Even in the winter?

Oceanic Hotel on Star Island in the Isles of Shoals.

— Photo by DavidWBrooks

“The remarkeablest Isles and mountains for Landmarks are these… Smyth’s Isles are a heape together, none neere them, against Accominiticus… a many of barren rocks, the most overgrowne with such shrubs and sharpe whins you can hardly passe them; without either grasse or wood but there or foure short shrubby old Cedars… And of all foure parts of the world that I have yet seene not inhabited, could I have but meanes to transport a Colonie, I would rather live here then any where; and if it did not maintain it selfe, were wee but once indifferently well fitted, let us starve… By that acquaintance I have of them, I may call them my children; for they have bin my wife, my hounds, my cards, my dice, and in totall my best content.”

— English explorer John Smith in 1614 about the Isles of Shoals, off New Hampshire and Maine.

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The island of the Unitarians

 

"Trap Dike, Star Island'' (oil on canvas) , by CHRIS VOLPE,  at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.

Star Island is one of those tiny bodies of land off New Hampshire that comprise the Isles of Shoals. It has long been a summer retreat for Unitarians, that quintessentially New England denomination that mostly evolved from such Transcendentalists as Ralph Waldo Emerson.