To be or not to be … an island
There are islands and then there are islands. Manhattan’s an island, but the real estate agents bulldozed down its palm trees long ago. A lot of islands are isolated, a bump in the sea. Some islands hang out together. Geologists call them an archipelago. The islands by us didn’t get invited into the San Juan Archipelago Club. I think they knew we’d put bridges up and drive right on like we weren’t proud to BE an island. Naw, we wanted an umbilical to the mainland.
A Real Island sneers at the idea of the Mainland. A real islander doesn’t commute to a job back on the Mainland. A real archipelagist doesn’t shop at the QFC on the Mainland. An honest-to-God rock huggin, brine snorting, bent back barnacle covered island hermit doesn’t jump on a ferry every chance he gets so he can stand on Terra Firma in the Wal Mart parking lot.
A Real Islander is hoping deep down in his seaweed filled boots that the Tectonic Plates are moving him OUT past the Straits, out past Dungeness Spit, out past Neah Bay, out past the 3 mile territorial limits. A Real Islander came, not so much to Come to an Island, as to LEAVE the Mainland, physically, spiritually and meta-damn-phorically. They’re Escapists. They’re refugees from Real Life.
Our island hedges its bets. Way up at the cold north end, folks hardly know they’re ON an island. Down at the equatorial jungles of the South End, we’re unemployed, the drive just to the bridge is too horrible to contemplate, the only fast food we got is growing in our gardens and TV reception’s poor.
When the earthquake knocks down Camano’s puny little bridge, we’re gonna have some folks real surprised to learn they’re gonna have to make a choice finally. Course, when they build the South End Bridge to Everett, we will too.
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