Areas of Unrest

18 May 2000 - Island Hopping

QOTD: "Noshtalgia: yearning for the snacks of yesteryear" - Ellen Schneider

Reading: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Listening to: Kirsten Braten Berg, From Senegal to Setesdal

Work has been so exhausting lately that I've been fantasizing about retirement. Which is, realistically, a ways off, but perhaps someone will give me a winning lottery ticket. The interesting thing is that I've realized that when I think about moving somewhere independent of the need to find work, I know I'd be happiest on an island.

That shouldn't be that surprising. While I was born on the mainland, we moved when I was three. To an island (Island Park is the village, but Barnum Island is the island) off an island (Long Island), suburb to a more famous island (Manhattan). It isn't just simple coast with its limitless vistas that shaped my perspective, but being surrounded by the lack of land, knowing the waters could rise and cut us off. Even the narrow channels of Garrett's Lead and Wreck Lead are isolating. Despite causeways and bridges, island dwellers are always a people apart.

That isolation is what makes islands so important to biologists, of course. Australia, Madagascar, the Faroes - each a treasure trove of species not found elsewhere. The people are different, too. It is more of an effort to get somewhere from an island, so you have to stay away longer and learn what of home you can bring with you. Thus, the cheap guesthouses of the world are filled with Aussies clutching their clip-on stuffed koalas and little jars of vegemite. The streets of Los Angeles are not as crowded with exiles from Long Island, but we cling as firmly to our pizza and Billy Joel records and, when we find one another, we exchange nodding references to Asparagus Beach and Wise potato chips and Hurricane Donna. We all know our exits from the L.I.E. and can chant the stops on the LIRR. We don't know where we're going when we die, but we're sure we'll have to change at Jamaica.

I've traveled to a lot of islands. I can't imagine tiring of the lemon-scented air of Capri or the narrow, dusty lanes of Stone Town, Zanzibar or the astonishingly clear waters surrounding Bermuda. The footpaths of Mackinac are charming, once you get a couple of blocks from the fudge stalls and t-shirt shops at the ferry landing. Ascension Island, with its volcanic landscape and antenna farms, is like going to another planet. And then there are the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica, teaming with penguins and seals. There are sad reminders of another sort of isolation in the cells of Alcatraz, the stone quarry of Robben Island, Napoleon's gardens at Longwood House on Saint Helena.

Many years ago, I was trying to write a poem that was somewhat inspired by Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage. (Which is, incidentally, back in print and you should all go out and buy it immediately.) The book tells the story of Severin's attempt to sail from Ireland to North America in a leather boat (a curragh) in order to prove that the legend of Saint Brendan the Navigator could be based on a real voyage. The poem was a sort of song contest between a sailor and the ocean and one part of it that I got to work included the lines:

I sail for the Hebrides
I sail for the Faroes
I sail for Iceland
I sail for I sail for I sail

I mention this because Severin's book was the first time I ever heard of the Faroe Islands and I just got the brochure in the mail from Smyril Lines, which provides the passenger ferries from Norway and Denmark to the Faroes and Iceland. But that is vacation dreaming, vacation that would sound as odd to my friends as the low-budget island hopping we used to joke about - Long, Coney and Traffic. And I was really meaning to talk about places to live.

So I looked at real estate sites and I can't imagine being able to afford Shelter Island, which would be nearly ideal, tucked into Peconic Bay between the forks of Long Island and a three minute ferry ride from either side. I'm afraid to look at Block Island or Nantucket or Vinalhaven; the latter is a place I'd almost have to move to if I could afford it, for the name alone.

Since this is fantasy, why limit it to the U.S.? Perhaps I can move to Malta or Mayotte, Curacao or Christmas Island, the Bahamas or Baffin Island. Or speed over the sea to Skye - far speedier than in the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie since they've built a bridge to the mainland.

I'd better stop before somebody points out that the obvious place for someone like me is the Scilly Islands.