Discovery on Little Hog Island, part 24

No retreat today. I’m jotting down a few words before I heave myself into bed. (I did walk to the shore at one point, in the evening, after dinner—almost at dusk. Alone.)

Discovery on Little Hog Island, part 24

Part 1, part 23

“It was a small school, and ‘interdisciplinary’ wasn’t the buzzword it is now,” Ross said, “but suddenly the project expanded exponentially and the girls were in on it too.”

They were out in the kayak together, Ross paddling and Dana crunched into the cargo hold. Ross said that if the kayak would hold both of them in rough seas , it would be safe for her. The patches seemed to be holding and Ross’s strong paddling was taking them toward the spit end of Little Hog Island.

“Let’s see, not Phip Rellins, he was biology, not Mr. Brunelle, he was Physics, let me guess, any chance it was Raymie Wadworth?” Dana asked.

“You’re good, real good. How’d you know?”

“I didn’t. Shot in the dark—it was the only other teacher I remember your mentioning.”

“You remember that? I don’t remember that—you got a photographic memory, or tape recording memory?”

“Not really, just a sort of unreliable 6^th sense. It only works some of the time.”

“Yeah, Raymie got involved. Took the girls under his wing. We worked on the ecology and they worked on the history. It turned out that what they were doing was even more interesting than the terns. Speaking of which,” he said, waving his arm out. He had turned steeply and slid the kayak into a narrow sandy slip between some tall rocks. The terns flew in and out, doing their fantastic aerial dance.

“I didn’t bring my scope, my binocs or my notebook or recorder,” Dana mourned. “I didn’t know we were coming out here.”

Part 25