Hurricane Island, a speck of pink-grey granite and dark green spruce trees in Penobscot Bay, has had a lot of incarnations over the years, including a stint as an active quarry community and then as the longtime summer base camp for outdoors organization Outward Bound.
Perhaps all those iterations make it the perfect place to teach about permaculture, according to Jesse Watson of Midcoast Permaculture Design, a Rockland-based landscaping firm that focuses on edible ecosystem design. Permaculture is a design methodology that incorporates aspects of agriculture, landscape design, ecology and more, and aims to help people design resilient and sustainable human habitats.
“It’s a unique venue,” he said. “I think of it as a feral or rewilded landscape. We can look at what’s emerging and work at what’s there to make it more productive.”
Watson’s organization is teaming up with the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership to bring the two-day introduction to permaculture course to the island on Saturday, May 13, and Sunday, May 14. Participants will engage in a mix of lecture, group discussion, video and hands-on projects in the field to prepared to learn about permaculture.
They also will find themselves on an island with a unique history. Notably, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Hurricane Island was home to a thriving quarry town with a year-round population of about 250 people, most of them skilled stonecutters imported by the quarry company from countries such as Italy, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Scotland and England. The town was a surprisingly cosmopolitan place, with many languages spoken, a bustling school, churches, a baseball team, two town bands and even a bootlegging vessel that often anchored offshore to sell contraband booze to the stonecutters, according to a historical account published on the website for the Hurricane Island Foundation.
But demand for the island’s granite began to wane, and the last shipment of rock was hauled off the island in 1914. The barge tasked with bringing the heavy load to Massachusetts didn’t make it far, foundering in heavy seas and sinking just a few miles away off of Rockland. Shortly after the sinking, the quarry management pulled up stakes and closed the Hurricane Island town virtually overnight, according to the history. Families left their homes in such a rush that pictures were still on the walls and tables were still set for the next meal that never came. Eventually the houses in the overnight ghost town were dismantled, and the island became known mostly as a destination for picnickers.
In 1964, the island’s fate changed again when it became the summer base camp for Outward Bound, hosting more than 40 years of adventure-based courses in sea kayaking, rock climbing, sailing and more. But by 2009, Outward Bound had moved its main office to the mainland and the Hurricane Island Foundation was incorporated, with a mission to integrate science education, applied research and leadership development through educational programs based around the island.
One of those programs is permaculture, Watson said. His students will spend their two days on the island being introduced to the design principles and ethics of permaculture.
“We’ll do some ecological analysis, looking at the topography, the movement of water, sun and wind, to get an idea of what the ecological context is,” he said. “My goal for the students is to introduce them to a new way of seeing the world around them. To empower them with at least a handful of design tools that they can employ in their regular lives.”
For more information, visit hurricaneisland.net/permaculture.