived at low tide (as we did the first time we ever came, when Mother refused to climb the wharf ladder in a skirt until we wrapped a blanket around her). The small dog we slung 15 feet up the side of the wharf in her flotation jacket; the 65-pound Lab, too big to take up that way, wouldn’t stop squirming. So I tossed her unceremoniously overboard, and after considerable thrashing, she swam eagerly ashore.

Neither Mother nor I moves quite as briskly now as we did 40 years ago. But that’s given us the leisure to savor things as we’ve passed – the cavernous dining hall decked with mementoes, the quarry whose chilly water we dreaded on foggy days, the meadow and ice pond, the empty foundations, our old cabin. The cabin used to sport an anemometer atop a long, not-too-rigid staff, and on windy days the whole building vibrated like a motel bed. Those summers were among the very best of our lives. Now, the spruces and grass already are beginning to reclaim the island.

The boat is coming to pick us up. Time to pile our stuff at the head of the ladder. It’s low tide again; does it ever fail? Mother says she has a great scheme for lowering the Lab into the boat. Even barely keeping afloat, as I am, in all these memories, I can hardly wait to see what it is.