Treasure Island

When I was twelve, I was home schooled through a correspondence course, Calvert School. We were living in Kiribati (the Gilbert Islands) at the time, and the school I had attended the year before did not teach anything above 6th grade - and there wasn't another school appropriate for expatriates. My mom was my "teacher" and that was tough. But that's for another time.

Through Calvert School, I experienced some new things. I learned to love architecture; I even considered studying it later in college. I read some really great books. I remember The Story of a Bad Boy, Tom Sawyer, and Treasure Island.

I read Treasure Island in a treehouse I built behind our house in a tree there in Eita. The amazing thing is that this tree leaned out over the beach on the ocean side of the atoll. As one person described the location, there is a "sea wall...that drops down to the open ocean. When the tide is high, the waves pound against the sea wall. When it is low, there is a fifty-yard stretch of rock beach to where the waves break." So I read Treasure Island, a story of pirates, ships, treasure maps, and tropical islands, with the ocean waves breaking over the beach, an amazing backdrop for an amazing story. I love telling that story.