The big event this past weekend was the wedding of one of our sons’ long-time island friends. Two of our boys (actually they are young men now) flew in for this epic/epochal event. These days, 23-year-olds don’t get married that often, so it promised to be a special time.
The lead-up was like watching the gathering of a tribe; each ferry arrival became a stake-out where someone from the tribe was on hand to greet the arrivee. The whoops, hollers and double-armed, eyes-closed embraces were nothing like we remembered from our high school or college reunions. They were much more powerful, bespeaking a bonding not often in evidence in our age of instant but digitally mediated connections.
So I put the question to some of these tribes people: are your island friendships more intense and lasting than those from your high school or college life, and what explains such outbursts of spontaneous joy and celebration when you see each other? The range of answers speaks volumes about the nature of island life.
First off, longevity.
Most of these young people have known each other for between 15 and 20 years, which is a lot of your life if you are a 20-something. One young woman recalled how in high school and to a lesser extent college, she occasionally changed friend groups as she shed one identity and grew another; but on the island you don’t have that option. It’s not like you are going to go to the next town over for friends, another young man said, the edge of the water turns everyone inward. Or who you see is who you get.
Second: demographics.
On the mainland, friends are pretty narrowly circumscribed to your own age group—those who happen to be in your class at school; a little less so in college, but not much: juniors and seniors in college do not hang out with freshmen and sophomores. Here on the island, however, the age range between the oldest and youngest in their tribe is almost ten years. Another young woman said that whenever she invited a friend over, she could expect to get their older or younger brother or sister as well. Older island kids had to learn to be more socially flexible and younger kids had compelling older role models.
Then there is the matter of fun.
The fun they have, they all said in one way or another, is the fun they make. One tribal member remarked on the “total freedom to roam around;” another called the island an “invisible natural playground.”
One recalled the “make or break” rafts they would build with just enough nautical integrity to float across the cove. Another young fellow asked where else he would have skinned and cooked a squirrel. On a more plebian note, one young woman pointed out, “I mean, we have all used an outhouse.”
And then, finally, there is pirate culture.
Hard to know why islands and pirates have been so often cast together in the same play. But they just go naturally together. Treasure Island would not have been the same if it were Treasure Mountain. Just across the Reach is a smaller island, now known about these parts for its annual pirate party, a dress-up affair that attracts a shocking rabble from the mainland. Atavism and egalitarianism are alive and well and on full display.
But beyond this annual weekend event, pirate culture has imbued these island-tribes people with the notion that there is honor among them—from the least of them to the most privileged. Everything is shared—food, beer money, clothing. Interestingly, before bike share programs hit cities, it was invented on the island. We are forever helping round up the house bikes that have ended up elsewhere. When one of our boys (young men) cut his knee open playing soccer, unbeknownst to us, a pirate doctor administered whiskey as a painkiller and carefully stitched him up so he did not need to be go to the mainland.
The wedding itself was held at the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula overlooking eternity. The bridegroom, from the pirate island, is a musician and his new wife is a singer, which is how they met. During the processional, they sang a song they co-wrote as their vows. A member of the band married them. Under a cloudless blue dome, there was not a dry eye among the assembled, including seven tribal groomsmen, whom you might think as obdurate young men, but who were as stunned as the rest of the celebrants by the simple majesty of the event.
The pair of newly wed artists will reportedly head for Nashville as their next venue to try to break into the music industry.
Islands often call out our best selves and when this happens to you early in life, you never forget its power to keep drawing you back.
Philip Conkling is the founder of the Island Institute. He operates the consulting firm Conkling & Associates.