Despite the desperate situation, we train for just such things. No matter how bad a situation at sea becomes, hope for survival always remains strong.

When Christine Dentremont finished the industrial design program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., she relocated two days later to Swan’s Island, where she would spend the next few years as a sternman on a lobster boat.

For a week during each of the past four summers, a group of college students and their instructors have been channeling the innovative spirit and nature-oriented sensibility of R. Buckminster Fuller in the design pioneer’s own habitat.

By this time, I and others have usually made our way through the odd feeling that comes at the end of August. Overtired from working days and staying out later than usual at night, we have scrambled for every last chance to see friends before saying those parting words, “Have a good winter!”

They worked, smart phones at their sides, talked with each other incessantly, laughing. I loved it.

He is awed by the humbling power of nature, whether a rip-roaring gale tearing shingles off roofs or the miracle that earth doesn’t spin out into the abyss…

There's one more day of summer showing on the calendar as this column is being written, but the signs of autumn are everywhere on the coast of Maine.

I have mixed feelings about summer.

I’ve always loved little spaces I could make my own. When I was a kid, maybe 13 or so, I lived for a while in a box a refrigerator had come in. I