Fisherman Island

The day is busy meteorologically and meetings-ologically, and then, during the last meeting of the day, is busy both ways at once, when another tropical downpour hits. The board room is like an island curtained off from the sea, pounded by the surf of the storm cell, and we are nearly completely distracted from the business of the day. The tumult lasts but ten minutes, and windows are re-opened, air freshened, minds tightened, sky and agenda back to normal.

When I'm back home, sitting on the deck, the sun re-appears just before setting. But the sky grants it only a sliver of opportunity, and it takes immediate advantage to stream like a laser and light up the islands in the bay. Little, Sheep, Monroe and especially Fisherman glow with a radiance as if lit from within. Fisherman is just far enough away that its details are usually not clear, but tonight the slanting sun against the dark clouds still flooding the east seems to act like a magnifier, or a purifier, and binoculars inspire the two or three trees and the old abandoned white house to a shout of eloquence. Their agenda may be past, there are no motions to second or resolutions to approve out there, but like a tropical downpour, the images come freshly alive.

An island is a troublesome beast, spawning ideas of independence and freedom where there really are none. Fisherman is small and desolate, like the rocks and grasses and surf and heath of Dogs Bay in the west of Ireland. You believe you can be married to the land on an island, or an Ireland. Where there are no people, there might be peace. But the contrast is the thing - between dark sky and gleaming light, between a fisherman and the sea, between a Board and a preserve, between an official and a druid, between a human and his Nature.