Lifesaving Lessons (4 page)

Later, Dave and Nate had easier success with the Laundry Cove dory, and sustained no damage. Now all we had to do was find the ends of both doryless seines and mark them so that when Alden arrived with the
Grace Egretta,
we'd be set to haul the twine back into the dories. The Robinson Cove seine was cooperative. The end was in plain sight. I tied one of my orange-and-white lobster buoys to it and headed for Laundry Cove, where I spent six unsuccessful hours. Every time I reached down and grabbed the cork line to pull to find an end, I ripped the line from the net. It was useless. I had to condemn the seine, justifying that it was too rotten to fish, and vowed to cut the corks from it and leave the rest on the bottom to totally disintegrate. So already I had a third less twine than I had started with. And we hadn't made a set. In fact, we hadn't seen a single fish.

Alden came the next day. We quickly hauled the Robinson Cove twine, placing it back into the infamous dory, and returned it to the mooring. So here we were, Omega Four, with a fresh start. The problem was, I was disheartened. My crew had to jump into their lobstering lives to try to salvage a season and make up for time and income lost while frigging with the seining operation. We all understood that the good berths for herring, or places that historically attracted fish, were all occupied by dories of fishermen from Stonington. A dory left on an anchor marks that spot as taken. It's first come, first serve. And we had gotten into the game too late to claim any fertile territory. Eventually swordfish season rolled along, and I couldn't leave the island fast enough. The herring gear that served as a daily reminder of my total failure as a seine fisherman was stored away indefinitely. We hauled the dories onto the shore below the schoolhouse and flipped them upside down (with some difficulty I might add). We stowed the twine on the float and tied it to a summer person's mooring. It was early August, and I was headed to the Grand Banks aboard the
Bjorn II
and spent two months doing something I was relatively good at. Paychecks worked in a wound-licking sort of way. And “out of sight, out of mind” with regard to the seining business rang true until February, when the whole works washed ashore right in front of my eyes, where I could not avoid it.

.   .  .

Of course this could never have happened in warm weather, I thought now, opening my eyes to check the level of the tide. The month of February is typically the coldest and windiest of the year. The water was nearly high, and only one end of the float wagged in the slight westerly breeze as the other appeared to remain hard aground. Westerly wind, even just a little of it, would not help. The dory was pinned on the west shore, so the wind acted to keep it there rather than assist in the other direction. This would give the folks who winter on Isle au Haut something to talk about. Our year-round population had fallen to around forty. Whether the recent decline was a cause or a symptom of certain situations that had developed in the near past, I would never know. But the island had changed. I suspected it was suffering the same identity crisis that I was. We all considered ourselves islanders above all else. And loners. In disconcertingly increasing numbers our staunch lifers were bailing after Thanksgiving, becoming virtual summer people.

I wondered now what would become of Simon and me. Our relationship had become very odd in the few months since I had begun questioning it. (Teenagers do not corner that market either.) We had been together for nearly the entire decade of my discontent, and acted sort of like an old married couple. But we weren't married, and I had just latched onto the realization that we never would be. This was depressing. Rounding into my forties, I was beginning to realize that I wasn't heading for the husband-and-2.3-children model, but that didn't mean I was content with the status quo. I knew that I needed to somehow go a separate way. But other than not marrying, and being too comfortable with each other, I had no real reason to “divorce” Simon. We had always gotten along famously. We never quarreled. We enjoyed spending time together. And now here Simon was, coming to my rescue as usual. He was always there! I just felt that we (or more accurately
I
) were missing something. I wasn't content with the reality that my primary male relationship was one of friendship. Besides, Simon had his family, including an ex-wife with whom he remained friendly to the point of still spending what I considered a weird amount of time. And I suppose that went a long way in making me feel very much alone when I was inclined to feel sorry for myself—like now. In all honesty, my relationship with Simon's entire family, including his ex, was as easy and natural as his was with the Greenlaw clan. Regardless, settling down hadn't been what I had anticipated, and I now knew that I had been happier in rootlessness. There's not a lot of soil on Isle au Haut, so like the island spruces, residents' roots grip sheer ledge with some tenacity. Add a little rain and wind, and even the healthiest trees are prone to blow down. When “seaworthy” is the most coveted adjective in your vocabulary, life ashore is lacking. I had to admit that whatever problem I perceived in my relationship with Simon was likely a symptom of something that had more to do with me than us.

The sound of oars working methodically in locks broke my regression. I hopped to my feet to see Howard Blatchford heading toward me in his peapod, which is a small, double-ended boat named for its shape. “I brought a couple of anchors and some line,” he said as he put the bow of his boat against the ledge below where I was standing. I scrambled down the rocks and climbed into the bow. I squatted down low and held both rails to balance the tippy boat. “I think we'd better run two anchors out, one off each of the offshore corners of the float, and put as much tension on the lines as we can,” Howard said. I agreed that this was a good idea, as the tide was already going back out and the float wasn't going with it. The anchors would, at the very least, keep the float from going farther ashore.

Howard dropped me on the float and he rowed the first anchor to the west and dropped it in. He rowed the end of the line back to me so I could secure it to the float. He repeated the process with the second anchor, this one to the north. The two of us worked to set the anchors and get the lines as tight as we could. Of all the people who could have come to help, I thought, why did one of them have to be him? Howard was not one of my—or the island's—favorite neighbors. A known, convicted sex offender, he had served his time and come home to Isle au Haut to live out his days more quietly, adding credence to the belief held by many that our year-round population consisted largely of misfits. Ostracized for years by our tiny community, he was certainly Johnny-on-the-spot today. I wasn't exactly in a position to refuse experienced, competent assistance, no matter what Howard had done in his past. I was thankful that not many of my neighbors had witnessed this morning's collaboration. But, shamefully, not as thankful as I was for his help. And where was trustworthy Simon?

When Howard left I was happy to be alone. I spend a lot of time alone. And reflecting on that, I realized that the very things I liked most about my life were the same things I disliked. The bind I'd put myself in made it difficult to pursue significant change. The float, balanced and confused on the ledge, seemed as undecided as I was about which way to go and when to make a move. Not much of a role model. But then again, I didn't need to be anybody's role model . . . yet.

I Am a Rock

I
t's staggering how much actually goes on in a tiny community while seemingly nothing is going on. All that winter, when I had chance encounters with anyone, which were indeed rare during the short days and long nights of blustery weather, there would be little news to report. “What have you been up to?” was nearly always met with a shrug and “Not much.” My end of any conversation always included the thickness and quality of the ice on the island's freshwater pond, as skating had quickly become my favorite procrastination to lure me from the writing project I was falling behind on. Unseasonably warm days were challenging until someone told me that three inches of ice were enough to support a team of horses. I had no idea what that actually meant, but figured that even if the “team” consisted of just two small ponies, they outweighed me.

Spending time spinning alone on the ice was a daily ritual that I kidded myself into believing was essential for stimulation. Well, I certainly wasn't getting a lot of stimulation from people. I could go around the island in my mind, house to house, and do a head count. Every time I did, I came up with a different number. But none of these virtual trips ever produced more than forty-two fellow occupants. Even on days when the island's only grocery store (or store of any kind, for that matter) was open for a two-hour, biweekly shopping spree, I never saw more than five people. I wondered where the other thirty-seven were hiding and imagined that they must be more industrious than I was to be so busy as to not make the store hours. Even if they had no intention of buying anything, it was the best social life on the docket this time of year. I guessed, because I never saw much traffic, that my fellow islanders didn't need to fuel their cars. But they had to
eat.
And I saw boxes of groceries from a mainland market coming over on nearly every mail boat. Not that the recipients were on the dock to meet the boat and collect their food and drinks. They must come when no one is looking, I thought, and wondered why they were not as eager as I was to meet what on most days could be considered the only sign of life. And I wasn't relying on the boat for my sustenance, just activity.

Once in a while I would see someone shoveling a driveway or another getting wood for a stove, and I'd nearly scare them back to their houses with my enthusiastic greetings. Not that I wasn't normally friendly. I was. But I had never really gone out of my way for it, especially not in winter. In fact, a wave from a distance would have usually sufficed. Not now. Not this winter. Funny, I had assumed that being alone was what I needed to be productive. Everyone imagines an author in seclusion pounding the keys and tearing through the pages. This had been my mode in the past and had propelled me through the writing of all my books to date. The notion that total solitude was needed for me to perform well the job of creating written material required that I keep everyone at arm's length. I had worked to keep everyone at bay each book-producing winter, and had been unapologetic about it. I had admonished a neighbor for a friendly, unannounced visit and had hung a sign on my door, “Do Not Disturb.” I had trained my family not to call me during writing hours, and I had been absolutely rude to my mother when she just couldn't wait until lunchtime to let her fingers do the walking.

But this winter things had changed. I stared at blank pages, wishing I had someone to talk to. I found myself hoping to run into Ken so that I could ask about Mariah and how she was doing at school. When I caught a glimpse of Mariah during a school break, I thought she avoided me, and excused this as her not wanting me to ask her if she was looking for any work. My newfound need to communicate must have been because I was alone more than usual; alone by choice and needing to communicate is a strange contradiction that I cannot explain. Every winter since moving to the island eight years prior, I had split time between my place on the island and in Vermont at Simon's house. When I wanted to write, I was home. When I wanted to play, I went to Vermont, where I could have fun with Simon and his group of friends. This year I had made a conscious effort to remain home as much as possible. I used my writing as an excuse not to venture anywhere or do anything that required leaving “the rock.” I knew that I was looking for the exit ramp in my relationship with Simon and this required separation. So I seldom invited Simon to hang out with me. In Simon's absence, I found myself striking up conversation with anyone who made the mistake of making eye contact. My pain being self-inflicted didn't make it any more tolerable. I actually pulled my truck to the side of the road one day to chat with an itinerant laborer who had come over on the early boat to do some chain-saw work.

The man, whom I had never seen before, was leaning on the open tailgate of Bill Stevens's pickup truck, drinking from the mouth of a beat-up thermos. (Bill Stevens is our road commissioner, among other things, and often recruits muscle from the mainland to fill in where our lack of manpower needed it.) The man was dressed in heavy canvas chaps and a helmet with a full face shield that was now flipped up so that I could see his concerned look as I approached. “Hi,” I said as I stopped rolling down my window.

The man spun the top onto his thermos, glanced up, and said, “Hi.” I'm sure it must have seemed as if I had stopped to ask directions, which is funny considering the reality.

“Nice day for the chain saw.”

“Yep.”

“I'm Linda,” I said with a smile that should have melted the frozen snot on his mustache. He nodded. “Are you working for Bill?” Another nod and a look of nervousness made me think he might have mistaken me for some type of authority—maybe a code enforcement officer or planning board member out on inspection, which is also funny considering the same reality. “I'm heading to the pond to go ice-skating. Have you seen that part of the island?”

“No.” The man flipped his face shield back into place and picked up the saw. Before I could ask where he was from and whether he was planning to leave on the late boat, he had pulled the saw to a growling, unfriendly start, and flexed the trigger in and out in a menacing fashion. I would have bid him farewell and advised him to have a nice day if he hadn't turned his back to me. Nothing says “I'm ignoring you” quite like the roar of a chain saw.

Most of the residents weren't much more forthcoming with idle chitchat either, which is what I had always perceived as normal island winter mode, and perhaps why I had fit in so nicely in the past. Now every time I tried to strike up a conversation, I felt as though I were annoying my “target” (for lack of a better word), and usually abandoned such attempts feeling as though I couldn't approach the same person twice in a week for fear of being accused of harassment. I am certain that some considered me the proverbial fly in the ointment. Not that I was causing trouble. I just wanted to be cheerful and energetic. And those scattered demonstrations of happiness tended to put me on the suspect list. Everyone just seemed so slow, like moving through cold molasses. Most people appeared to be slightly, or in some cases, fully depressed. I knew it was a simple function of winter on the island, but I guess I hadn't noticed it as much in the past due to my own hibernation. Or maybe it was worse than ever this winter. Many people didn't venture from the front of a television set, and those who did sort of moped around lamenting their existence. Out-of-work fishermen, who composed most of the heads-of-households group, were not happy campers. Idle hands may be the devil's workshop, but my observations say the devil should have topped the invitation list.

A natural offshoot of what I was beginning to see as my personal, internal inconsistency of wanting to be alone but not wanting to be alone was the questioning of friendship, and whether I had ever experienced it. Alden, who had always been my best friend, had told me long ago that if I counted my true friends and used all the fingers on one hand to do so, I was a lucky person. Well, let's see . . . Alden is one, Simon is two. How would I define “true” friend? If I broaden the definition, I might add an old crew member or two. There were a number of summer people with whom I had become “friends.” But when I recalled that some of them didn't know my name until it appeared on the
New York Times
bestseller list, “friend” was a stretch. I was well aware of all the clichés about friendship. I knew that in order to
have
a friend I had to
be
a friend. And I knew that “a friend in need is a friend indeed,” and all the similar two-way-street bullshit. With this in mind, I quickly resolved that until now I hadn't needed a friend. Perhaps “need” was too strong a word for what I was feeling. But I did want a friend, and wasn't sure how to go about it.

I was battling the winter blues, too. But I refused to give in to them. I had been as down as anyone while dealing with my stranded float, which by the way did eventually drift off the ledge and in the right direction. Not as buoyant were my fellow islanders' spirits. The float and herring gear were now secured to another summer person's mooring, though Dave Hiltz had assured me, “It will never stay there.” I understood this negativity as a twinge of island winter funk, and prayed that Dave was wrong. It was rumored that most of the year-round residents had been prescribed some form of antidepressant or another. If this was true, they should think about getting some better drugs, because these sure weren't working. After the school's Christmas program, I figured that the entire population was stuck in the Gordon Bok song “The Hills of Isle au Haut.” That song is sung at every island function without fail. Everyone knows the lyrics, but the only verse that has any volume when sung by the community is the one about winter: “Now the winters drive you crazy, / And the fishing's hard and slow, / You're a damned fool if you stay, / But there's no better place to go.” It's our unofficial theme song, and it's sung with gusto. And if you sing this winter part with some conviction, which it seems everyone does, you have no chance of being anything but depressed. We all hold dear the understanding that we are crazy, life sucks in the winter, and we are paralyzed to do anything about it because there isn't any better option. Within that scenario, gloom is inevitable.

I set myself apart from those with paralysis in that I had made a conscious decision to remain on island this winter. I had
chosen
this. I could leave at any time. The only thing holding me back from escaping to some sunny place was my personal resolution to remain here and suffer, martyrlike, with the rest of the islanders, and perhaps a bit of anticipated guilt should I actually accept Simon's offer to go away on a golf junket. I purposefully left my house and work obligations every day, looking for something—I'm not quite sure what. It wasn't until early March that I discovered the bright spot on Isle au Haut.

.   .  .

I was a little bummed out to wake to six inches of fresh snow. There would be no skating today. But making lemonade with life-dealt lemons was easy once I remembered that I had retrieved my cross-country skis (among other things that had accumulated during the course of our relationship) from Simon's place the last time I left Vermont. It was early, and I assumed the plow driver hadn't made his route yet. In fact, every storm so far this winter, the driver had been somewhat frustrated by dead batteries, a bad starter, blown hydraulic hoses, et cetera. So I felt pretty safe skiing right off my front steps and planning to circumnavigate the island by road on my skis. It was a gorgeous morning, bright and crisp. I'd start on the main road to the south, I thought. My place is the last of the year-round homes going in that direction, so I would not encounter any tire tracks—just pristine, virgin snow. As I passed the drive that leads to the lighthouse, I felt a twinge of nostalgia. My family once owned the light keeper's house. I had many fond memories of spending summers in a bedroom where the walls reflected a dull, red flash of light every five seconds. But there had been a lot of snow under the skis and water under the keel since then, and I had finally forgiven the older generation of Greenlaws and had gotten over the childish grudge I'd held for so long following the sale of the family property. Could it really have been more than twenty years ago? I wondered.

Before I had broken a sweat, I was coasting down the slight hill and around the bend after the trailhead that led to Seal Trap. Moore's Harbor was absolutely glistening. The sun was just peeking over the trees that cast long shadows on vanilla frosted ledges. The old house and barn stood erect with perfect posture that lent credibility to the granite foundations and construction methods of an era long gone. In my mind's eye I could see Carol Bergeson squatting in her garden and her husband, Lloyd, puttering with the hand pump on top of their well. I wondered how they were wintering in their off-island Massachusetts home. They were getting quite old. They always took time to visit whenever I happened upon them, I remembered. Things were different in summer. The climate was warmer on many levels. Everyone was more sociable. I coasted to a stop and took in the stunning vista while I tried to recite Robert Frost's “A Time to Talk.” Frustrated that I couldn't bring it back from the depths, I continued on my way vowing to look it up when I got home.

I startled a large snowshoe hare out of hiding at the end of Anne Davidson's road. Its white fur was as fluffy as the snow it skittered over. I love rabbit tracks in their perfect triangular pattern. You can speculate on some tracks: Are they coyote or dog or some large cat? But nothing looks like rabbit tracks. The rabbit ducked under a low-hanging branch heavy with snow that clung to the needles and threatened to slide at any disturbance. If Greg and Diana hadn't gone to Arizona for the winter, there would certainly have been a beagle chasing that bunny, and a gunshot would soon follow, I thought. The only sound here now was that of my skis swishing over and through the powder and an occasional scrape on a rock. I was soon deep in Acadia National Park, which makes up nearly half of the island's acreage. Of course the park was officially closed this time of year. The two rangers were unemployed until spring. The campground was empty, the trails were all untraveled as evident from the unbroken blanket of snow at each sign marking entrances, and the float and ramp in Duck Harbor had been removed from the dock and towed to Stonington, where they were stored in the otherwise empty parking area of the Isle au Haut Boat Company.