Island History

Hugh Ogden built three cabins on an island in Rangeley Lake in Maine. He would spend winter as well as summer on the island, whenever he wasn’t teaching or traveling. Construction, the machine shop, human labor as well as loons, moose, and bear provide the subjects and imagery of Hugh’s poems since he purchased the island in the 1970’s. The island provided him the solitude he required for his writing. Rangeley provided a liquid place of mountains and fierce shifts of weather and temperature, an isolation in which Hugh could hear the voices that called him to poems.

Today, the island is owned by Hugh’s three children, Cynthia, David, and Kathy. The island provides Hugh’s children and grandchildren a place of calm as a relief from their busy lives.