CHARITY
«I must try to be alone for part of each year, even a week or a few days; and for part of each day, even for an hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my centre, my island quality...Unless I keep the island-quality intact somewhere within me, I will have little to give my husband, my children, my friends or the world at large «
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Near the big island, Spectacle, was a small island, named Star.
Star was so small that you could walk its shoreline circumference of rocks and sand in an hour. In some places the sand was fine and white and in others gravelly, just as in some places the rocks were not much more than pebbles and in others boulders you could climb like a goat.
The interior of Star was densely wooded, mostly with spruce trees, but at its southern end it had been cleared and a one room cabin had been built in the middle of the grove. The door of the cabin was always left unlocked. It was the intention of the owner, who lived so far away as to be invisible, that anyone who wished to stay there, could.
Travis Chandler, a 17 year old from the mainland, had been curious about Star Island ever since he’d seen it from the ferry, on the way to Spectacle, when he was 7. It was the night his mother had left his father and when he’d spotted Star in the distance, a light on in the cabin, he wished he could go there, to be far away from everything and everyone.
When he was 17 he bought himself a kayak. The first weekend of July, after school was out, he filled a small...
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