The Inexplicable Power of Islands...a case in point, my case....

WASH-ING-TON IS-LAN-DER/ w`ash-ing-t`on is-lan-der/noun(1853): an individual whose primary emotional attachment is to the small island community of Washington Island, Wisconsin. May be young or old, may have descended from an earlier generation of islanders or not. May be native born, transplanted from elsewhere, or a frequent visitor. May have visited the Island for the first time only yesterday, heard the clarion call to islanderness, and recognized the Island as his/her true spiritual home. The inclusive title of "islander" may be legitimately claimed by anyone who's heart makes it'spermanent residence on Washigton Island.

I've taken to treating the big chain bookstores like my own personal library. The advantage over the real thing is, of course, the availability of coffee. I've actually read a number of books in their entirety while lazing away afternoons at the bookstore. Should I need to do something genuinely useful, I'll mark my place and return my book of the moment to it's shelf until I take it up again on a subsequent visit. Oh, I buy books from time to time as well, but I like to patronize the indy book shops when there is actual commerce involved. I don't often spring for a new hard cover book. When I have, and they later show up on the discount racks for 75% off I want to kick myself. Occasionally however, a book will distinguish itself from it's pricey neighbors on the shelf and speak directly to my preoccupation's of the moment. "Pssst...Pssst", it beckons, "you...yeah you, cough up the dough freeloader, I'm the book you've been lookin for" .

What has been preoccupying me for quite some time is the mysterious power of Islands. I was perusing the stacks not long ago when I happened upon ECCENTRIC ISLANDS, Travels Both Real and Imaginary by Bill Holm. I sprung for the hefty sticker price and it pleases me to know that this fellow will be getting his full retail due.
Bill Holm, poet, teacher, musician, and the grandson of four Icelandic immigrants, has written a wonderful book about Washington Island. Well, OK, Bill never actually mentions Washington Island, nor is there any reason to believe he's ever been here, but it's a book about Washington Island nonetheless. When Bill's Icelandic grandad was forced, by the necessities of the time, to relinquish the name Johannesson and choose a new family name, he opted for Holm. Holm translates into "island", or "inshore island", in Old Norse. Granddads tip of the hat to the homeland seems to have sealed the deal for our author. Bill's an island man, always has been He's opinionated, passionate, a lover of Shakespeare and Bach, and given to swinging poetic haymakers at the BIG questions. For Bill the big questions relate to how we live our short, precious lives and what we choose to attach importance to along the way.
Real islands, Old Holm suggests, are magic places, and the lives of real islanders often reflect this. Islands nourish the evolution of improbable human beings. Bill opines that the brain and the imagination are fertilized in odd ways when seeds must cross water to be planted in them. He shares novelist John Fowles belief that" Islands are sacred places where the unconscious grows conscious, where possibilities mushroom, where imagination never sleeps".
Bill believes that a predictable process is set in play when we find our way to islands. They provide a discontinuous break in our habitual patterns and preoccupations. They unhinge us from the world of getting and spending. They allow us to shrink the world for

awhile, and to rest in a place of manageable size and expectations. Islands provide a respite that permits what is truly important in our lives to surmount its illusory competitors and come to the fore of our awareness. It's true that you can probably keep such unfamiliar musings at bay by bringing along your cell phone and your laptop, as islands don't care for either. But, if you allow yourself to succumb to an island's magic you risk stepping into uncertain terrain. It's entirely possible that the preoccupations of your predictable, landlocked life will fall away, compelling you to think about who and what you are, and, what may have gone wrong. It's possible that you will find yourself transformed by your relationship with an island and it's inhabitants. A sublime mid summers stay on an island such as Washington Island could set in motion unanticipated life changes.
Real islands, of course, are not the only experiences that prompt us to wrestle with the central questions of our lives and to search for our just place in the world. Bill believes that we can be"islanded" in a metaphorical sense, by illness, by heartbreak, or by other unanticipated life intrusions. Whatever the impetus Bill would contend that to be "islanded" is to move closer to your own truth. "The island is the domain of the imagination and that imagination is the only divine spark in us- kill it, and you kill any possibility of growing a soul".
Islanders, Old Holm contends, are often given to sweeping gestures of imagination, generosity, and courage. Their lives are frequently marked by a kind of "poetry of gesture". The proof of this can be found by visiting those that inhabit them. Towards this end, Bill takes us to visit our island counterparts on Mujeros, Madagascar, Molokai, Mallard, and to Iceland. At each we are introduced to those the author feels have been inspired by the magic of their island.
Molokai, the Island of Lepers, is a remote island in the Pacific only 20 miles by sea from the big island of Oahu. It was here, in the mid 1800's, that frightened Hawaiian political and religious authorities banished the lepers to fend for themselves. And, it was here that a young Catholic missionary, Father Damien, asked his Bishop to assign him. For sixteen years Father Damien ignored advice to neither touch, or be touched, by his congregants. Instead, he cleaned and dressed wounds, built houses , planted crops, organized choirs, and tended to the spiritual needs of his congregation. He did this knowing full well what the personal cost would be. In 1889 he died a gnarled and swollen death on his island. His was a life of fearlessness and service.

One hundred years later Old Holm stands on the sheer cliff above the still extant Lepers village and marvels at Damien's courage." Something in that place, that Island, that particular life, seems to me a bond between one world and
another...between fearlessness and joy".
Madagascar is one of the poorest places on the planet., a place that on first blush is likely to evoke only sympathy and befuddlement in the western traveler. But Old Holm suggests that this is to confuse material poverty with a poverty of the soul. "There exists in this dirt poor island a culture, history, souls, poems and songs nobler and more alive than our own." It's in the remarkable indigenous music of the Valiha, an instrument made essentially of junk and scrap that Bill sees reflected the resourcefulness of the Malagasy. Their elaborate ritual and customs cement them to their land, to their ancestors, and to their history. Unlike many of us, they revere and continue to celebrate the lives of their forefathers As Bill says," The Malagasy understand that we do not recreate the world each day on our electric screen. Ancestors occupy not the next world but this one: they are my neighbors, my teachers my mentors".
Tiny Mallard Island is located in the Rainy Lake archipelago in the Voyager National Park north of International Falls Minnesota. In 1919 young Carl Oberholzer (Ober to his legion of friends) received a bleak medical prognosis. His response was to pack his canoe and paddle away from his privileged Harvard background taking to live in the largest wilderness area in North America. Turns out his prognosis was wrong as Ober lived to be 93. He finally settled on three tiny pieces of rock in the middle of Raney Lake. There he created a remote microcosm of all that is best in western civilization. Beautiful hand built structures, gardens, collections of great literature, of music, and the lifetime accumulations of an avid naturalist. Along the way Ober waged a one man assault on the Robber Barons of the day, who sought to drain thousands of square miles for then* own nefarious ends. He became a hero to environmentalists then and remains so now. This was a man whose very life was what Old Holm would call the" poetry of gesture". Islands, as Old Holm says, love true artists.
It's in Iceland that we linger the longest. It's where Bill's genetic history resides, and he appears to be much at home in this countryside inhabited by dreamers and eccentrics. For Bill, Iceland is the archetypal Island, the Island by which all others are to be judged, the incarnation of whatever "islandness' means. It's here, perhaps because of it's isolation, that the influence of island life on the character of it's inhabitants, stands in starkest relief.
Of course the measure of Bill's lofty philosophisin' is whether it rings true in your own experience. Do you or I know anyone similarly affected by their island experience? And, as we look about this island, is there any evidence of the magic Bill alludes to? At the risk of lapsing into the inappropriately confessional let's look at an individual case, my case.

I've had one foot on this island for the past several years. If mental preoccupation were measurable it would amount to a considerably larger chunk of anatomy. The truth is that I am unabashedly in love with Washington Island. At least it feels like love. My heart begins to beat a bit faster as I pass Bea's Ho-Made Pies and wind towards the Northport Ferry. Waiting to board I'm atwitter with a suitors anticipation. By Deaths Door I've slipped the grip of detached irony. Rolling off the other side I'm a decidedly nicer person and I think the same to be true of others. I want to bring my island friends pies. My wrist limbers and I'm itchin to begin waivin. I begin to believe that I may have artistic potential and that perhaps my singing isn't all that bad. I look about wondering how I might borough in and be of some service here. I want to be welcomed home. The effect is somewhat akin to what actor Jack Nicholson must be experiencing when he leans towards Helen Hunt ( in the movie, As Good As It Gets) and says,"you make me want to be a better man".
Friends have suggested that my infatuation likely has much to do with encroaching mid-life, or nervousness about my health, or just accumulated revulsion with real life. I suspect there's truth to this, but I find more resonance with Old Holm's explanation. I've been "islanded". And, I'm hopeful of permanently affixing this pair of rose colored glasses and living better for the distorted view. Here is just a smattering of the island experiences that I suspect have been doing triage on my jaded little psyche:
Having been a guest for many years at Gibsons West Harbor Resort. The Gibsons provided for our family, as it does for many others, a way to experience the island beyond the Cherry Train. They provide beautiful, inexpensive simple, and meticulously clean lodging. Because they have been our connection with the Island I've always thought of them as the "First Family of Washington Island". We often see familiar faces at Gibson's from one year to the next. We, like them come from larger urban areas with our roof racks straining under all manner of pricey recreational equipment, intent on vacationing in earnest. Every year things are much as they were the year before, except perhaps for our bigger loads. The Resort is quite beautiful, but I think there is more to the allure. Now, I'm sure the Gibsons have their fair share of woes and I don't wish to be overly pollyannaish about this. But for me, and I suspect many others, watching the Gibson's live their lives is quite a revelation. Watching them work together and play together. They don't appear to be tethered to the insatiable need for more and fancier that figures so prominently in mine and others lives. I wonder how they've done this and I wonder how our family might move in that direction. Part of what draws me to the Gibsons' is the hope that whatever is going on in that family might rub off on me and mine.

Then, of course there are the many evenings I've spent at the Red Barn. Whatever or whoever
the performer, this is surely the most uplifting venue on the planet. To pick just one evening among many, the Hagan family's annual performance. The evening is always full of beautiful music. But, what lingers in my thinking long after, and evokes not a few wistful regrets about my own life, are their relationships. A family spanning probably seventy years. How fortunate and safe those children must feel to be a part of that. I'm taken aback by how carelessly I've attended to my children's need for this. I hug my kids and promise myself that I will remember to remember.
And, there was my good fortune at being on the Island this past summer when the community staged a benefit to help defray medical expenses for a long time neighbor. I often think about this event. I've worked all of my adult life as a professional social worker, sometimes being useful, sometimes not. All too often dispensing a kind of idiot compassion that was neither requested nor freely given. Often not even sure of my own motivation. That benefit appeared to have nothing to do with my line of work. Bill Holm would say that it was simply " a good afternoon for civilization, human beings doing for others as they ought to. It was the wisdom of the islands given a body".
And, here patient readers, is another not insignificant thing. My gender seems increasingly, and perhaps deservedly, the butt of some society wide, cosmic joke. But, my gender, the native born, the newcomers, part-timers, old and young alike, appear to be acquitting themselves quite admirably on this piece of rock, thank you! There are the dignified mainstays, some with almost mythic pasts. Men like Arnie Richtor, Jack Hagan, Ray Hanson, Lonny Jorgansen, Dave Anderson, Nathan Gunnlaughsson, and Harold Greenfield t, leading gracious, generous lives of service and leadership. Lives worth emulating. There are the mature, Island backbone guys like Herb Gibson, Jimmy Anderson , Lou Small, Neal Schadl, Bill Olson, Rick Schmidt, Orin Mann, Kirby Foss, Lee Engstrom , Butch Gordon, Jim and Mac Gunnlaughsson, Guys assuming leadership roles who've not been boomered into uncertainty. The artists and professionals like Dan Hanson, Julian Hagan, Steve Waldron, . The newer full timers like BobWagner, Dave Ranney, Anselm Amadio, Eric Broderson, Don Benson, Bill Norris, Gene Manning., and Brian Vanderwalle. These guys are contributing boundless energy, innovation and intelligence to the community. The some timers like Fritz Dahlmer, Rick Shereikis, and Gene Callahan, The businessmen like Ken Koyne, Keith Mann, Mike Remke, Jim VanRamshorst , Dan Nelson, Peter Nehlsen, Andy Munao, transacting useful, eyeball to eyeball commerce. Not a cyber character among them. The younger guys like Aaron Radosovich, Josh Vanramshorst, Jimmy Sorenson and Cody Foss who don't inspire panic in us papas. They make the prospect of our daughters having future suitors almost palatable. It should be noted that I don't actually know a lot of the people mentioned here but I'd wager I'm right about all of them.
Then there are the myriad of ordinary things and events that are imbued with sweet poignancy when viewed through the prism of my rose colored glasses. The night sky, a fire and a sack of marshmallows at Gibson's beach; a trip to the dump with my boy ,Sam; another visit to see
the mummified mouse at the nature center: a Faithful Friends concert,; the Vets Day ceremony; a steamin cup o Red Cup Joe on the porch,; Jackson Harbor anytime; island waitresses: a visit to the Farm Museum; the weather rock; Sunday breakfast at Sunset; the old Willy's standing guard in Martin Andersons field;...well, you get the picture.
If Old Bill is right about islands and islanders one would expect to find evidence that this community is a cut above. Lets see, there are 675 full timers and a few thousand part-timers, roughly the size of my neighborhood in Madison. Permit me, patient readers, an incomplete, fawning recitation of your islands attributes'.
The breadth of civic and community life on t3he island is nothing short of astounding: service organizations; foundation boards; Vets groups; citizen committees; church groups; various volunteer groups that staff the museums, organize festivals and cultural events, and insure that the needs of other islanders are met; swimming lessons for all; martial arts for kids; family education programs; an active parent/teacher organization; first rate athletic and recreational programs; a kick butt youth soccer program; a first rate Island baseball team and park; organizations for sportsmen, environmentalists, preservationists, sailors, writers, those who enjoy preparing gourmet food, those wishing to eat less, problem drinkers, theater buffs, those seeking religious fellowship, quilt makers; and those who enjoy reading and discussing books.
The community institutions and facilities that islanders have built, maintained and continue to hold in common is truly impressive: It's own electric cooperative; a terrific library; a well staffed clinic with medical, dental and counseling services; lovely churches; an award winning community theater group; a first rate weekly newspaper; the jewel that is the Island School ( recently named by one educational resource as one of the 100 best schools in the nation); three interesting museums; a public art and nature center; a well equipped and well trained volunteer fire and rescue department; a beautiful visitors center; a community van; a well staffed town garage with all essential services; an interesting dump; lovely public beaches; beautiful protected natural areas and parks; public boat landings; a full service bank; a full service grocery; a community insurance group; two full time, good natured policemen; well maintained roads; a modern community center housing town offices, gymnasium, and meeting space; a beautiful community recreation center with pool, fitness equipment, tennis courts, recreational room and an active family center; an enviable community archives collection; an exceptional pre-school; a community treasure in the Red Barn; a world class summer classical music festival (I don't get to many classical performances but I'm absolutely certain that these folks play with more heart when they play here than they might otherwise); an annual Scandinavian festival; an annual art fair; and an annual Island festival. And, of course, over a half century of dedicated and reliable ferry service from the Washington Island Ferry Line. The Ferry has been the lifeline that has allowed the island to flourish.
Creativity and artistic expression abound. The island is home to many talented musicians of various inclinations. A number of classically trained musicians affiliated with major symphony orchestras have found the island particularly hospitable and have vacation homes here. There is a long folk tradition that has been nurtured by the Red Barn. The eclectic Julian Hagan has often been the nucleus around which other island musicians have come together. Dan Hanson , another gifted musical presence has been an inspiration and a mentor to many of the Islands young . Music on the island, however, is not the sole province of the professionals. Most everyone will sing with a bit of encouragement. There are a number of fine visual artists whose work has been inspired by the Islands beautiful pastoral landscapes, shorelines, storybook cottages, and maritime ambiance, and There are a number of fine fiber artists that have honed their craft through affiliation with Server's School of Fiber Arts.. There are several fine galleries, a public art exhibition space, summer art classes, a summer music school, a summer drama program. There is, of course, the beautiful Strake church. There are a number of accomplished writers on the island, and an even greater number of aspiring writers. Can anyone looking to Rock Island from Jackson Harbor doubt that ChesterThoradson fell under the spell?
The Island has inspired many "grand gestures of generosity" among those who love it. The gift of the Island Recreational Center, and the Trueblood Theater being obvious examples. There are many less visible, but no less noteworthy, gestures of generosity occurring day in and day out between islanders. All of this in a community the size of my extended Madison neighborhood, I'd say this island is thriving proof of Old Holm's theories. The "Communitarians" and the "New Urbanists" toiling away in academia could have saved themselves some hard thinking by simply coming here and taking notes.
I'm told that Washington Island, relatively speaking, is not a wealthy community. I suspect this is more true for those who live here year round and make their livelihoods here. A while back I had the pleasure of a conversation with Steve Toby. At my prodding Steve talked a bit about the uniqueness of island life. He made an observation that has remained with me..He indicated that there were a number of people of considerable financial means that were a part of the island community. It was his belief, however ,that having a lot did not garner one any particular standing in this community. Rather, it was how much you were inclined to contribute to the betterment of the island, financially and through personal involvement, that translated into community regard. I've wondered how a value with such little cultural currency elsewhere has held sway here. I think Old Holm would say that it's attributable to the strong familial threads that tie today's islanders with their ancestors who settled this difficult place. They can still see thepoverty and the struggle that marked their ancestors lives. They are not inclined to make the fundamental Puritan mistake of equating money with the grace of God.

I'm hopeful that this essay inspires a real Islander, or two, to extend an invitation to Old Bill Holm to come see what those four Icelandic bachelors (possibly cousins of his) helped to create here on Washington Island. We could rent a hall, fill it with difficult to pronounce family names, get Bill a piano and surround him with island musicians. Maybe give him the key to the town or some such thing. Now that would be a fine Island evening.

Back to Main Page