2024 Travers Winner!

~Dylan Neumann, Class of 2025

At sundown, the island started to buzz. The air turned into a bloodthirsty horde of little biting monsters that every hiker and camper alike fears: mosquitoes. Everywhere you went, thousands of mosquitoes followed you. But despite the biting bugs that infested the air, it was still one of the best times of my life. From the ages of six to ten, my family and I went to a small island in the middle of Lake Nicatous in Maine. It was my grandfather’s friend’s and we’re always happy to go when invited. We called it Bacon Island, because every morning, when you woke up somebody would be cooking bacon. Because I was there with my family and there was always something that needed work, I learned how to work hard, how to admire the peacefulness of nature, and that family is as important as food or water.

There was always something that needed work on the island. Even though my grandfather was friends with the island owner, there was always a condition. It was never money, or any payment of that sort. it was always building something. Stones and fallen trees littered the ground so we never needed materials, but we always needed more hands. So whenever I was called over to work on something, I always complied. One year, too many stones took up too much space on the ground and there was almost no space in the refrigerator. 

With permission from the owner, my uncle started to build a cold room out of the stones for the less perishable items. Everyone started to pitch in, and at the end of the two weeks that we stayed there, the work ended. It was simple, nothing more than walls of stone leaning against a hill, but it was much more chilly inside the room than outside. It was amazing how in such a short time, our family constructed a fairly large room for storing cold items. It was fun to build with only things that we could find. But most importantly, it was eye opening and showed me that working hard always paid off.

While we ate bacon every day for breakfast, we ate fish almost every single night for dinner. It wasn’t just some fish that we bought at market basket though, it was fresh, caught that same day by either my father or I. 

While on those fishing trips out in our little motorboat, it was quiet. It felt like we were on the open ocean, not just our little lake. I was always told to be quiet, as if we talked it sent the fish into hiding. So while on the water, it felt as if we became one with nature. When night fell, we could see the night sky as if we were in space. Stars so bright, like the light of vegas, and so little light pollution that the rings of the milky way were like highways that cut across the sky. Every night as I sat on the porch, I thought that it was incredible that I could feel so close to nature, while being so close to home.

I’ve talked a lot about my family on the island, because that’s all that’s there. There are no phones or consoles or TVs because of the limited electricity. The only thing on the entire island that used electricity was the fridge, because we needed a place to store milk and bread. So to pass time we did puzzles and played board games and talked. for hours at a time, we would do one thing and never get bored. 

Because of the love of the island, everyone bonded over something, no matter how far away they lived. If we weren’t doing a puzzle or something physical, then we would watch for mooses on the far banks or see what fish are at the shores. As a family, there was nothing that got boring, because we’re all that we needed.

Despite not having gone there for the past three years, I can still remember everything so clearly. I can remember the boat rides there, the islands that we would pass, the shores of the island, the people there, and most importantly the fun of the year. Every time I went, it was the most fun of the year. There was never a time that I regretted going. It might be the things that I worked hard on there that kept me waking up looking forward to doing something. It might be the beautiful natural surroundings, untouched by human influence. Or it might be the family that stayed there, their constant chattering floating across the island like a gust of wind. And while I may never be there to find out again because of the owner’s unfortunate passing, it was the time of my life.