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On Whale Island: Notes from a Place I Never Meant to Leave
“Here is the soul of an adventurer laid bare . . . Hays is a superb comic writer, an irrepressible jokester who turns this epic camping trip into a cracked, sitcom Walden . . . Profound.” — SFGATE
After Daniel Hays and his father built a twenty-five-foot boat and sailed it around Cape Horn, he thought he'd finally put his wanderlust to rest. He went back to school, bought a house, took a job, got married.
But as it turned out, in the real world Daniel Hays felt lost. So he took his love for the sea and his need to escape civilization and pushed it he bought an island off the coast of Nova Scotia; built a tiny house; packed up his wife and stepson, two dogs, and three boatloads of supplies; and moved there.
This is the story of fulfilling a to live by your own rules and your own wits. And Daniel Hays, as readers of My Old Man and the Sea will remember, is well equipped to do both. He generates electricity from solar power and a terrifying windmill, funnels rainwater for their showers, creates a toilet seat out of a whale vertebra, strings their bed up on pulleys so that by day it can be lifted out of the way. For him, every morning is a wonder and every storm a blood-coursing thrill.
But while Daniel loves this permanent boy's life, his wife longs for the life they left behind, and his spirited stepson is feeling isolated. Soon, their Swiss Family Robinson existence becomes a vision only Daniel can see.
Funny, tender, and fascinating, filled with the details of an unconventional life, this is the story of how the Hays family lived on Whale Island, and how, finally, they had to leave.
After Daniel Hays and his father built a twenty-five-foot boat and sailed it around Cape Horn, he thought he'd finally put his wanderlust to rest. He went back to school, bought a house, took a job, got married.
But as it turned out, in the real world Daniel Hays felt lost. So he took his love for the sea and his need to escape civilization and pushed it he bought an island off the coast of Nova Scotia; built a tiny house; packed up his wife and stepson, two dogs, and three boatloads of supplies; and moved there.
This is the story of fulfilling a to live by your own rules and your own wits. And Daniel Hays, as readers of My Old Man and the Sea will remember, is well equipped to do both. He generates electricity from solar power and a terrifying windmill, funnels rainwater for their showers, creates a toilet seat out of a whale vertebra, strings their bed up on pulleys so that by day it can be lifted out of the way. For him, every morning is a wonder and every storm a blood-coursing thrill.
But while Daniel loves this permanent boy's life, his wife longs for the life they left behind, and his spirited stepson is feeling isolated. Soon, their Swiss Family Robinson existence becomes a vision only Daniel can see.
Funny, tender, and fascinating, filled with the details of an unconventional life, this is the story of how the Hays family lived on Whale Island, and how, finally, they had to leave.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
13 people are currently reading
135 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
August 17, 2018
The writing is strong - poetic at times - but the author seems like such a colossal jerk that I just couldn’t give this a five star rating.
August 20, 2012
I wanted to like this book. The idea of the author and his family moving to a relatively remote island for a year sounded intriguing. And the memoir is brutally honest about the author and his life. But I just didn't like him much and found myself mostly thinking, "Oh, grow up already. Stop whining about how you don't want to live in society, don't want to get a job, etc." I feel a little harsh for disliking this memoir for this reason, but I just didn't get it.
December 27, 2015
Hays moves his family to a secluded island in Canada in order to escape the modern world, which he feels pushes people away from what is really important: man's relationship with nature. Hays' wife and stepson accompany him to the island and together they have a modern Swiss Family Robinson type of adventure. Hays is sometimes amazingly inept, and it seems that only luck saves him from disaster. Throughout the memoir, there are small snippets of the diaries kept by Wendy (Hays' wife) and Stephan (his stepson), but the majority of the text consists of Hays' personal narrative of the year's events. As a narrator, he can be frustrating because despite the fact that he engages in a fair amount of introspection, he never seems to gain the awareness he seeks. His saving grace is his ability to see the good qualities of his wife, stepson, and neighbors and he understands that they help him successfully navigate the world despite his ongoing childishness.
June 4, 2012
I had high hopes for this, because of my cold weather island obsession. I'm discovering that people moving to an uninhabited island is not so interesting. I believe Daniel Hays believes himself to be a modern-day Thoreau, particularly since he quotes him at the beginning of almost every chapter, but while he includes supposed journal entries, they are more chronological than thoughtful. We did this, and then the dogs did this. And then there was the time this happened.
Sigh, boring. Halfway through I was already uninterested, but still finished in case something dramatic happened. Maybe if the author didn't seem to simply want to escape his life and had some other compelling motivation, this would have been more engaging. I know a lot about the minutia of their lives, rather like following someone you vaguely know in Facebook.
"Day 243 -
It has been gray and stormy all week and it's only faith that lets me know there is a sun, a moon, and a mainland nearby. The radio tells me there is a Canada - well, a Nova Scotia anyway - but overall, with the fog outside and inside our windows, the world is quite small and entertainment is scarce."
"Day 355-
...I could never listen this completely before. I have stood in our harbor and heard water being dragged through seaweed, a jellyfish turned over, a ripple being reflected off a rock. Just for these new sounds in my life I want to stay here forever."
Sigh, boring. Halfway through I was already uninterested, but still finished in case something dramatic happened. Maybe if the author didn't seem to simply want to escape his life and had some other compelling motivation, this would have been more engaging. I know a lot about the minutia of their lives, rather like following someone you vaguely know in Facebook.
"Day 243 -
It has been gray and stormy all week and it's only faith that lets me know there is a sun, a moon, and a mainland nearby. The radio tells me there is a Canada - well, a Nova Scotia anyway - but overall, with the fog outside and inside our windows, the world is quite small and entertainment is scarce."
"Day 355-
...I could never listen this completely before. I have stood in our harbor and heard water being dragged through seaweed, a jellyfish turned over, a ripple being reflected off a rock. Just for these new sounds in my life I want to stay here forever."
July 27, 2018
Pretty good. I certainly agree with checking out and doing what's good for you because the reality is "running around after little pieces of green paper" is a waste of time. Do you know anyone who is really successful but doesn't have a moment to spare for their family or friends ? I do and despite all they have I don't envy them in the least.
I really admired Stephen and his reading list. I hadn't read many of those books until I was in my 30's and 40's and I am envious of someone who did si when they were yet 14.
That was another thing I would like to know more about since it is so many years after...how is Stephen? He had that great time on the island, went back to mainstream dumb America and plugged in to the stupid computer TV life.
Wendy irritated me . I got the feeling that she did not grow into the experience but rather was always in turmoil with it. Her desire to garage sale and drink lattes and soak in baths were always going to hold her back from making the journey. And since a year was put as the amount of time there was always a countdown to the end with her and I think that was disruptive.
I really admired Stephen and his reading list. I hadn't read many of those books until I was in my 30's and 40's and I am envious of someone who did si when they were yet 14.
That was another thing I would like to know more about since it is so many years after...how is Stephen? He had that great time on the island, went back to mainstream dumb America and plugged in to the stupid computer TV life.
Wendy irritated me . I got the feeling that she did not grow into the experience but rather was always in turmoil with it. Her desire to garage sale and drink lattes and soak in baths were always going to hold her back from making the journey. And since a year was put as the amount of time there was always a countdown to the end with her and I think that was disruptive.
December 9, 2008
The guy’s got issues, not the least example of which is that he hauls his new wife and 11-year-old stepson to the remote Nova Scotian island he owns, where they live in a shack for a year. No electricity, no refrigerator, heated by a wood-burning stove (they chopped the wood), and a 7-mile boat ride to shore. But it was engaging to think about being that self-sufficient, exchanging TV for books, living in touch with the cycles of nature. An interesting adventure.
June 12, 2009
What happens to all those ADHD kids in school? They marry incredibly understanding women and buy their own island. They spend a year on an island with no running water, electricity, or anything that they don't manufacture themselves. I couldn't, wouldn't, or enable this.
October 13, 2010
The author of this book is kind-of nuts. Well, he is nuts, but he is a great writer. It definitely made me think about whether or not I could live in those conditions (and stay married!) for a year. Quick read.
September 27, 2017
It wasn't fantastic and at times I felt that he was perhaps the ugly step-parent he feared he was, but it kept me interested enough to read quickly.
June 11, 2016
I liked it, daring change of lifestyle for one year and maybe worth then time spent.
January 21, 2021
Many people dream of running away to an island, but Hays actually did: wife and stepson in tow, he retreated for a year to a chilly Atlantic ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia.
I might have done better not to read reviews before the book, because I went in a bit wary, and that coloured my experience of reading. The thing is: Hays doesn't make himself particularly likeable throughout. On some level I'm on board with this—memoir authors who are willing to introspect are far more interesting than authors who aren't—but I think he 1) gave us too many of his rough edges up front and 2) didn't put any effort into sanding out those edges. This seems to be a fleshed-out diary (with occasional entries from Wendy and Stephen, his wife and stepson), and although a lot of the same themes come up throughout, Hays doesn't necessarily come back to his rougher moments to show character growth: there's a moment when he questions whether biology supports parental love for stepchildren (87), and although he gradually comes to appreciate Stephen more throughout the book (and to stop making a distinction between stepson and son), he never comes back to it directly, and it's hard not to see that, and the publication date, and think gad, this kid was only a young teenager when this book came out. Not a fun thing for a young teen to read, you know?
The experience was Hays' dream (he clearly would have preferred to stay on the island forever), but not his wife's, although she seems to have been game enough. But sometimes...oof. Might be played up for 'humour' (side note: if I ever forget that I generally avoid male adventure-memoirs because they'll be so full of farts, pee, shit, etc., all I need to do is read a book like this to remember), but there's this sense that Wendy wanted the adventure to involve a comfortable home and Hays wanted the adventure to involve being as caveman as possible, including refusing to sweep post-meal crumbs anywhere more fitting than the floor. I have no idea how their lives have been in the past twenty-odd years, but by the end of the book I wasn't placing high odds on them still being together.
The other thing: for all that this is a book about living in a small house on a small island, I really didn't get a sense of either house or island. Oh, I got a sense for how many cracks were in the walls and leaks in the roof, but not for anything like house layout (we learn that the ground floor is 14x16 and the upper floor a bit larger; that the ground floor contains Stephen's bed—or possibly room, not clear—the stove, and perhaps(?) storage(?); that the upper floor is bedroom-living room-kitchen...and that's about it) or island layout (there are rocks, there is forest, there are coves, there is a path that goes...somewhere).
I might have done better not to read reviews before the book, because I went in a bit wary, and that coloured my experience of reading. The thing is: Hays doesn't make himself particularly likeable throughout. On some level I'm on board with this—memoir authors who are willing to introspect are far more interesting than authors who aren't—but I think he 1) gave us too many of his rough edges up front and 2) didn't put any effort into sanding out those edges. This seems to be a fleshed-out diary (with occasional entries from Wendy and Stephen, his wife and stepson), and although a lot of the same themes come up throughout, Hays doesn't necessarily come back to his rougher moments to show character growth: there's a moment when he questions whether biology supports parental love for stepchildren (87), and although he gradually comes to appreciate Stephen more throughout the book (and to stop making a distinction between stepson and son), he never comes back to it directly, and it's hard not to see that, and the publication date, and think gad, this kid was only a young teenager when this book came out. Not a fun thing for a young teen to read, you know?
The experience was Hays' dream (he clearly would have preferred to stay on the island forever), but not his wife's, although she seems to have been game enough. But sometimes...oof. Might be played up for 'humour' (side note: if I ever forget that I generally avoid male adventure-memoirs because they'll be so full of farts, pee, shit, etc., all I need to do is read a book like this to remember), but there's this sense that Wendy wanted the adventure to involve a comfortable home and Hays wanted the adventure to involve being as caveman as possible, including refusing to sweep post-meal crumbs anywhere more fitting than the floor. I have no idea how their lives have been in the past twenty-odd years, but by the end of the book I wasn't placing high odds on them still being together.
The other thing: for all that this is a book about living in a small house on a small island, I really didn't get a sense of either house or island. Oh, I got a sense for how many cracks were in the walls and leaks in the roof, but not for anything like house layout (we learn that the ground floor is 14x16 and the upper floor a bit larger; that the ground floor contains Stephen's bed—or possibly room, not clear—the stove, and perhaps(?) storage(?); that the upper floor is bedroom-living room-kitchen...and that's about it) or island layout (there are rocks, there is forest, there are coves, there is a path that goes...somewhere).
November 11, 2019
Just the kind of book that I love-and I could have loved this one because it had great potential-great subject-moving to a remote,uninhabited Nova Scotia island...living off the land, a bit of a love story, the decision to stay or make a go of it-but way too much narrasisstic, juvenile crap. Basically just a jerk, who drank too much, expected too much and treated his wife and step son horribly-who happens to be a very talented writer. Way too much details about his relationship with his step son-I actually was beginning to re-live the trauma of our own step families and maybe that is partly what turned me off this book. But really-he was not a very nice person and did not take advantage of this amazing opportunity. I realize that he had some underlying mental health struggles but this book was not the place to focus on that-that could have made a completely different book and if I had read it like that going in that might have been just fine-but this was portrayed as a get back to the land and find your soul kind of book. There was no soul in this book and nothing really learned about this beautiful province of Nova Scotia. I do hope that he and his family have found a place to live happily and healthily together. I did try to google where he might be now but no luck.
November 1, 2021
I found myself kind of fluctuating between 2 to 3 stars with this there are times I didn’t like the main character and he kind a got on here my skin he got a little bit better towards the end of the book though there are times I just wanted to roll my eyes and tell him to grow up all in all this is a fast read more kind of like a lazy afternoon with a cuppa coffee read I wouldn’t go out on a limb and really recommend this one.
February 28, 2022
This was an interesting personal memoir. Author, with his wife, 11-year-old stepson, and two dogs, spent a year living on his personally-owned island off Nova Scotia. I would have enjoyed seeing a section of the book with photographs. Most of the narrative is diary notes of author himself, and there are occasional entries by wife and stepson as well.
July 12, 2020
It's an cute story of staying independent in a remote islands with your family. The interesting part is about to be survive, good planer, dramatic thought that the writer explaining how he feel, about his wife and son.
January 5, 2017
I really enjoyed this book. I didn't want it to end. The author lays out his family's tale in a very conversational style, making it easy to access their experiences.
December 31, 2018
I loved this book! One of the few that I know will read again; along with the author's other book.
January 8, 2023
A decent read.
October 24, 2009
The author of “My Old Man and the Sea” (an account of a sailing trip around the world with his father) now writes about the year that he, his wife, and 11-year-old stepson spent on a remote island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Hays had bought the island some years before, and he and his father had built a house there. The new family drives from Idaho to Nova Scotia, and it takes three boatloads for them to carry everything they need from the mainland to the island. This includes everyday needs such as food, clothing, etc, as well as books, music, and home schooling supplies for Stephan, and all kinds of tools and generators. I especially liked the family relationships, as Daniel and his stepson Stephan grew closer. Wendy got pretty tired of life on the island as their year neared its end, but Daniel and Stephan could have stayed much longer.
August 3, 2015
I really enjoyed this account of a normal family who, needing a break, decide to live alone on a small island in Nova Scotia for a year. There isn't anything romantic about this book. The author discusses everything he does wrong. He recounts the problems that develop from being cramped together far from others, his wife's longing for other human company, the trials and successes of home schooling, even his own struggle with manic depression. There is nothing heavy or incredibly beautiful about the account and you may not like the author, whose antisocial behavior can be a little bizarre, but the fact is that they experimented, succeeded and had a great time doing it. One of my own fantasies is to live on an island--maybe not one quite as remote as this one--where I don't need so much to survive. This book showed me that normal troubled people can do it and I enjoyed the experience.
April 11, 2009
This is the best book I have read this year! While I was reading this book I kept thinking about one of my favorite childrens books called "Do you dare?" a berenstain bear book. This is the journal of a man who bought an island off the coast of Nova Scotia and moved his wife and stepson from Idaho to the island for a year. All you married couples out there would you dare? How about all of you who have interactions with pre-teen children, would you dare? I found myself laughing out loud with this book.
P.S. Dawn I'm not sure how you will feel about some of the stories about their hunting and fishing expeditions. Also their 2 dogs often ate the wildlife.
P.S. Dawn I'm not sure how you will feel about some of the stories about their hunting and fishing expeditions. Also their 2 dogs often ate the wildlife.
May 2, 2014
I was disappointed in this book. I thought the idea of living alone on an island with the family for a year in a small house that Hays built would be pretty exciting. But he was going to town frequently for supplies or to go hang out with friends,etc., just took away from it. A good percentage of the writing was his inner thoughts and diary about what was going on with his feelings. Sure, there were some funny moments, but I was looking for more action here. Hays came across as kind of selfish to me. There were only a handful of snippets from the son and even less from the wife. I only finished it because I was determined to in case anything improved, which it didn't. Sorry.
May 21, 2009
I got lucky with this one. I picked it up at some old bookstore randomly because of the title, and it turned out to be a great read. Written entirely in journal entries of the author and a few by his wife and step-son, it follows the family's adventures living on a remote island off Nova Scotia for a year. The situations they find themselves in are hilarious, the scenery gorgeous, and the book entertaining but down to earth. I'd recommend it to anyone who has ever wanted to escape society for a while.
August 7, 2010
Listened to this on unabridged audio cassette. The trouble with listening while driving is it's impossible to jot down all the interesting quotations and observations that I'd like to preserve and it's too much trouble to rewind later to find them. I loved some of his philosophy such as needing to be away from people occasionally to recharge and regain his sanity. Loved this story of uprooting his family and making a home on an isolated little island without any amenities. Some humor and lots to ponder about life, etc.
March 20, 2016
I liked this story about a man and a new wife who brought along a son to spend a year on an island off the coast of eastern Canada. I generally enjoy these books about the sea and living in seclusion and this one was on par with others I've read in this genre. The other is not always very likeable and doesn't seem suited to his chosen partner but the story really revolves around the connection he makes with his new stepson.
May 20, 2008
Living on your own private island....sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Add your new spouse for companionship. Still good. And don't forget your 11 year old stepson.
Daniel Hays lived on Whale Island for a year, alone but for his family, occasional visitors and trips to the mainland. Sometimes humorous, seemingly honest, this year went fast for Daniel -- and also for me.
Daniel Hays lived on Whale Island for a year, alone but for his family, occasional visitors and trips to the mainland. Sometimes humorous, seemingly honest, this year went fast for Daniel -- and also for me.
January 11, 2013
I listened to this CD. The reader sounded spookily like a man I know who makes similar puerile comments. I liked the survival aspects of the book and the creativity and ingenuity required to live for a year on a remote island. I guess father and son both grew in this year, but I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say "matured".
May 18, 2017
An unusual diary-like chronicle of his family's year on an isolated Nova Scotia island. Yielded some interesting quotes such as: "TV is a clump of perverted perceptions, and most of us arrange our living rooms around it, and worship it." -page 34. Authentic, sometimes weird, but it held my interest.
September 21, 2013
A very fun read. It's a true story about a family who spends a year on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia. It counts through the days and tells about all the antics and adventures that they experience...a man with his wife, a 12-year-old stepson, and their two dogs. I hated to see it end. I like it enough to order another book written by the author and his father.
November 11, 2015
I listened to it on tape driving from Mass. to DC. I enjoyed hearing his account of a year on a desolate island with his wife and son. It certainly reinforced how strong the human spirit can be when forced with privation and need to survive (even though they were just a boat trip away from civilization). A good story.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews