The Simple Problems Found on the Island

It’s midnight and I’m on my cot in a tent on the island. It’s quiet now, just small waves slapping the rocks and jokes between me, my cousins, and my friend Nick, When we wake up, it will be very windy and possibly rainy. There’s a hurricane en-route, which is expected to weaken to some less impressive category of storm.

Installed on my phone now is a tide app, which always strikes me as bizarre when I’m walking around the city at home. But here it’s part of life. When it’s high tide it’s easier to boat back, and possible to carry heavy loads in the boat. At low tide boating requires a lot more precision to find the deep water channel, but we can circumnavigate the island easier on foot.

I like having to think about the weather a little bit. It’s a connection to the real world from which we’ve largely insulated ourselves. Most of the time that’s a good thing, but tradeoffs hide behind convenience.

Our island has no luxury, other than that of time and space. One of the luxuries lost is the luxury of being fussy. One of my cousins runs inside when mosquitos come out, and another is inexplicably scared of butterflies. But the island trails were flooded with tiny white moths and the constant whine of mosquitos is the soundtrack of the deep woods.

And at first there was a small amount of fuss about the bugs, but today we were pushing through thick forest trying to find the eagles nest, ano no one said anything about the moths fluttering or the mosquitos buzzing around our faces.

So many of our problems are constructed problems. Social things that aren’t going the way we hoped, or business problems that are layer upon layer of abstraction above core human needs.

Here things are simpler; more direct. We have to cut down trees to make paths. Wood needs to dry before it makes a good fire. The wind is coming in, so we have to move the boat. Whole clasess of problems, like not liking bugs, vanish.

The activities we do on the island aren’t necessarily fun. My cousin Lindsay split firewood for a while, while Nick went around picking up washed up trash and my cousin Madeleine and I did other chores. But these things are satisfying. They often feel like they tap into something core to the human experience. It’s nice to do work that feels necessary once in a while.

Maybe part of why I bought the island was because it seemed like a comic luxury. I’m attracted to the shock value of it. But what I get most out of it is a connection to real work and real problems. It makes me feel more self sufficient, but also puts my other problems and struggles in perspective.

Now the patter of rain surrounds us in our tiny tent. We’ll go to sleep and when we wake up we’ll have to pack up and push through wind and rain to get to our boat. We’ll wade into the sea, fight the wind with the oars until we’re deep enough to start the engine, and navigate through the fog to the dock. It won’t be dangerous or difficult, but it will require some effort and will leave us all feeling satisfied. Those are the moments I look forward to most on the island, and the moments I know will never be in short supply there.

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Photo is Nick on the shore where we dock the boat.


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