who is ayn rand?
I got a friend whose granddad came over from Norway to America in 1901. Bought some land on Camano Island between the Stilly River and Utsalady Bay, built a 12 foot by 12 foot cabin that still stands and lived in it until he built his house, about 2 or 3 times bigger, and it still stands with an addition that made it a 750 square foot palace. This, for all us newcomers, makes him a bona fide North End homesteader.
To get to his farm he had to be ferried across from Stanwoodopolis, then hike the 2 or 3 miles up Land’s Hill and across the hogback we all use now, although we got a road these days. Shopping was a bit more strenuous than it is for us Late Arrivals. You can bet he was like a lot of us South Enders are today — he only went in to town when he had to.
My buddy still lives there in the ‘modern’ house his father built. He’s added lots of acreage over the years, kept the farm going, the chickens, the gardens, the cattle herd. It would be easy to imagine him being pretty proud and possibly smug about carrying on the American tradition of hard work, a veritable Captain of His Own Destiny. We all like to think our lives were the result of our sweat, our smarts and our individual Can-Do attitude. But my friend would disagree. He says none of this would have been possible without the bridge being built finally and the roads laid down, the electric lines strung, the whole infrastructure that supports us all.
We aren’t Laplanders, you know. And we don’t exist in a wilderness. Even if, as we pioneers down here like to believe, we’re far from the oversight of Rome over there on the ‘other’ island with its seat of power centered in Coupeville, about a 2 day drive far far from home through multiple counties and over various bridges. It’s fine to take pride in our Emersonian self-reliance, to build a house or a business or a life. Just give some credit to the many unseen hands that paved the way. Believe me, nobody’s going to think any less of you.
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