Islands can be a place of reflection, as we experience through the eyes of Brianna Williams in The Tower Colony during her turn working with breeding seabirds in an abandoned Air Force station radar tower.

“To reach the nest boxes, we had to brave a distressing climb up three flights of sea-rusted steel stairs whose landings had long since dissolved and had been replaced by ancient two-by-four boards scavenged from the carcasses of neighboring buildings. Despite my fear of heights – the thought of falling to the unforgiving concrete foundation below terrified me at first – I grew accustomed to the one hundred foot climb up those rusty stairs four to five times a day. At the top of the stairs, it narrowed into a short passage of enclosed concrete before opening into what would be my joy and despair for the foreseeable future.”

Next Chapter: "Lost and Found," by J. Drew Lanham