Casting Off

On Thursday July 16, I embark on the first leg of my journey. I will be flying via New York City and Germany to the Maldives - an island nation just off of India - where I will be staying on a small island called Villingili, a short hop from Male', the capital.

This photo shows the mouth of the Harraseeket River in Freeport, Maine as it opens out into Casco Bay. It's the harbor in which I first learned to sail and where we moor our family sailboat, Libra.

It is a sight I know intimately - one which reminds me both of new beginnings and of home. As I rush about tying up last minute preparations, I thought it would make sense to post a bit about where I've been, and how it was that I got to this point - to leaving Vermont and the Harraseeket in Maine for uncharted waters...

I am the daughter of seafaring parents. After working for several years in Edinburgh Scotland, my parents set sail in the early '80s. Together they sailed the Mediterranean, stopping in the Canaries before crossing the Atlantic, and finally wending their way through the Caribbean and up the eastern coast of the United States. They ended up in Maine, and have stayed here ever since - traversing the waters of Casco Bay and teaching their two daughters to sail.

Coming of age in a sailing family did more than instill a love of the sea in me; it made me more cognizant of the land, opening my eyes to the world of islands hemming the Maine coast. When I was about twelve years old, we sailed to Cliff Island for an overnight. Ashore that afternoon, we met an elderly woman who offered to give us a tour of the island. Leading us through the streets, she showed us the shingled store and some yellowed photographs in the historical society. Upon reaching the small schoolhouse, she paused. Without hesitancy she asked my father if he would be interested in joining the island community. Young people were leaving, she explained, and the school was threatened with closure. For the first time, I realized just how fragile island communities were.

From that point on, my understanding of island life seemed to converge all around me. My best friend moved to Cliff Island as part of the resettlement project. Our new neighbor was a commercial lobsterman off of Bustin’s Island. When my father founded his own engineering company, his focus shifted to coastal property design, sending him to town meetings in and around Maine’s coastal and island communities. In school, I began to read about islands; in writing assignments, I often wrote about them. And the more I learned about islands, the more I realized that they were not “simplified” versions of mainland life but actually on the cutting edge of social, economic and political problems more commonly associated with mainland and urbanized settings.

I could go on, but I'll let the rest of my story unravel alongside my voyage. All in all, I see the Watson as a chance to fuse two defining threads of my identity: a lifelong passion and concern for the preservation of island communities and a quest to reconcile the journalist and humanitarian in me. As I look towards my future, Maine’s islands and audio storytelling are both present. Philip Conkling, President of Maine’s Island Institute, once wrote, “to 'save' the Maine coast, we need vision and confidence in ourselves to create an alternative future.” By giving voice to islanders and exploring opportunities to use audio storytelling not only as a cathartic art form but also as a tool for civic engagement, I hope to do just that.