Dear Hermit Island
(Or, Living in the Gray)
I grew up taking two-week camping vacations to Hermit Island, Maine. My sister Lindsey and I loved it for the freedom.
Located in the very small town of Phippsburg, Hermit Island is a stretch of coastal private property open to the public, a sliver of adolescent heaven surrounded by the roaring Atlantic.
The campground still accepts only cash or checks. Tents and pop-up trailers only. No RVs. No electricity or water hookups at the sites. There is a camp store, a snack shack, and not much else to interfere.
There are rocks to climb, cliffs to jump from, seaweed to explore, clams to dig, waves to catch, and trails to hike and bike. For Lindsey and me, there were always friends to make.
At Hermit Island, we got drunk, played with fire, stayed in the water until we pruned, and put what felt like hundreds of miles on our bikes. We ate every meal by the radio, with the local country station at a fair volume, hosted epic ping-pong tournaments, drank Slush Puppies to our hearts’ delight, fed dozens of dollars in quarters to the World Cup pinball machine, made out with boys, plural, in the dunes, and once refused to return to our tents until after sunrise.
Hermit Island was the highlight of every year. The great release. The place where we let go completely.
It tracks that our parents stopped bringing us when we were deep into high school. They were not interested in any Hermit Island babies coming home with us.
I did not return until my forties. To my delight, very little had changed beyond some of the rules. Music was no longer allowed. Neither were fires on the beach, dogs, or teenagers roaming wherever they wanted after eleven.
It is possible my generation ruined it for everyone who came next.
We earned that freedom.
What surprised me most upon returning was how quickly the feeling of being alive settled back into my body as I climbed the familiar steep hill into the campground.
This week marked my second visit in my forties. We stopped for one too-short day on our way north to visit dear friends.
A gentle mist covered most of the island. The water and sky nearly disappeared into one another, and the familiar landscape looked softer around the edges.
This month was my final immunotherapy treatment for now.
As someone living with Stage IV melanoma, I do not get the clean certainty of “cured.” Right now, my scans show no visible evidence of active disease. Right now, I do not need more treatment. Right now, I can put more of my energy toward healing from what treatment left behind.
The words right now matter.
This could remain my reality. It may not. There is no clean line separating diseased from cured, danger from safety, before from after.
There is only the gray.
Standing on Hermit Island beneath a sky that blurred into the Atlantic, I remembered that gray does not mean there is nothing to see.
The island is still here. Still beautiful.
