Anna let the kayak drift down the sheltered channel beside Porter’s Island. Shipping her paddles, she ate a lunch of tortillas and beans. Lying back, her legs free of the enclosed bow, she let the sun paint patterns on her eyelids, as the water tapped its music against the sides of the boat.

When she finally paddled into the wake-riddled bustle of Rock Harbor, it was after five o’clock.

Rock Harbor was a nine-mile stretch of water protected from the storms by a chain of islands: Raspberry, Smithwick, Shaw, Tookers, Davidson, Outer Hill, Mott, Caribou. The administrative offices of the National Park Service were clustered on Mott Island, the biggest in the chain. A majority of ISRO’s employees were housed there in dormitories or apartments. The island’s somewhat gruesome history-it was named for Charlie Mott, who had tried to eat his wife one long and hungry winter-was all but exorcised by the banal necessities of bureaucratic life.

The niche in Rock Harbor that was thought of as the “real” Rock Harbor was three miles from Mott toward Blake’s Point. It was a doubly protected cove shut in an elbow of land. The lodge was there, along with the Visitors’ Center, the boat rental concession, and a clapboard windowless hall where National Park Service naturalists liked to shut the tourists away from moose and fox and thimbleberry, from rain and wind and mosquitoes and show them slides of Nature.

Gasoline and groceries could be had in Rock, and there was a pumping station for boats. During the height of the summer season the Voyageur from Grand Marais, Minnesota, called three times a week, the Queen brought passengers from Copper Harbor, Michigan, on Mondays and Fridays, and the Ranger III carried fares and supplies from Houghton. The lodge was usually booked weeks ahead and backpackers, disembarking from the ships, often had to hike eight or more miles out before finding a camp for the night.