being there
by katharine mieszkowski

Lonely islands

BOUND AND GAGGED , the fish warden hero of Jack London's "Tales of the Fish Patrol" arrives on the Marin Islands, just off the coast of San Rafael, as the unhappy cargo of a Chinese ship. He's trapped on the "lonely" islands, the prisoner of some shrimp poachers he'd been trying to arrest.

He spends a night crouching in the frigid mud just offshore, playing hide-and-seek with his captors. When the tide finally forces him back onto the beach, he emerges a freezing mess: "My clammy, muddy garments clung to me like sheets of ice," he whimpers. "I repeatedly beat my hands upon the rocks to get some sort of life into them. Sometimes I felt sure I was going to die."

Moral: On the Marin Islands, if the shrimp poachers don't kill you, the bay will.

Cheating death is unlikely to be the highlight of your visit to the Marin Islands, but helping the local ecosystem to survive could be.

Today the lonely islands are part of the 320-acre Marin Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which includes two small isles and the submerged tidelands surrounding them. They belong to the public but are strictly off-limits for recreational use. The only way you can see these lovely stretches of wildlife up close is in a kayak.

The good news is that the trip is legal, fun, and benefits the environment. With the blessing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, local nonprofit Save the Bay leads monthly educational restoration trips to the islands via two-seater kayak that cost $55 and include an hour of weeding on this piece of very exclusive wilderness. Save the Bay provides the kayaks, paddles, trowels, and gardening gloves; you bring your own sack lunch, bottled water, and extra water-resistant layers.

As our gaggle of paddlers geared up on a foggy Saturday morning at the San Rafael marina, I poked my head into the nearby Loch Lomond Live Bait Shop, where photos of the management's favorite local wild birds adorn the wall, each with a pet name – Willie, the snowy egret, Great Ernie, a great egret, and Gizmo and Rookie, two black-crowned night herons. Wee Willie and his brethren likely hail from West Marin Island, which is less than a mile offshore and supports one of the largest rookeries of egrets and herons in the West.

Back at the marina, we got the requisite novice's lesson in bay paddling and safety. Most important lesson: there's really no need to panic if you fall in, since most of the water is only four to six feet deep. Then we splashed out on San Pablo Bay, turning our backs to the shoreline tract housing built on landfill, and headed toward the two wild islands.

Jutting 85 rocky feet into the air, without an inviting beach, West Marin Island doesn't favor human visitation, much less habitation. That's one reason it's still crowned with the low-lying, native coyote bush and the buckeye trees where egrets and herons build their enormous nests.

A junior osprey was getting a basic fishing lesson from two adults when we landed on the rocky beach of the flatter, larger East Marin Island. On the hillside above our landing spot, a squat, abandoned building peered out from the eucalyptus and Monterey pines.

East Marin Island was a private vacation island for the Crowley family, who started what's now the Red and White Fleet. The island still contains the evocative ruins of their getaway: a toolshed, a main house, a guesthouse. We picked our way up a path overgrown by poison oak to the top of the hillside, where we ate lunch and peeked into the decaying buildings. There's a garden hose still hanging at the ready and a dilapidated wooden bench that's being reclaimed by the land. The kitchen door stood open, revealing a refrigerator, a large pot left on the counter, and an overstuffed bucket of trash ready to be taken out – but to where?

After lunch we got a brisk ecology lesson. The native habitat on East Marin Island has been radically altered by the nonnative plants and trees that humans brought here with them: fennel, Scotch broom, eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and even the stray garden geranium. Who needs pirates? Ordinary gardeners are more than trouble enough.

Over on West Marin Island, the habitat is more or less natural, except for a few traces of nonnative grasses. You don't have to be an ecologist to figure out why the smaller, rockier island is a Wee Willie nesting paradise, while the one that's been altered, then allowed to go to invasive seed, is not.

That was all the encouragement we needed to spend a vigorous hour struggling to unearth tenacious fennel, some of which stands taller than six feet. Then we paddled away from the two wild islands, against a brisk wind, braving actual waves, which was more than enough adventure for this weed patroller.

The next Save the Bay restoration trips to the Marin Islands are Sept. 13 and Oct. 25. Go to www.savesfbay.org/discover.html to join the patrol.

Katharine Mieszkowski is a Bay Area writer.