If you assume a satellite perspective, you look down upon the earth and view an ocean world in which float islands—be they atolls, nations, or continents. If you now descend and join those island communities, you will discover people whose lives are defined by different limits, different needs, different utilities. Islanders are by definition more relint on things to hand: water locally drawn, food locally raised or harvested from the sea, local skills required to make and fix things for themselves. They are more or less connected to a mainland that may provide fuel, additional supplies, even law enforcement, doctors, and priests, but they know that fog or storm may cancel that connection at any moment and they will be required to fend for themselves. I have no interest in romanticizing island life; it is hard, challenging, often lonely, not always united in politics and beliefs, and forever formed by natural forces that are omnipresent in changing weather and wave.
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Brian Kelly says:
This is my favorite article on this website. Love it
Ginny Jones says:
I keep coming back to this because it articulates an island way of life that I — an islander — have tried to explain for years. It says it all and says it beautifully. It may help me maintain my sanity during the coming summer and until Labor Day sets us free for another 9 months. It is Memorial Day and the private jets are zooming in to pluck off the very rich and very famous after their weekend here. Alas they haven’t a clue about why this is a special place, and they — like so many of their brethren who are less wealthy and have to travel by BMW or even a Toyota — don’t even realize that they don’t have a clue. Nor would they care if they did. For them this island is just one of the 100 A list places that you must visit before you die. Sorry to sound so cynical but four times in three days I have been almost run off the road or passed in very foolish places (blind corner, blind hills) by crazy drivers. It isn’t that I poke along either; it is that those very important people have to be the best, the fastest, the first, while going for the glitz. They are the folks who are here for the weekend because they might be able to rub elbows with Carly Simon or Larry David, or visit John Belushi’s grave. They are used to life in America where you have to always be on top, and in control. THey are the folks who are so geared into modern high tech gadgets that rather than truly looking at beautiful scenery they are googling it on their IPhone. BAH HUMBUG! More people should be thinking about what Peter Neill wrote and applying his words to life, and to all places whether on a finite island, or our island earth.
Deborah Brewster says:
My inner-islander says right on, Peter. It’s about living life on a human scale, something our modern world makes difficult, but island-living necessitates. Those tiny islands off the Maine coast beckon….. not so much for retreating but for the micro-worlds they offer. Thank you for your thoughts.
Larry Cheek says:
Excellent observations. A few years ago I was interviewing residents of Washington’s San Juan Islands for a magazine story. One of them, a sculptor, told me that many of the visitors who came to his sculpture garden and bought a piece were first-time art buyers. The island was opening their eyes to new experiences; the tether to their mainland inhibitions had temporarily slipped.
I now live on an island myself, and I recently started a multi-year project to build a house full of new furniture. After a little contemplation, I decided that each piece would be a unique composition; there would be no consistency of style or wood species. I was no longer concerned with what people would think of it, or cared about observing standard interior design principles. I just wanted to experiment with the possibilities of wood and form.
It’s been wonderfully liberating; wish I’d moved to an island decades earlier.
Peter Neill says:
Larry, post some pix! Love to see through island hand and eye.
Alan Peck says:
Thought provoking! Thanks