Sweat, hard work, no showers, BEAUTY, and friendship were the ingredients a couple weekends ago when I volunteered to help prepare Star Island for the summer.
In return my labor I received room, board, amazing views, and summer camp kind of fun. A pretty darn good trade it my book. Thanks Kirsten for bringing me to this wild place. Kirsten was madly needle felting in the evenings while we were there, folks were mesmerized.
Star Island is loaded with rugged terrain, beautiful views, history, and ghost stories. Go if you can, it's magical. There are week long conferences out there that sound fun but you can also get a room just for the night. It's part of the Isle of Shoals and looks right over to Appledore and Smuttynose islands where the murder in The Weight of Water took place. The book is a good summer read.
The main hotel building, the Oceanic, is over a hundred years old. There were hotels on the island before this building that apparently burnt to the ground more than once.
Our crew wiped, swept, and mopped many rooms and through the haze of Murphy's Oil all I had to do was look up to one of these views. The stone cottages made me crazy I love them so much. Our Pelican, or young cleaning crew chief Tim, has such a sunny and upbeat personality that he was a pleasure to work for. At the end of the day I had that exhausted-in-a-good-way feeling.
Lastly, a view of our room. It was no frills, bring your own sleeping bag and expect no showers but then there was that view again so who cares. The food was amazing and it could not have been a better time. The other volunteers joined in with the "S T A R, we will be back, we will be back, we will be back!!" chant call and response with the Pels as our boat was pulling away and by then I did feel like the island had a grip on me, I will be back. I did get in a little knitting time, next post is Latvian mittens!
9 comments:
ohhhh I always wanted to do that. So beautiful I know that light. It kills me. Thanks for sharing your weekend.
I NEED to go there! Gorgeous place!!! Hope you wore your ambergris. Looks like the perfect setting for it.
Beautiful views, I will put that on our summer travel list! Thanks for getting it ready!
Oooh, so awesome! I love anything that can be described as summer camp for grown ups. But then I loved summer camp as a kid too!
i know this sounds crazy, but wouldn't it be awesome to spend like a week in winter on that island? just roaring fires and fiber arts?
Oh wow. I really, really, really hope I get to go to a place like that some day.
I want to go to there.
hope to share my talent both in actual work as well as teaching what I have learned from many a Yankee tradition learned from my New England family
I remember volunteering there many springs ago. My favorite part was watching the other "volunteers" wander all day long and do nothing while I put enough sweat equity in to rebuild the Oceanic. Those same volunteers were the first ones in line for the food and always drank all the coffee in the morning.
Yes the views of the ocean are great but the non showering chain smoking pelicans who meander in a haze of a hangover all day long put a drag on things.
The boat ride out is especially nice, if it's not raining and the exhaust fumes are not blowing in your face.
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