august 19–september 1, 2019 | new york 43

could be buried on the same site. Hunt

believes that Hart Island as it is operated

could handle all of the 50,000 people who

die every year in New York City.

The cops are naturally sensitive about

Hart Island, especially when inmates are

digging graves, and sure enough, when we

row too close later that day, a helicopter

comes over Lorenz’s boat, followed by a fire-

boat: The crew approach, wave, move on.

We pass near Chimney Sweeps, but I want

to see Rat Island, a private patch of rock

watched over by a statue of William Tell, a

gift to the man who owns the place, a Swiss-

American who bought the island for

$160,000 in 2011. A retired Port Authority

worker, he can see the island from his City

Island home address.

We land, and I walk the main street,

this street being a 40-foot path of broken-

up rock not unlike the one that makes up

the rest of the five- or six-parking-space-

size island. I admire the Tell statue and

the street sign for William Tell Way. The

New York Post reported that the owner

was looking to make the island into a

glamping site, though the Post also said

the island is two and a half acres, and

frankly it didn’t seem that big to me

(though high tide was coming). We row

back toward Hog Island, where Williams,

Lorenz’s husband, finds some flotsam for

a sculpture he is planning.

Next in view is High Island, a little spot of

land with a shack and a tall radio tower: It’s

where WCBS-AM and WFAN transmit,

each of which operates at about 50,000

watts, the signal so strong that you can get

the Fan in Chicago or in South Florida if the

weather is right. California, Jamaica, Swe-

den, various parts of Canada, and Japan—

all places that have reported hearing WCBS

Newsradio over the years thanks to an old

emergency-broadcasting policy that autho-

rized some signals to be strong enough to

reach anywhere in case of a national emer-

gency. Traffic and weather have been known

to transmit through City Island radiators.

The water is clear and beautiful, the sky

big. We spot Columbia Island in Westches-

ter, just over the invisible city line: a private

island, bought in 2007 by a physician and

real-estate developer, Al Sutton, who con-

verted it into a 5,600-square-foot luxury

home. The closer you get, the more you see

it’s built for the end-times, with a desalina-

tion machine, solar panels, rooms with

storm shutters, and at the edge of the hexa-

gon-shaped island, a five-foot-thick storm

wall. He never lived there. “I was more

ambitious when I purchased it,” Sutton told

CNBC, “and now, in my 80s, it’s not as prac-

tical.” It’s selling for $13 million.

We paddle around for Nonations to no

avail. Markers are hard to understand,

shores distances tough to determine using

apps, using maps, using anything. Finally

we spot some rocks causing a stir as the tide

is changing—Nonations! We make land at

a nearby craggy swatch of schist with just

enough room for three people and a hole in

the rock that makes a great tie-off for

Lorenz’s boat. Green algae covers every-

thing. I can’t say I was sure what island I

was on at the time, or now, as I sift through

old maps and charts, all of which seem

futile as the waters rise.

The day reminds me of a trip I’d taken

with Lorenz to see my favorite island, one

that is nearly impossible to visit. It’s not

really called anything, because it’s not on any

modern maps, but it used to be called Oyster

Island, a sunken sliver of rock located just

southwest of the Statue of Liberty, hidden in

plain sight. These days it’s underwater

mostly, due to the lack of oysters that would

cause it to jut above the sea. But at a super-

low tide, under the auspices of a supermoon,

it can just barely be viewed by boat.

Last spring, I took the Staten Island

Ferry with Lorenz on the new-moon tide.

We didn’t know if the island would appear,

but when we went past on the ferry, we saw

it, just a ledge of rock, a ridge battling off

tide and windy surf. I started to think that

this invisible island had somehow survived

renaming—that it had survived treaties and

contracts and development deals and that

it had something to tell us about all those

things, their enduring complications. I

wanted to maybe see it again, maybe not,

but never to name it, and to appreciate the

way that sometimes it’s land, sometimes it’s

not, making it impossible to map, impos-

sible to own. ■

LONG ISLAND SOUND

meet my friend Marie Lorenz and her husband, Jeff

Williams, at Orchard Beach, a couple of miles by car

from City Island, the old boatbuilding village some-

times described as “Nantucket in the Bronx.” Lorenz

has brought a boat she built, which she calls the Tide

and Current Taxi. We are headed out to see some

Bronx islands, ones I’d previously looked at only on

a map. These are the little islands at the end of the East River

as it changes into Long Island Sound. Entering down on the

Arthur Kill, I could feel Jersey, but up here Connecticut is in

the air. The rocky coast points toward Maine.

We paddle slowly out of the lagoon
behind Orchard Beach, coming around Pel-
ham Bay Park’s northernmost corner. Our
hoped-for goal is a little island called
Nonations, an island owned, so the story
goes, by neither the Dutch nor the English.
The islands in Pelham Bay are like islands
at the end of the world, rocky, broken ledges
that seem too small for anything. Very
quickly we pass Hog Island, then head out
into Long Island Sound.
Right away we can see Hart Island, the
city’s burial ground for people who are
poor or whose bodies are unclaimed for
one reason or another. It was once a train-
ing ground for the Union Army, and after
the Civil War, it became a prisoner-of-war
camp for Confederate soldiers. The city
bought it in 1868 and began using it as a
potter’s field. These days, inmates at Rikers
are in charge of burying the dead—in
trenches, bodies stacked on bodies, as they
have been for more than a century.
The exception was for a handful of peo-
ple who died of aids during the aids crisis.
They are buried individually and apart—on
the site of an old sewage-treatment plant, a
fact discovered by Melinda Hunt, an artist
who believes the public ought to be able to
visit Hart. Trips are currently organized by
the city twice a month for family members.
The City Council is making moves to turn
the island over to the Parks Department,
which has been reluctant to manage a
cemetery.
Unintentionally, the burial practices at
Hart have made it one of the largest natural,
ecologically sustainable burial grounds in
the U.S., with some one million bodies
unembalmed in simple pine boxes, decom-
posing so that, eventually, other bodies

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