"I was pretty sure I wanted to study marine biology, but this place made me realize that I want to do research. You get to see not just individual organisms," she explains, "but the whole structure, where they live, their reproductive cycles and how they interact."

The isolation of island life and intense focus on research can build strong bonds between students and faculty, Rodgers says. "You're on a first-name basis with the faculty, and you get to know your classmates so well. Everybody has to pitch in to make the place run, and you learn to help each other with your studies and your projects, too. It's the most amazing community I've ever seen."

In summer, Bob Tuttle often sits on the porch of Laighton House on Appledore at dusk, looking over the shimmering water to Star Island in the distance. "Sometimes I can just about see men over there laying fish out to dry, and women wandering around with their parasols," he says. "So much has happened on these tiny pieces of rock, it's almost staggering."

Tuttle doesn't know how or why he became infected with what he likes to call "the Shoals virus;" like most people, he has no words to express deep love and longing. "I just know there's no place on Earth I'd rather be."

Those who venture out to Appledore Island this summer will see the busy community at Shoals Marine Lab and, nearby, the carefully tended recreation of Celia Thaxter's lovely garden and the little walled cemetery where she, her parents and her brothers lie buried. A trip to Star Island will be even more of a step back in time, through the surviving relics of Victorian life and the vanished fishing community once known as Gosport Village.

As the ferry leaves Gosport Harbor and the Isles of Shoals behind, visitors can expect a fond farewell at the dock from the Pelicans, Star Island's summer staff. They'll wave and call out -- in a reminder of the plaintive cry of a pirate's ghost bride -- "You will come back, you will come back." ~

Kimberly Swick Slover is the founding editor of the University of New Hampshire Magazine.

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