Come to your senses in the middle of Muscongus Bay

''I'm here to take pictures of flowers," announces Nancy Gill of Wisconsin, whose $1,000 fee for the week has been partially underwritten by her local garden club. Margaret Pearson, a fourth-grade science and math teacher from South Portland, wants to refresh her marine biology before heading back to the classroom in the fall. For Cecilia Rogers, who moved recently from New York to Washington, D.C., to take a position as art director for Conservation International, her motivation is simple: ''I'm looking for some peace and quiet on the coast," she acknowledges with a smile.

The island camp where all have congregated was started in 1936 by the National Audubon Society and is managed now by Maine Audubon. The 330-acre island of spruce, fir, white pine, and exquisite glades of ferns and moss is the legacy of a determined mother and daughter team. Mabel Loomis Todd and her astronomer husband , David Todd, were enjoying their traditional summer sailing trip through Muscongus Bay in 1908 when Mabel, alarmed by the lumbering on Hog Island, decided to buy it. Several years later, she had amassed nearly all of the little lots on the island, and she and her husband built a small cabin in which they spent many subsequent summers with their daughter, Millicent.

When her mother died in 1932, Millicent Todd Bingham inherited the island, including all but one outstanding lot owned by a local couple. In the depths of the Depression, the local couple told Millicent they intended to cut and sell the trees on their property. She asked them to give her time to find a way to purchase their lot.