If you remember wondering why Mission Local broke the news of the Angel Island ferry’s mechanical failure in September, you may have put two and two together. I was a “direct informant” stranded on Angel Island alongside seven other campers.
The city’s ferry had suffered a sewage malfunction. According to the customer service representatives I talked to, campers had never been stranded on the island before. I would soon learn this wasn’t exactly true.
Mission Local has learned that the Angel Island ferry is not running today, leaving anyone hoping to return to the mainland today stranded on the island.
More when we know more.
— Mission Local (@MLNow) September 17, 2024
After plugging my phone into an outlet outside the ranger’s booth, the first call I made was to my editor. “Don’t tell me your boat is sinking,” Joe Eskenazi said.
I was supposed to be at work that afternoon. But a perk of being a journalist is that when you’re late to work because you went camping on a Monday, you can write about it. (Alternatively, pursue a more lucrative profession and call yourself a water taxi.)
So, while we waited for another public watercraft to be commandeered to pick us up, I tried to meet some people.
There weren’t many.
Matthew, one of a handful of rangers, was in the middle of describing how the Coast Miwok first sailed to Angel Island from what is now Marin County when Maire Farrington wandered over, oblivious to the ferry debacle.
The 62-year-old has been camping on Angel Island every year for 31 years. On this trip, she planned to be alone on the island for a full week.
Her inaugural outing involved a group of a dozen friends. In the years following, their group swelled as “the friends had kids and the kids came and then the kids’ friends came.”
“And then the kids grew up.”
It became more difficult for Farrington’s friends to take time off. The party dwindled to just Farrington and a “buddy.” Then the buddy started a Ph.D and could no longer come, Farrington said with a shrug.
“And so it’s just been me,” said Farrington as gray wisps of hair escaped the lavender hoodie pulled around her face. “I’ve been doing solo camping for the last decade.”
Farrington has hiked every trail. She packs her Kindle, stocked with mystery novels. But most of her time is spent sitting and watching the view — the best moment, she said, is when the moon rises, the city lights come on, and the owls start hooting. When she’s “lonely for human noise,” she brings a meal down to the dock.
“I don’t do devices or find out what’s going on in the world,” Farrington said softly. “I just love the silence.”
Farrington has worn many hats in her day. For years, she wrote a column about new parents for the Noe Valley Voice called “More Mouths to Feed.” She’s also a psychotherapist who used to volunteer at a women’s shelter in Haight Ashbury.
Camping, she said, is part of the way she finds her own mental clarity.
“Ancient” is the word that comes to mind when Farrington thinks of Angel Island. Besides the remodeling of the immigration station museum, which teaches visitors about the thousands of immigrants once detained there, she thinks the island has changed very little.
“There’s just this … earth,” Farrigton emphasized, almost at a loss for words. “It’s like, this timelessness.”
While she may be a seasoned Angel Island camper, Farrington is no Bear Grylls. She says she’s actually “really reluctant to go to most places by myself.” Her first time on Angel Island alone, she was so “spooked” she barely slept. A raccoon stole her food.
Since then, Farrington has toughened up. On the morning of the stalled ferry, she said she fended off two coyotes who approached her campsite (this involved jumping up on a bench and screaming).
In 2020, she was the only camper on the island during a power outage.
When Farrington, ready for a week away, arrived at the Tiburon dock on a stormy morning four years ago, she was told the island would close. On top of the power outage, the water was too choppy for ferries to operate. All campers were being turned away.
“Well, you don’t really need electricity to camp. What’s the big deal?” Farrington recalled telling a ranger. “I begged him, ‘Please, can I go [there] with you on your boat?”
Rangers maintain that the public shouldn’t expect to ever get a ride on a state parks vehicle. But for their retired regular, it seems, they made an exception.
It was a “once in a lifetime experience,” the camper reminisced. “I’ve never camped anywhere where there’s that much open space and no people.”
There wasn’t a boat in the bay. By choice, Farrington was stranded on Angel Island. “That’s heaven,” she smiled, nostalgic.
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