The Island

By Doug Westendorp

I blame myself. I was the one who encouraged the boy to learn to sail the boat his father had given him, and when he started talking about the island, I am the one who talked him into photographing it. 

My first clue that something was off somewhere should have been when we couldn’t find the island on any chart. He said it was “just over the horizon,” so it really should have been charted a long time ago. But charts aren’t always reliable, and anyway he was so convincing when he told me about it all: the little harbor, the sandy beaches, and the lush vegetation. Then when he described to me what he did on the island, moving stones around (“in a line,” say) and stacking driftwood into towers. “Gardening,” he called it, all of his rearranging. He did some more traditional gardening too, even talking about transplanting small trees and other plants to where they were “happier.” And he was happy, it seemed, for the first time since his mother died. He smiled when he talked about the little stream of fresh water he found, the fresh fruit hanging ripe from the trees, and the “warm, dry” cave he sometimes slept in. (But who ever heard of a warm, dry cave?) It’s true he was gone more than once for a couple of days at a time, and always returned safely. There was no reason to doubt his stories. 

But he didn’t want to photograph the island. Didn’t want to take a camera. Maybe I shouldn’t have pressed him, but I was curious to see it all, and finally he relented. And when he did he was as eager as I to see the film developed. He said he had sailed all around the island for all the “perfect angles,” and he took an entire roll of Pan-x in one of my favorite Nikons. Together we took it to the dark room to see how they had all turned out… 

And that’s exactly where I lost him. In the darkroom. The photos turned out alright. That is, they were perfectly exposed. But all we saw on them was water, sky and horizon. No island. I turned to him for explanation, but he was speechless. In fact, even under the red lights in the darkroom I could see he had turned pale. He looked like he had seen a ghost. Next thing I knew he was rushing out of the room and out of the house and down towards the shore.

It’s the last anyone in town has seen him, and it’s been over two weeks now. I suppose he’s on his island, but no one seems to be able to find it. I tell the searchers that it’s just over the horizon, but they are at a loss... I blame myself.

Doug Westendorp, at sixty-four years of age, is a retired professor of visual art. He lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife of forty-four years, and blessedly close to their three children, two sons-in-law, and four granddaughters. More of his life and work can be seen at dougwestendorp.com.