It wasn’t the most comfortable situation. As he told Mike when they had agreed to go, “I wasn’t comfortable talking to teenage girls when I was a teenager and it’s never got any easier.” But here he was, with Mike, forty-six teenage high school girls and four mothers.Throw in the bus driver and there were fifty-three people on the bus headed North.

The youth pastor and his wife were in a van that followed them, carrying the program materials and the other items needed to run the week long retreat. They were headed to the Island. This late in the year, it was pretty much under used and the University had cut them a deal for the use of the cabins and dining hall. They would be returning at the end at the last regular daily ferry run of the season.

After that they ferry would run three days a week until things got too wet and dangerous to run out the xxx miles that it sat off the coast. There was a small group of people that lived there all year, taking care of the buildings. It was a isolated place, off the beaten path for many who had never heard of it. The number of diverse biological niches had made it a key research station. A couple of the girls had been there on a school trip the previous spring and it was partially their talking it up that had filled the bus.