Brett Martin

He circumnavigated the island looking for supplies.

He found a stick and a piece of red cloth and made a flag to signal passing ships.

Then he found several big pieces of styrofoam and some wood and spent an hour or two fashioning a raft, but it collapsed when he sat down on it.

Undeterred, he went back to searching for something that would be his ticket off the island.

And then he found it.

It was the hollowed-out carcass of a jet ski, or as he calls it, a scooter.

Now there was really no way off the island, even by swimming, because, well, you know, sharks.

It was a galling situation, and it was made even more maddening because the city was right there.

Were you hungry at this point also?

I can't, I don't... Like, you could just go over and pick up a duck?

Like, how did you catch a duck?

It turns out that the island where Alex was stranded is called Ruffle Bar, and it lies only a 20-minute boat ride away from the coast of Brooklyn.

Far from being traumatized or ashamed of his exploits, Alex wanted nothing more than to go back out there.

And from the vantage of my overpriced, undersized apartment, I wanted to see a place where you could be totally alone in the wilderness, smelling your own death in the air, while in at least theoretical commuting distance to midtown Manhattan.

So we hired a boat to take us to Ruffle Bar.

In truth, I wasn't as completely surprised as some might be to learn that such a place exists.

I grew up near the islands of Jamaica Bay, in a neighborhood called Canarsie.

And when I was little, my friends and I would cut through the empty lots near my house to explore the mix of trash and nature on the shoreline.

It was a place totally apart from the rest of my mostly urban childhood, a secret place that my friends who lived even 10 or 15 blocks away were unaware existed.

But then, the smaller islands around New York have always occupied a weird place on the edge of the city.