ISLES OF SHOALS (continued)

DAY SIX

The best and worst part of being an island steward is meeting the people who find their way ashore. The island regulations are posted on a wooden box at Haley's Cove -- no smoking, no camping, no fires, no radios, no restrooms. Dogs can poop on Malaga, but not on Smuttynose. Nothing found on the island can be removed.

There are little booklets in the box with an island walking tour. You can take one for a small donation. I find that, the smaller the visitor's boat, the bigger the donation. Last year I watched a guy with an Aristotle Onasis-sized yacht stop in Gosport Harbor. The back of the boat opened, James Bond-style, and a speedy powerboat lowered itself into the water. A group of four well-dressed world travelers zoomed into the cove, took a copy of the tour booklet, and left without leaving a nickel.

Today, some jerk parked his double in-board smack in the entrance to the cove, pulled out a six-pack, and pushed a half dozen kids into the water for a swim. I told him he was welcome to tour the island, but not to block the cove. He told me he'd leave when he good-and-well felt like it. I scribbled a few notes on my clipboard, snapped a few photos of his boat, and pretended to dial a cell phone. Suddenly, he felt like leaving.

But most tourists are respectful and openly thankful that the owners have been kind enough to open their private island. I get as much information about Smuttynose from visitors as I give. This year one sailor told me how to trap and skin the abundant muskrats for their pelts. Another guy said that his family used to eat Thanksgiving dinner on the island, a frigid tradition they have since curtailed. A spry woman in her 70s pointed out where her late husband's ashes had been scattered off nearby Appledore. We sat on the stoop of "Rozzie's Cottage" and talked about Rosamund Thaxter, whom I never met and about "Sandpiper," Rozzie's biography of her grandmother, poet Celia Thaxter, whom she never met.

Celia herself lived, for a spell in the one remaining old house on the island, the one most people know from the label of Shoals Pale Ale. Her father Thomas Laighton bought Smuttynose from, I think, the son of the man she called "King" Haley. Back then Haley had his own sawmill, grinding mill, rope walk, a fruit tree orchard, and a distillery. Lemuel Caswell, who is buried in the little cemetery on Star Island, built a great long fish pier on what is now a barren stone foundation here. The Laighton's took over a 60-guest summer hotel on Smuttynose in the 1840s called the Mid-Ocean House. Nathaniel Hawthorn, Richard Henry Dana and a young Franklin Pierce were among the guests. A young Celia Thaxter filled the hotel rooms with flowers, wore flowers in her hair and on her hat, and raised parakeets on the island. Laighton also built a grocery store that stood at the top of the cove near the old fish house. I've spent many hours wandering the stone foundations, staring at old photos, trying to imagine all the sounds, bustle and scent of those busy days.

CONTINUE with Smuttynose Island Diary