Helping Out without Being Swept Out (to Sea)

—02.16.2000—

It’s 1am. I was just about to go to bed when I looked out the window towards the bar. The wind was blowing a steady Force 8 (about 45mph) from the northwest and driving the sea over the bar* in a steady, white surge. I went back downstairs, put on my parka, and went out to have a look.

The moon was out, and waxing, in an unnaturally clear sky, littered with pinprick stars. Life had left everything behind, leaving only the bright memories of buildings, fences, and paths. They seemed like ghosts in matte-chrome, blue-gray, and cold. Behind me the two houses appeared as if in an impossibly good black & white photograph, the earth bleached by moonlight, the moonlit clouds looming white from over the horizon against a dark sky, and a single, yellow light from a top bedroom back at the house that I’d left burning.

The tide was cresting now at its highest point and the sea thundered over the bar, pure force, seething and running white, faster than I’ve ever seen it, spurned on by the norwester blowing straight down the mouth of the cove. I leaned into the wind and watched it run, no more than a ghost myself, a shiny shade, unreal and temporary, standing alone on a patch of night-white sand observing nature as she applied her power while everyone slept.

——

I decided to head back home to Pengold Cottage on St. Agnes this afternoon to write. There’s no good place to do it on Gugh. Besides, I’d like to structure my time a little more, to start doing things again, regardless of whether they make money. Otherwise my days melt, one after the next, and I’m left with only puddles.

I got out of the bath on Gugh this morning (well, noon) and looked out of the window at the two coves just reaching out for one another again across the bar. I had to hurry, so I threw some clothes on, stuffed my laptop in my backpack, jumped into my boots and ran down to the beach. The sea was green and chunky, and the wind was still spurring restless whitecaps. Thankfully I could still see the tops of all of the stones across to the other side. So I set off, and stepped through the wet. It would have been wise to have given some thought to timing the sets, for as soon as I was a third of the way across, a swell muscled its way between the two islands.

I saw it coming in out of the corner of my eye and immediately tried to find a tallish rock to stand on. Too late—it came in thick and fast, adding another foot of water to the bar, drowning everything under long, sideways streaks of white foam. The water rose up the beaches on both islands, doubling my distance to dry land. I froze for a moment as I felt the current swirling around my legs, the eddies towing me sideways, and my submerged boots pleading no contest.

Splorsh, splorsh, splorsh. I turned around and splashed back to shallower water. When I turned to face the bar again, the surge had passed and the sea was momentarily flat. I made a careful but quick dash across and arrived on St. Agnes with water spilling out of the tops of my boots.

Beyond the two coves, in the open water, the sea was continuing to throw itself around like a heavyweight. The locals describe this as “lively,” as in “It’s looking lively out there.” On wind charts “fresh” feels like an understatement as it translates to something like a 50mph blow.

Just then I spotted the little mail boat out in the chop. It was running perpendicular to the current to get around The Cow (the big rock perhaps 50m past the mouth of Porth Conga, the cove on the eastern (currently windward) side of the bar, where the quay lies, and where all of the boats land). I also saw David Best, the man who runs the post office shop, standing up on the quay, which was being absolutely pounded by waves from the incoming tide. With each successive concussion spray flew high into the air, fell again, and doused everything. I ran down to lend a hand.

I got there just as the boat was coming in. He grabbed the lines, I threw the outgoing mailbag across, and a few bags for St. Agnes came off. I grabbed them and sprinted up the quay, my boots still sloshing, as another roller impacted with a thud. The whole thing took about a minute and then the boat was off again, riding up the top of a wave, teetering momentarily, and then sliding down the other side. Back in the waiting room, at the top of the quay, David said, “I saw you coming across the bar. I was a little concerned for you.”

“Yeah, I got caught in a swell.”

“If you’d left it another fifteen minutes would probably wouldn’t have made it.”

“Even another five...”

He dumped the mail onto the floor and sorted it into packets for everyone. “Here’s one for you, hand-written. Looks like it was worth waiting for.” It was a Valentine’s Day card from my friend Amy, which was nice.

“We’ve had waves come up over the quay and fill little boats just like that. Anyway, I appreciate the help. I’m not fond of being down there by myself in weather like this.” I told him I was happy to help, hung out a bit, and then sloshed up the road with my mail.

Now I’m sitting back at Pengold in a sweater and pajama bottoms because all of my pants are on Gugh. And it’s a bit chilly since I’ve let the oil in the stove run out until I’m here again full-time.

——

Last night, over dinner it was mentioned that every woman on the island that’s had kids over the last twenty years has had at least one miscarriage. On Bryher, another of the off-islands, there have been sixteen cases of cancer over the past few years. Is that statistically significant? I don’t know, but it seems like a lot. Apart from flower farming runoff seeping into the groundwater, there was speculation that granite emits radon gas over time, which is radioactive. I’ve never heard of such a thing. It was also mentioned that bracken spores, if inhaled over years, can cause cancer. It sounds like something that’s worth a study. Regardless, I’ve decided to stop drinking the water.

Another thing. As I mentioned, people living here lease their properties from the Duchy for prices one might expect to pay in the London market even though at the end of 30, 60 or 90 years, one has nothing left to show for it. I also heard that once the property has been leased the land that it’s sitting on has to be rented from the Duchy separately. I’ll have to check if my facts are correct but this seems like it would put tremendous financial pressure on the community, pressing people to grow as many flowers and take in as many tourists as possible to have something left at the end of it. What’s more apparently, the more successful you are, the more rent the Duchy will want.

At the same time Prince Charles speaks out in favor of conservation. He’s quoted in the Environmental Trust’s brochure (the organization entrusted with maintaining all of Scilly’s public land) as saying, “We must forever remain vigilant against the threatening forces of change... For various reasons we have allowed terrible damage to be inflicted on parts of this country’s unique landscape.” Yet this statement, and Prince Charle’s general support of sustainable land and community, seem to be at odds with how the Duchy appears to be running the Scillonian estate. If the Duchy’s policies do indeed put more pressure on increasing tourism and agriculture, wouldn’t that wear down the land faster? I don’t understand how these two ideas are supposed to mesh together. Like I said, more research may be required.

——

Work on the gig shed has stopped for the moment. Jon is on St. Mary’s building a roof. This previous weekend was a non-starter as well, since he brought home a wicked stomach flu which he described as a horse kicking him in the belly all night.

Still the shed looks very promising. The corner stones are in place and the walls have reached a respectable height. Bryce is turning out to have a good deal of wall building talent. I ended up taking a more supportive role as my dry stone walling skills weren’t really up to the task. That meant more digging. I may get a Ph.d!

——

I went for another walk this evening on Gugh, as the light was fading, and let my intuition guide me. It, and I, walked out from the back of the house where the path heads out over the island as a double-rutted grass track. We passed flowers that spontaneously gathered on the road, as if for some kind of meeting. We continued out further to where the path grew thin, light, and confused, bending tall grasses instead of pushing them aside.

I followed my thoughts and they led me past the old man (the standing stone), down through an abandoned field, through remains of of a very old stone wall. After a few more feet, my intuition stopped and invited me to lay down beside it among the weeds and grasses. I looked up at the sky and was immediately overcome by a “far away so close” sensation, like a vision distorted by fever.

The sky was an immense river moving past but I was so close to it that I couldn’t make out either bank, just the floating, luminous gray, and the white jewel of the moon submerged beneath it. A hole opened in the clouds and the moon stared up at me, concerned as it always is. I laid there for a long time as the light faded out and wondered what I looked like from space: a yellow dot on a green dot in a field of blue.

——

I found a gem on Patricia’s bookshelf the other day. It was the proposal for a sustainable community called “Genesis” that had been written in 1974. It contained lots of quotes from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, and Walden 2, and plenty of articles in the appendices from other communities that had already been making a go of it. The proposal itself, from the little I read, seemed to describe a highly-centralized social system and I lost interest.

It was the stories from other communities I found compelling. They told of shared housing, raising kids, of women trying to get over the jealousy encountered in giving up monogamous relationships, of people struggling in general with the practical aspects of multiple partners, and the sometimes damaging effects it had on their social structure. Projecting back over time, I can see how sex could have gotten a bad name. One might imagine how our lingering Puritanism came about after, perhaps, an earlier era of sexual openness.

There were other good tidbits, some eight-year-old kids picking up some little clues to their own nascent attractions, running back and forth into each other’s rooms, giggling for nights on end, and then forgetting about the whole thing for months. Another one about kids wanting to join the adult world by modeling adult behaviors, a little girl in the kitchen was peeling potatoes and said, “I’m working, right mommy?” All sweet stories.

*The sandbar that connects Gugh and St. Agnes at low tide.