Chances are good or fair or at least better than minuscule that at some point in your long and illustrious life you’ve found yourself on an island. Islands are everywhere in the vast waters that cover this world, and it is entirely possible that you’re on an island right now, as you read this. That may or may not make you more qualified than the rest of us to address the salient issue of the day, which is:
How to take the measure of an island, when all is said and done?
Islands come in all shapes and sizes, defined as bodies of land surrounded by water. But as with all things in life it’s never quite that simple, especially when it comes to Australia, which the powers-that-be tell us is a continent and not an island, despite what a quick glance at the globe might suggest. If you are curious about who these powers-that-be happen to be, or how they justify their claims about Australia missing the cut when it comes to counting islands, you’re on your own, but rest assured that when it comes to island-type places, Australia is very very special.
If it were a bona fide island, it would be by far the largest, at 2.9 million square miles, give or take a few. As things stand, Greenland happens to get the prize for island enormity, at 822,700, and it’s a long way down to second place New Guinea, at 303,381. If you’re a fan of numbers and ranking, Great Britain stands ninth at 80,827, Cuba at 40,852 is half that size at 17th, with Iceland (39,315) a close 18th, and looking down the list to a few more which you might find familiar, there’s the island of Taiwan at #39 with 13,323 and Vancouver 43rd, offering 12,079 square miles of mostly rocks and conifers, looming out of the Pacific. Looking at the entire list reveals a great many islands of grand proportions whose names are probably obscure to most casual geographers, many of which are to be found in Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as the polar regions.
On the other hand, there are famous islands like Gilligan’s, Treasure, Fantasy, Amity, and the Island of Doctor Moreau, which never even existed, except in the human imagination. There is a wonderfully preposterous sci-fi film from 1955, This Island Earth, whose very title is total nonsense when one considers even Australia doesn’t really qualify for the term, but of course the filmmakers could not care less about such an objection. As artists (so to speak) their realm is the poetic and conceptual, and one could make a case for the title being the film’s major claim to fame. Is our lovely planet not, indeed, a life-supporting remote oasis of water, rock, and dirt, floating in the vast ocean of the cosmos?
The operative word, here, is remote. Islands are, by some measure, a world apart from what we call the mainland, to a greater or lesser degree. Remote, in this context, is an extremely relative term. For larger islands blessed and/or cursed with all the blessings and curses of mainland civilization, the term can be relatively meaningless, other than the fact that one cannot get there from the nearest mainland without employing a boat, or in modern times an airplane. The people of Great Britain consider themselves an “island nation,” a place apart from the mainland of continental Europe, the significance of which has varied greatly throughout history (here’s looking at you, Brexit). The islands of Indonesia and Hispaniola contain two different nations, Borneo three, so one can only wonder about how the inhabitants of these places might consider themselves “islanders” and if in any way they’d see their location on the planet as “remote.”
On the other hand, isn’t the very essence of remote to be found in that classic cartoon theme of the desert island, with its single palm tree and stranded inhabitant, usually alone and desperate, but more often than not accompanied by another, to whom they can deliver the punch line? Being lost and forgotten and a long way from civilization in this case is just one big joke, or rather an endless stream of jokes that started back in the early days of newsprint and now looks like it will go on forever, or at least until no cartoonists are left standing.
The literary equivalent of this, and no joke at all, is Robinson Crusoe, where the castaway from civilization must survive by way of his inventiveness on the tropical island paradise-of-sorts he has all to himself, or in R.C.’s case, until he discovers he doesn’t. Daniel Defoe couldn’t have imagined all the spinoffs that his clever and original tale was to spawn, starting a century later with the Swiss Family Robinson by Johan Wyss, and after that Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island. Some modern spinoffs of this timeless island scenario have already been mentioned, though we should also not forget Lord of the Flies and the ultimate modern tribute to this grand tradition, the original reality show Survivor. And who can forget Tom Hanks at his most poignant, in Cast Away? As with the cartoons, will this story never end?
What will surely never end is the allure and romance of the island experience. On the one hand there is the adventure-rich remoteness of the desperate castaway longing for civilization, and in the current day the much tamer and far more subtle remoteness of “island living,” whereby one gets a version that includes the amenities of civilization with some number of the undesirable bits edited out. One can also pay a hefty premium for this more or less privileged lifestyle. As it is with the cartoon and Crusoe themes, the variations are also endless.
Those of fabulous means have long indulged in purchasing islands to have all to themselves, which provide seclusion and privacy at a level that cannot be matched by locations shared with the riffraff of our species. From capitalists of the billionaire class to pop culture icons to Russian oligarchs and other James Bond villain types, nothing beats your own private bit of land where all boundaries end at the water.
If your own high roller status lies a few notches below the top level, there’s the short list of private island resorts where you can at least pretend for a week or a month, places like Kokomo in Fiji or The Brando in Tahiti, Jumby Bay in Antigua and of course Guana Island in the British Virgin Islands, so comfortable in their posh status that they don’t even care about all the peasants tempted to make crude scatological jokes about the name, at their expense.
What’s that? You say this is all a tad too exotic, a bit outside your wheelhouse? If that’s the case you might try watching the first season of White Lotus or the Bond movie Skyfall to familiarize yourself by way of pop culture, as so many millions have done already. Better yet, let us bring this conversation down a whole bunch of notches and take the measure of some places more familiar to riffraff like ourselves. If you happen to be a billionaire capitalist or a pop icon hiding away on your private island at this moment, you might consider reading no further. If you’re a Bond villain or Russian oligarch, you might go take a careful look at your bank of security cameras, to make sure no surprises are arriving by way of a submarine or airborne commando division.
Our fair state of Massachusetts offers two excellent examples of islands for further study, neither of them of the desert variety and certainly not at all tropical this far north of the equator. They are accessible to the public, though this can take a bit of doing, which means they are each remote in their way. Both are relatively well known, as one was actually featured in Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick, and in modern times US presidents and various celebrities have made a point of showing up in their towns and villages, a few even owning residences at times. Most important of all, this writer has spent time on each, at various seasons, and nothing beats firsthand experience. His level of celebrity is a matter of opinion, but let’s just say he’s famous in his own mind, as are you in yours.
If you haven’t guessed by now, the islands in question are Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, both of which lie off the southern coast of Cape Cod. As the tourist bureaus and the MA vanity license plate choose to group them, we’re talking Cape Cod and the Islands, like they’re all just one wonderful seaside getaway, chock full of lovely sand beaches and clam and lobster shacks and quaint architecture and lodging to suit all tastes and pocketbooks.
So, does a cape even halfway qualify in this discussion of islands? “Capes” are certainly water related, but the sharp-eyed skeptic can first legitimately question why a cape is not just a peninsula by another name. A search for an authoritative answer yields the same unsatisfactory and vague results as the continent/island distinction that arose regarding Australia. As far as this writer could ascertain, the term “cape” tends to get assigned to peninsulas that are 1) quirky or singular in shape and readily identified by sailors for navigation purposes and 2) and/or of particular geographic and historical importance, by far the most important of these being Capes Horn and of Good Hope. To refer to the Peninsula of Horn and Peninsula of Good Hope totally lacks cachet and any sense of romance, and history books would suffer if such were the case, don’t you think?
Cape Cod is but one of the more notable capes in the US, other examples of which are Cape May in New Jersey and Capes Hatteras and Fear in North Carolina. Special mention should be made of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, featuring Breton in a dual and very confusing role, and if this troubles you, you might ask the next Canadian you run into what the hell’s going on here, though you may have to cross the border to find one at this point in history. All these capes are notable for having a brand that cashes in on their special seaside qualities when compared to the beach communities that line the coast nearby. They are, the travel brochures claim, places of particular pristine natural beauty, at least in part, with the implication that they possess some extra level of remoteness. As in, they’re almost islands, when it comes down to it.
(By the way, if you’ve never seen the movie Cape Fear, watch it soon, or right now, and make sure it’s the 1962 original with Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, in black and white with a terrific orchestral score. If you’ve the passion and lots of time, follow that up with the Scorsese remake starring Robert De Niro, but if you can’t be bothered, rest assured it’s the inferior version)
One special distinction of Cape Cod’s is that song. You know the one, from 1954, that was a major hit for Patti Paige, who’d never been there but loved the lyrics. Old Cape Cod offers the whole peaceful ocean retreat package, sand dunes and salty air…quaint little villages…lobster stew…the moonlight on Cape Cod bay. So peaceful, so lovely and far from the madding crowd, so remote, so island-like. As for the alluring ambience of the place, these lyrics probably nailed it, back in 1954 when it was a long drive from Boston, back when the locals fished and farmed and the wealthy already had their beachfront mansions and estates. Joe Kennedy senior, for example, had established the family compound in Hyannis Port way back in 1928. There was a modest tourist industry in the summer, and those few among the working classes who’d savored Cape Cod’s offerings and could afford it had their own summer places, most of them little more than shacks that they closed up for the colder months.
Then came the coming of the roads, as the great Billy Edd Wheeler song goes, first the route 6 expressway running down the middle of the peninsula to Orleans, as well as a similar grand enhancement of route 3 down from Boston. A little later, the magnificent Interstate System brought routes 495 and 195. The result, as one would expect, was people and traffic, then more people and traffic and vacationers and second-home buyers, many of whom tore down the shacks or winterized them so they could live there full time, now able to commute to jobs in Boston and Providence.
The sand dunes and the seafood and the quaintness have endured to a degree, helped by strong preservation efforts to save some of the natural beauty, but 1954 was a long, long time ago, and it shows. The traffic jams on routes 3 and 6 in summer are legendary, and the madding crowds have transformed the place, as you might expect.
Which brings us to the islands, Nantucket and “the Vineyard,” as locals say it. One is smaller than the other, one is an easier day trip, especially if you want to take your car, one is exclusive and one is very exclusive to the point where its airport is the second busiest commercial airport in Massachusetts, much of its traffic people flying in and out on their private jets all summer. Neither is the subject of a famous song, but the irony is that island exclusiveness ensures that both hew closer to the glories Patti Paige sang about than their peninsular mainland neighbor. Fame and popularity are, however, rarely a good thing and the islands differ from the mainland experience only by degree, with crowds and traffic jams now a part of island living as well, at least in the summer.
Nonetheless, the islands might still be described as Cape Cod without the riffraff, lacking the Cape’s issues with drugs and poverty, especially in places like Hyannis. The islands have also been spared the Cape’s well publicized problems with the water supply, at least for now, that have resulted from the exploding population and things like excess nitrogen levels leaching from aging septic systems as well as runoff from lawns and golf courses, not to mention contamination from a military base. By the way, Nantucket has three golf courses, Martha’s Vineyard five, if you’re keeping track, another indicator of how far they’ve come from whatever sense of remoteness they may have once possessed.
Let it be stressed that a wonderful time can be had at any of these places, and for generations of Bostonians, going to the Cape or to the islands has long been an obsession. People’s tolerance for the monumental traffic jams speaks volumes about the appeal. So is there any hope for finding some semblance of island experience that at least hints at remoteness, of meaningful release from civilization in the present day, that doesn’t require that one be from the upper crust or a Bond villain, that doesn’t require traveling halfway around the world, if one happens to be a New Englander?
New England just so happens to have a destination that fills the bill in many respects. As it is with so many special out-of-the way and sometimes remote places we have come to know over the years, our original intent in going there was literally for the birds, until it wasn’t. Monhegan Island, a land mass about a mile long and a bit less than that distance in width, sits twelve miles off the coast of central Maine, just south of Penobscot Bay and about an hour’s ferry ride from Port Clyde. It was likely first settled by Abenakis, was visited by Samuel de Champlain in 1604 and John Smith, he of Jamestown fame, in 1614. It was a refuge for British settlers fleeing the native uprising that was King Philip’s War in 1675, and was a known haven for pirates 100 years later, though Treasure Island it was probably not.
Fishing and lobstering have long been the island’s claim to fame, but in the mid-19th century the island was “discovered” by a few painters, which developed into a so-called “artist’s colony,” a curious cultural phenomenon that had begun around 1820 in Europe. That was when landscape painting saw a surge in popularity, especially the en plein air practice of working outside the studio, up close and personal with the glories of nature. Artists of the time clustered in various locations, probably the most famous of which was at Barbizon in France, where notables like Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Jean Francois Millet were part of the scene, along with many others. Some say there were as many as 80 such communities in Europe until WW I brought the whole thing crashing down, never to be revived except as a feature for the tourist industry.
In the case of Monhegan, the artists have co-existed with the fishing community to the present day, along wth the day trippers and summer vacationers who utilize the limited lodging, or own residences. The island’s permanent population as of 2020 was sixty four people, which should tell you something. The fact that there is no road network beyond the small settlement near the ferry dock and no regular auto-ferry service should tell you a whole lot more. This is no desert island or Robinson Crusoe scene, nor is it a bastion of privacy or elite exclusiveness. Maybe it’s something better than either of those, in its own humble island way.
Come for the day and walk the trails through the woods or across the rocky cliffs above the water, but be very careful not to twist an ankle, which will happen if you are careless or in a hurry. Stay overnight for a day or two, or a month or the whole summer. We met someone on the ferry back to Port Clyde, a talkative old guy who’d just spent his fifty second summer there, with friends who owned a house, and he was pondering if this had been for the last time. Getting around Monhegan can be physically somewhat daunting, with lots of steep elevation changes even in the village, though you can always hire or hitch a ride on a golf cart. There are any number of pickups, necessary to haul supplies from the ferry and fishing gear during the season, but most look very well-worn if not unusable; it’s hard to tell. There may or may not be an official speed limit though really slow seemed to be the typical velocity for anything with a motor, and of course they were never going very far as there was no place very far to go.
This island was quiet and peaceful and undisturbed in a way that was shocking and unexpected. Backpackers and hikers may be familiar with this, fans of deep wilderness that they are, but here, in a working community, with the ocean all around? With a hotel and a grocery store and piles of fishing paraphernalia scattered about the landscape, not to mention the various art galleries?
Then there were the birds, for this was mid September, a time of fall migration. All were headed south, by one route or another. Most were following an inland route, or along the coast, but by chance or design some number get blown out over the water, to end up on offshore islands where they’d chow down and maybe spend the night. Monhegan is one of the best of these, offering a mixed boreal/deciduous forest and many thickets with bushes offering cover as well as late season fruit, seeds, and insects, some of this the result of human habitation.
Most of these birds were passerines, the perching birds people know from their backyards, things like sparrows and finches, crows and orioles and wrens and catbirds and wood warblers and many many more, including lots and lots of cedar waxwings flitting about in large noisy flocks, of which our group saw almost 200 in the course of a few days. Most of our number were dedicated birders, Massachusetts Audubon people, keen to sharpen their skills and blessed with gifted hearing and eyesight, so you can bet nothing feathered within 100 yards (or much further away if flying overhead) escaped their notice. On Saturday, the one full day we spent on the trails from 6am until sunset, as a group they ticked off 63 different species from the checklist, not too shabby as one of our trip leaders described it. That’s a lot for one day, unless you’re down near the equator, hunting in tropical habitats.
That same leader would also humbly tell you luck was a great factor in our success, due to the arrival of a major cold front on the Friday we arrived. In the fall that means the onset of cool winds out of the north and west, providing a major boost for all the birds ready to migrate south who’ve been waiting for the right moment, of which this was it. Friday afternoon was a pleasant taste of late summer, in the upper 70s. By the next morning the script had flipped and it was high 40s and breezy. The woods and thickets were swarming with birds, the trails and paths busy with larger and smaller groups like ourselves from all over the northeast, one in particular all the way up from Cape May, New Jersey. Monhegan is the place to be in mid-September, but the timing must also be right. Some number of people came up to our group and lamented how they’d been on the island all week with little to show for it – up until now.
Anyone who’s sought out birds or fished for enough years can tell you about the you shoulda been here yesterday (or this morning, or an hour ago, it doesn’t matter) phenomenon. As in yesterday, or any time before this moment, there were good birds everywhere or the fish were biting like crazy but alas today or in this moment, it is just not the same. Along with the other joys of the weekend was the special pleasure of knowing that this time around our timing was perfect, the kind of moment one needs now and then to give one’s inner pessimist a dope slap, a reminder that for most of us it works both ways and stop whining about your lack of good fortune, already.
But it is important to add that some of us, with our declining visual and hearing abilities, witnessed only a portion of what all the crack birders experienced. With thicket birding, glimpses come and go quickly, as feathered individuals constantly move around and behind the leaves of the bushes and along and behind the tree branches. All too often, while most of the group collectively savored the colors and patterns and identification field marks (ooh look at those malar stripes or did you pick up on the white under-tail coverts?), this birder more often than not only saw movement. Birds flitting along the trailside in deep shadow were never more than dark little shapes, though others easily picked up on the details that made them Lincoln’s sparrows or white-crowned or whatever.
Though it may sound like it, this is neither a lament nor a complaint. This writer has memories of getting good looks at almost all the birds our group encountered on bird walks he has done in the near and distant past. He’ll tell you that he got his share of good looks this time around, as well, more than enough. Call it delusion or self-aggrandizement if you must, but sharing the group’s enthusiasm at this very special moment for everyone – we all saw the birds in one way or another, after our own fashion – created an experience that was for him totally pleasurable, though much of this was vicarious. We were all savoring our luck together, finding feathered treasure in this place that was in itself a true treasure.
What topped it all off were the falcons, which were everywhere. Perigrines, merlins, kestrels – for them, migration is a time of opportunity, when their meal source does them the favor of clustering together in dense flocks moving south. They were a constant presence, moving fast but offering unobstructed views up against the cloudless sky, powerful and graceful and a joy to behold, as always.
In contrast to the fleeting pleasures of the birds, there was the constant presence of this place, where people were everywhere and traffic was not and it was always very very quiet. The human settlement was clean but also a bit tatty, not there for the tourists so much as for the working population, the fishing people and the artists. It’s probably a bit of a stretch, but the ambience was somewhat reminiscent of Melville’s Nantucket, as described in Moby Dick. That Nantucket disappeared quite awhile ago, but to visit Monhegan is to travel back in time, after a fashion, if your imagination is drawn to that kind of thing, and it’s possible you just might find it wonderful, as we did. On the other hand, if golf is your passion you’ll probably be disappointed, but take heart: there are islands all over the world ready to welcome you with open arms. Enjoy.
