Trouble in Paradise

It's amazing what traveling 10 miles out to sea to a place that has no television, no newspapers and few people does to your sense of time. Given its lack of reality, Monhegan Island might just as well be Brigadoon. And though a stroll through the town cemetery gives ample evidence to the contrary, still one imagines how a life spent there could go on forever, since local time stretches out so far beyond the norm; three days there felt more like three weeks. This morning, clinging to the memory of the meadow blanketed in fog, a random pheasant in the woods, waves crashing on jagged cliffs and that persistent half-moon hanging in the sky all day, I am reluctant to break the spell, but a quick scan of the daily paper reminds me what Man has been up to, and it's basically no good. Old wars continue, new killers are on the rampage and our presidential election keeps chugging towards its eventual train-wreck of a conclusion. But on Monhegan, most of the conversation centers on what trail to follow to which destination and what's for dinner.

Not that it was all fun and games, believe me. The towels were thin, the water pressure ghastly and the hiking so strenuous I may need that hip surgery today, or possibly tomorrow. Plus there was that nagging feeling that you'd seen those people someplace before, and in fact you had: at breakfast. By the time you smile and wave at the same set of strangers four or five times, your initial feeling of camaraderie mysteriously curdles into a growing dislike for no apparent reason, resulting in a desperate need to look away, change direction and pray they aren't at dinner too. In fact, it's a wonder there isn't any violent crime there, what with that same little red-haired girl constantly running across your path, her oblivious parents pointedly avoiding eye contact and doing nothing to at all reign her in or silence her annoying chatter. And how about that strange couple who started out so cloyingly friendly we worried we'd never shake them and ended up literally glaring at us across the dining room without even a hint of common courtesy a day later? What's up with that?