Lord of the Flies-ing
The periwinkle and white van bumps up the gravel drive, only fifteen minutes behind schedule. It looks like it belongs to the last century—with its fading block letters and boxy frame. An unexpected relic for a private school out of Boston, it resembles the kind of vehicle that once carted public school kids to zoos or crowded community pools in the 1990s—back when I was their age.
Ten middle schoolers tumble out—nine mop-headed boys and one girl whose face is set in a mix of annoyance and dread. Their teachers follow: three adults with end-of-year exhaustion drawn like parentheses around their eyes.
“The drive,” the kids immediately inform us, “was like twice as long ‘cause the AC didn’t work.”
I remember those rides—legs aching from a body growing too fast in too little space, the stale air, a single cassette on repeat, and the endlessness of forced nearness. It makes me feel old to comprehend how discomfort was the point. Still, I’m glad that, in this age of AirTags, some of those rough edges survive.
Their leader—a cheerful fifty-something British history teacher—approaches with a box of donuts. He offers it to my boss, A., and me with an unspoken apology for the chaos he’s about to unleash.
The Maine air grabs the students by the neck as they step out. Thick with brine, the scent of boiling lobsters and the mineral tang of farmed shellfish assails their metropolitan noses. Atmosphere engulfs the senses. Gulls shrill overhead and a patchwork of lobster traps rises all around into a sun-faded tapestry blanketing the skeleton of industry. Above the kayak shop, a warehouse hums steadily, full of filters and pumps, the wet mechanics of clam farming.
Everything is ready for their small expedition: three days and two nights of kayak camping on Crow Island, barely a nautical mile away, nestled in Muscongus Bay. A.’s wife has stayed up late into the night to prepare our meals—each bite tucked into labeled plastic bags, sorted by day and purpose, sealed in drybags. Meanwhile, A. and I have prepared the group gear: tents, pads, splash tops, neoprene layers, boats and paddles, PFDs. All is lined up on the altar of the launch.
After introductions, the girl beelines for me. She stands rooted in her petunia-colored rain jacket as she looks me in the eye and says, “Hi. I’m Em.”
“Hi, Em. I’m KK. It’s nice to meet you.”
She lifts her chin. “As you may have noticed, I’m the only girl here. My two friends bailed at the last minute. I’m so mad at them. I don’t know any of these boys, and I’ve never kayaked or camped before. I don’t want to be here.”
I want to say something—something gentle and reassuring—but the gears of group wilderness travel are already grinding into motion.
“Being the only girl isn’t so bad. You’ll see.”
I have to leave it for now because luggage now rushes from the van like water from a cockpit during a T-rescue. There are hard-case wheely suitcases and backpacks the size of the kids. A. tosses me a glance—told you they’d overpack—and gestures toward a pile of red 20-liter drybags.
“All your personals have to fit in these,” he commands.
The kids glance at the kayaks, next at their baggage. There’s a brief pause as the physics compute. Without fuss, they start downsizing. No protests. No drama, except for one boy who is desperate to squeeze his dad’s vintage LL Bean sleeping bag into an unrelenting hatch.
“Sorry kid, you’ll have to indulge your dad’s nostalgia another time,” instructs the history teacher, handing him one of our modern, compact sleeping bags.
For the others, all well-traveled and many from abroad, the sight of the slender boats offers all the explanation they need. There are no overhead bins on the sea. Fluffy pillows, extra sneakers, redundant hoodies—all are left behind with little ceremony. It surprises me, their readiness. But air travel has already taught them something about what is essential versus what ought to be allowed in our highly regulated modern world.
Then, the history teacher calls out: “Alright, kids, phones in.”
The group freezes. Disbelief ripples across their faces. These aren’t just devices! They are the breath between thoughts, the tether to everything. Unlike my generation, where phones grew into us, these kids were born inside them. Their lives irrigate through those tiny screens like the clam beds nourished by the circulating waters in the warehouse above. It hasn’t occurred to them yet that there’s no signal out there, no chargers, and no rescue if a phone slips into the ocean.
One by one, the phones are handed over—reluctantly, but without rebellion. All but Em’s. She stands beside the towering kayak trailer, a tiny pink barnacle. She white-knuckles the phone.
“Ok, Em,” I say softly. “Time to hand it over.”
She doesn’t speak. Just places it in my palm. Her fingers hover a second too long on the glass.
I ask, “What’s the longest you’ve gone without it?”
“Now.”
“Muscongus means ‘fishing place’ in Abenaki, the language of the people who have long called this coast home,” A. explains, and with those words, the tour begins.
The children paddle in broad loops and meandering zigzags, their tandem boats drifting like leaves on a restless stream. Their ears are half-turned, but their eyes are elsewhere—drawn to the rhythm of water, the pull of tide.
Still, the name lingers in the air, and in it, reality persists through the contours of time. Fishing place. The bay knows. It holds the memory of confluence, where the St. George and Medomak Rivers carry their warmth into Muscongus’s protected shallows. Freshwater mingles with salt, stirring nutrients into motion. The result is an estuarine cradle—soft and fertile—where lobsters shelter and molt and feed. And where lobsters thrive, come the others: terns that scissor the sky, sharp and bright as knives; concentric circling gulls; seals raising their sleek, whiskered faces; and sometimes, just sometimes, harbor porpoises arcing through the water like whispers, their dorsal fins stitching sea to sky. Along the edges, red spruces keep watch. Their resinous needles cradle nests for osprey and eagles, their trunks rooted in sea-rinsed stone.
“Porpoises!” cry the kids, their attention sharpened. “When will we see them?”
“Maybe you will,” A. says, with a knowing smile. “They don’t always show themselves. Maybe once or twice a season. You have to be very lucky.”
He explains how Alonquin-speaking people have moved through these islands for thousands of years, their lives braided with the tide, attuned to the sea’s seasonal pulse.
“They fished, gathered shellfish, carved stone tools, and lit their fires along these same shores—long before the maps bore names like ours. And then, in May of 1605, George Weymouth arrived in a three-masted ship. He stayed four weeks—long enough to rename the islands for himself. But it wasn’t until the American Revolution that settlement took hold: sheep arrived, trees fell, and stone walls rose.”
At the front of the group, Em shares a boat with D., a boy with a contemplative gaze, a bowl-cut, and a T-shirt printed with cats in astronaut helmets. He brought his own dry bags. Together, they paddle as if they’ve done it for years, strokes falling in perfect rhythm.
Dr. S., the English teacher from the North of England and the only other woman on the trip, leans toward me and whispers, “I’m glad Em’s with D. He’s a good egg. Very different from the other boys. Not that the others aren’t good eggs. D.’s just…” she pauses, watching the two glide silently forward, “well, you’ll see.”
Crow Island lies just off the northeastern side of Hog Island, which was purchased by Mabel Loomis Todd, Emily Dickinson’s editor, in 1910 to prevent further logging. Decades later, her daughter collaborated with the National Audubon Society to refashion the island into a nature education center, which it remains to this day.
Crow itself is a less storied, more humble place—only two acres—low-lying and soft in its contours. A circle of wind-shaped pines stands at its heart, surrounded by dark, seaworn bedrock. Rockweed braids the intertidal zone—glistening and treacherous to kayak-carriers.
We land and, a strange sight greets us. In the underbrush near the trees, still and stately, stands a lone rooster. His plumage glows an iridescent beryl, green as moss after rain, with auburn tones that catch the sun. One amber eye fixes on us, curious and unafraid, as we drag boats and sort gear. He does not flee. He stands his ground like he hatched right there on the granite, and has been expecting us ever since.
Dusk settles softly over the island, and the rooster has been named—Riccardo. He scratches and struts near the tents, as if we belong to him now. The last shelter finally rises. It has taken time. The work is slow and unfamiliar: adults kneel beside small hands, threading guy lines, teaching the delicate art of rain flies and taut stakes. The practice of making a temporary home in a place that is not ours.
Only D. works alone. He moves with a quiet self-assurance, unfolding the small one-person tent he brought from home. It goes up quickly, precisely. He’s done this before.
We lay claim to a small corner of soft earth—the girls’ corner—between the boats sleeping on the beach and a stand of white pine. Em, Dr. S., and I have chosen this spot for its distance from the boys’ latrine. Only D. is permitted near. His little tent brushes the border, a gentle exception. He knows we know he will honor the boundary, without needing to be told.
Before the children scatter for free time until dinner, the history teacher calls them into a loose circle for a talk about Leave No Trace, and how to use the Wag Bags.
“Remember,” he says, gesturing toward the small camp toilet tent tucked into the trees, “we are guests here. What we carry in, we carry out. Even our… business.”
He pauses to let it land.
“Number ones go in the designated spots—boys off the cliff, girls on the far beach. But number two’s? Only here,” he says, pointing again for emphasis. “And I mean only here.”
Some of the kids shift uneasily, experiencing varying degrees of disgust and horror. One boy lets out the beginning of a laugh, but a single sharp look silences him.
“I don’t know about you,” one boy mutters to another, low enough to be just barely heard, “but I’m not goin’ ‘til we get home.”
“You and me both, brah,” comes the reply.
A golden evening slopes down the sky as I walk toward the island’s southwest point—a smooth ledge shaped like the prow of a grounded ship. The stoves are set up there, where the wind can scatter the smoke and the view stretches wide to sea.
I crouch beside A., who’s coaxing the camp burners to life, shoulders hunched over the reluctant centerpiece: a frozen brick of taco meat, still resolute in its Tupperware, unmoved by the softness of June air. He prods it, flips it, mutters. I watch closely, trying to absorb the quiet choreography of this work. I’m here to be trained—a guide in the making, still learning when to step in and when to step back. Beside us, Riccardo watches too, pecking up stray crumbs like they might teach him something.
From the far side of the island comes the echo of boys as they attempt a circumnavigation. Meanwhile, Dr. S. sets down her book and pauses outside one of the big, three-person tents, where Em has tucked herself away, alone.
“You doing alright in there?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Lord-of-the-Flies-ing it, you could say.”
Dr. S. chuckles. “That’s a great way of putting it. If you were a character in the book, who would you be?”
“I dunno,” Em says. “Not Jack. Definitely not Piggy.”
Above us, an osprey calls—slicing the quiet with its high, fluted cry. The flame catches at last, and the meat begins its reluctant transformation.
Just then, a skiff noses into the cove—two local fishermen aboard, motoring toward shore. They call out as they land.
“Have any of you kids seen a rooster roaming around? We dropped him off here a few weeks back as a bit of a joke—not really expecting him to last—but folks say he’s been bothering campers…”
D. walks out to meet them, hands in his pockets.
“We haven’t seen anything like that, sirs,” he says evenly. “But even if he were here, I don’t think he’d be a bother.”
The men climb ashore anyway, boots crunching. They make a quick sweep of the campsite. Riccardo, mysteriously and magnificently, has vanished.
“Why can’t they just let him be?” D. murmurs, mostly to himself.
“Good question,” I say. “Let’s just be glad he’s got a stellar hiding spot.”
The fishermen return to their boat empty-handed. Em emerges warily from the solitude of her tent.
“What was that about?” she asks.
“Rescue mission,” D. says. “Don’t worry, the rooster evaded them.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“Wanna play Eights?” he offers.
“I don’t know how.”
“I’ll teach you.”
They sit cross-legged on the stone, a faded deck of cards spread between them on a stump. The meat softens in the pan. As the sun dips behind the trees and dinner is served, Riccardo reappears on cue—bold, unbothered, a feathered outlaw with perfect timing. The children save him scraps without needing to be asked. By unanimous agreement, he’s dubbed our Leave No Trace mascot.
The next morning, a few hours after Riccardo’s 4:30 AM wake-up call, we set off for our day’s paddle—about two nautical miles to Louds Island. Wind and tide push stubbornly against us, tugging at rudders that catch and slip. Fatigued kids slump low in their cockpits, muscles tightening with effort as paddles drag and drift. Even though I’m running sweep, A. circles back, weaving through the group, and puts two stragglers on tow.
“Hey, what about us? We want a tow!” call out their two compatriots.
I relent, suddenly aware of how exhausting these distances must be for twelve-year-old novice paddlers, and clip in.
As we near the beach, a hulking silhouette rests half-submerged—a sunken working boat listing quietly in the shallows.
“What happened?” a boy asks.
“I’m not sure,” A. answers, his gaze steady on the water. “Sometimes the sea doesn’t explain.”
Lunch spreads on the sand behind a thick windscreen of blooming rugosa roses. Their pink petals perfume the air with a heady sweetness, mingling with the sunscreen carried on the salty breeze. Teachers lounge on driftwood furniture, soaking up the last warm rays that spill through scattered clouds.
“So, what do sixth-graders read in English class these days?” I ask Dr. S., the pages of her book folded back as she looks up.
“Actually, the syllabus is shockingly conservative. It hasn’t changed much in, like, 40 years,” she says, voice low and thoughtful. “Another teacher and I are trying to update it. For example, we just finished Lord of the Flies, which feels dated and more than a bit racist. It doesn’t really map onto the kids’ lived experience anymore. It’s a rather grim view of humanity, really. Personally, I believe literature should help kids imagine a better future—not just fear it.”
Meanwhile, the kids—phoneless for twenty-four hours now—imagine a better present by rediscovering boredom. One skips a stone across the water, silver flashes against the pale blue. Another rock flies, tracing flat, quick arcs. Em joins in, skipping hers with a grin. The game spreads until all the kids are involved.
Suddenly, a water war erupts. Kayak bilge pumps become impromptu water guns, spraying sharp, cold jets. Kids shriek and chase, soaked to the skin, the warmth of the sun battling the chill of the spray. Laughter peals across the cove. A lone Croc floats away, bobbing like a ghost on the outgoing tide. A. sighs, stands, and paddles after it.
That night, rain patters gently, but laughter still rises from beneath the tarp where the kids have gathered to play cards. The adults retreat to their tents, spent. When I say goodnight, Em is there—fully part of the group now, cross-legged in the circle, holding another winning hand. The only one missing is D. He slipped away earlier, retreating to his tent, alone.
The noise fades as the drizzle thickens, finally sending the kids zipping themselves in for the night. For a moment, there is only the hush of rain on nylon.
Then, just as I am about to nod off—footsteps crunch softly on pine needles outside.
“Dr. S.?” A boy’s voice, tentative, in the girls’ camp. “I need to tell you something…”
Murmurs flicker like fireflies. Headlamps bob in the dark as a soft commotion stirs through the camp. There’s been a bathroom mishap. Tents rustle and unzip. The history teacher is summoned. Without a word, D. silently opens his solo sanctuary to another—the tentmate of the boy at the center of it all. Meanwhile, the embarrassed boy himself is settled into Dr. S.’s tent, while she moves in with a colleague, her voice calm and steady through it all.
By morning, of course, everyone knows. But no one mocks. The kids are up with Riccardo’s crow—quieter now, moving through the drizzle with a kind of gentleness. The incident will likely define the trip, yes, but now is not the time to make jokes. Instead, they make space for the cringing boy on the log under the tarp. They hand him a hot chocolate like nothing happened then carry on breaking down their tents. They let the boy with the flushed cheeks be.
Riccardo, oblivious, pecks boldly at our oatmeal. A. swats him away with a soft laugh. Still, he stands tall in the rain—undeterred, proud.
“You know,” says A., “I’ve been thinking, I’m going to come back for Riccardo. My sister-in-law keeps chickens, and he deserves a good home.”
The kids load the boats with practiced ease. What was foreign just two days ago now feels like second nature. Riccardo watches us go, curious whether we’ll be back for dinner. We won’t—but another group of kayakers is already on their way.
Back on land, the periwinkle van is reloaded and phones are returned. Yet no one rushes to turn theirs on. The kids change into dry clothes and then pile dutifully back into the van. The history teacher apologizes once again to A. for the damage to the tent and sleeping bag, promising to reimburse him. A. just smiles and reassures him, “It’s fine, man. Shit happens.”
The van grumbles back to life. The AC is still broken, but there are no more complaints. Before they reverse up the gravel drive, Dr. S. steps forward, hugs me, and says, “Em wants to say something to you.”
The shy girl steps forward. But the shyness is more a reflex than anything else. A vestigial impulse I know well.
“Thank you,” she says, inhabiting a newfound confidence. “I didn’t think I could do this. But you were right, it wasn’t so bad being the only girl, after all. I made new friends. Turns out I love kayaking. And camping!”
On the last night, after dinner but before the mishap, I sat alone on the western rocks, where the granite ledge tilts gently toward the sea and the light spills long across the water. Behind me, the kids’ voices lifted and fell like osprey hunting at dusk.
I thought about how much this group reminded me of the ski team I’d coached back in Colorado—also mostly boys. Same chaotic energy, same constant motion. But also the same kindness that slips in when no one’s watching. The surprising maturity and grace kids carry when no adult expects it, like helping carry each other’s skis up the bootpack. Different terrain, different season—but the same almost-invisible miracle: what kids become when the grown-up world stops telling them what to be.
We’ve been taught, through stories like Lord of the Flies, to fear what happens when children are left to themselves. Dr. S. was right to say that this view—of kids, and of the world we’re creating for them—is bleak and outdated. Maybe it always was. Golding wrote in the long shadow of the Second World War, a moment earmarked by the rise of a new nihilism that seeped into everything—even our understanding of childhood.
But what if Lord of the Flies isn't a cautionary tale about human nature so much as a projection of our own learned habits of cruelty and control? What if the so-called descent into wildness is just a childish narrative we adults cling to, a way of explaining—and excusing—the darker parts of our history? The taking of one people’s land by another. The bending of land and animals to our will. The abandoning of unwanted roosters on uninhabited islands, until they become someone else’s problem.
I didn’t see any tyrants emerge from the tents pitched on Crow Island. No beast, real or imagined, stalked any of us. Only an uncanny rooster whom the kids greeted with delight. Of course, no one was fighting for survival. But when thrust beyond their comfort zone, the kids’ first reflex was curiosity, not domination. Their second was care, not cruelty. I saw kids who adapted rather than destroyed. Who tolerated and tried new things. Who modeled the kindness of their teachers and reached out to new friends. Who took one another’s crap—sometimes literally.
Maybe the real test of “civilization,” then, isn’t what devolves in crisis, but what grows out of community. Yes, beasts exist—but they are not so much born as conjured, anthropomorphized collectively until we decide litigate or legislate them. And thus, perhaps, can these ideas of good versus evil, intrinsic versus superimposed also be unmade. Or even better, rescued. As the islands are. As Riccardo will be.
If the appropriate lesson from Lord of the Flies isn’t really about Jack, or Piggy, or the myth of inevitable unraveling, then what should we today take from this classic? If character isn’t a fixed moral trait, it might instead be conceived of as a kind of attention—slow, sustained, and reciprocal. Maybe it’s the girl in the petunia-colored jacket, the boy in the astro-cat t-shirt, or the rooster who stood watch. The ones who didn’t think they belonged, but made a place for themselves to play cards and drink hot chocolate anyway. Such character finds expression in islands that were colonized and now—quietly, incompletely—are being recognized as such. While the care of poetry editors and ornithologists is not restitution, it does slow the colonial entropy, rewriting the narrative of destruction. And, perhaps most crucially, we must extend this analogy to the teachers—those who explore with young human beings not just the texts about life, but life itself as the ultimate text: a fluid system of being, a breathing syllabus in need of perpetual revision.
Suddenly, a sound interrupted the solitude of my racing thoughts. The blow was familiar from my trip to Alaska, just weeks before. For a moment I thought: a whale? But no. Whales in Maine don’t come this far into the bay...
And then I saw them.
Two porpoises—one big and one small—surfaced together, grey-black sails rising in tandem. Four arcs, then gone, slipping between a red nun and Hog Island, headed toward the open sea.
Was it only last month that I watched a humpback and her calf trace the shoreline of the Lynn Canal? Then, the sight had made me think of my own mother—her instinct for leading by letting me find my own way.
Now, the porpoises felt different. Less parent and child. More teacher and student. Their brief, wordless choreography—parallel, companionable—offered a vision of what guiding might be. Not directing, but accompanying. Moving with.
I thought about calling the kids over. I wanted them to see these magnificent creatures. But more than that, I wanted them to have something to come back for.
So, I didn’t announce. I didn’t break the moment—theirs or mine. I just watched in silent awe.
I let them be.