When Hurricane Irene was off the North Carolina coast pin-wheeling her way toward the islands of the Outer Banks, a number of Maine islanders emailed island friends on Harkers and Okracoke Islands to send their hopes and prayers that the islanders might be spared the worst of her fury. One Harkers islander wrote back a scant hour before Irene made landfall that these expressions of support from Maine islanders a thousand miles away meant so much to her. Which led me to wonder whether there is something like a universal island culture?
When Peter Ralston and I founded the Island Institute, we used to say, “Maine islands have a lot in common,” a statement that, at the time, most islanders considered to be absurd. Those islanders across the way, they would tell us, are nothing like us; in fact, we don’t want to have anything to do with them. Slowly, however, the discourse changed as we learned to say, “All islands are different, but have a lot in common.” This subtle alteration in language meant we were generally not invited to leave on the next boat.
In the years since, Maine islanders often now celebrate their island connections as their collective impact has been amplified through such organized efforts with mainlanders as the Working Waterfront Coalition and the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition. More recently, the Island Institute has brought islanders from different regions in this country together for the annual Sustainable Island Living Conference, where the shock of island recognition has begun to spread outward. Through these contacts, Maine islanders have repeatedly seen their issues reflected back from elsewhere—the challenges of maintaining small island schools; of dealing with the high cost of food, energy and housing; and of the importance of maintaining healthy marine-based economies. At the same time, Maine islanders have seen that their approaches to these challenges eagerly embraced by islanders from far away.
Whatever the innovations are, from the use of video-conferencing technology to link one-room schools, to energy efficiency strategies to reduce costs, to branding of local seafood to increase value; islanders have a keen interest in learning from each other. Instinctively, they recognize that they share some deeper connection with each other than they share with mainlanders.
There are at least a couple of reasons to suppose that there might be something like an “island culture.” Most importantly, the isolation of small places simply creates different ways of being. Nothing kills island culture quicker than a bridge. Where bridges cannot go, you have to learn how to develop patience (because you cannot always go wherever and whenever you want), you learn humility (because Mother Nature cannot be over-ruled) and you develop a deep tolerance for individuality—even eccentricity—because when you are left to your own devices, you have the freedom to explore different ideas.
You also learn other skills on islands—sometimes as basic as to how to carry on a conversation on a ferry ride. Or how to share a sole source aquifer with your neighbor. But more often, the skills you develop are more highly involved, such as learning that the shortest distance between two points when wind and sea are opposed is not necessarily a straight line. Or figuring out how to use the limited resources at hand when the store-bought solution is inaccessible across the bay.
Some of these similarities of an offshore point of view can, and do, coalesce into an island culture, regardless of whether the island is as big as a nation or as small as a single community. So it seems worthwhile to continue sharing our stories from the Maine archipelago across other archipelagoes, especially during an age when communicating with other islanders, though separated by great expanses of time and space, has become more possible and more productive.
Philip Conkling is the president of the Island Institute based in Rockland, Maine.