I found the island maybe six or seven years ago. Or maybe it found me, I'm not sure. I discovered it while camping one weekend. I headed to the big lake outside town and had just started to set up the tent on the shore when I saw it. This might be interesting, I thought, so I put my supplies in a rented boat and rowed over. It's not a very big island: I could walk around the entire thing in well under half an hour. There's a small rise in the middle, with a copse of trees. I made a small fire on the tiny beach. It was so peaceful and quiet, and I slept that night like I hadnt slept in a very long time. I woke rested and surprisingly focused, and I drove home with a new sense of mission in my life. But mission statements are frail at the best of times, and it wasnt long before I found myself returning to what I now considered my island. The first time, I brought supplies for a long weekend and spent three delicious days in happy solitude. The next, it was three weeks. Before long, I'd decided to buy the island. The county records office had no file on any island in the middle of that lake, so we wrote it off as a cartographer's error. I registered a claim, a deed was prepared, and now the island... was mine. I built a small house and a deck. I cleared a small area behind for a garden. And when I was finished with all of it, I quit my job and moved there permanently. For the first few months, I was deliriously happy. I loved my island. It fulfilled my every need and met my every want... save one. I suppose it was the sound of other campers on the other shore, but I discovered I actually missed... people. Somewhat shocked at this moment of self-realization, I decided a day trip to the city was in order. The following morning, I noticed my rowboat was a feet lower on the wharf. I shrugged it off as the water level dropping: we'd not seen much rain. As I drove the truck into town, all the things I hated about city life — noise, traffic, pollution — were still there... but there were also... people. On impulse, I struck up a conversation with a complete stranger; by the end of the night, I was pocketing his phone number. I returned to my beloved island a torn man. The next morning, I decided to call him... which meant another trip across. But the rowboat was now even lower in the water, so much so that I only barely got into it without losing my balance. As I rowed away, I looked at how much of the island's base was now visible — and yet, the water level all around appeared the same as it'd always been. On shore, I phoned him, and we made plans to get together for dinner that night. I returned to the island almost giddy with excitement. I took a short nap and woke sensing something... different. The air? The light? Something. I opened the drapes and looked at the far shore. It seemed... changed somehow. Maybe it was a trick of the afternoon sunlight, but it looked... lower. Curious, I went downstairs, opened the front door... and suddenly realized the island was now fifty feet over the water. I edged my way out onto the wharf and looked under: the island stretched into a long, tall, thin column of rock that disappeared into the lake. I carefully backed onto the grass, afraid now to even stand. Then, with a lurch, I was thrown to the ground as the island suddenly rose. It was now... two hundred, maybe three hundred feet in the air. The rocky tether was gone. We simply floated. I knew that if I dove off to swim to safety, the fall would kill me. And even as I thought my escape, the island bolted once more, taking me higher and higher and... It's been... six months? A year? The island stopped rising, about four hundred feet up. Never moving, it just floats over the lake. Planes and helicopters fly by. I shout and wave my arms, but none appear to see me. The island continues to meet my every need: food, water, even warmth. It even somehow shelters me from the elements: it never rains or snows here... ... unless I ask it to, and then it's a gentle rain. Or a light snow.