Reflections inspired by Puritan Sonnet

TOPOPHILIA

Topophilia (from the Greek topos "place" and -philia "love of").

The poet W.H. Auden coined this word in 1948 to describe the affection we often feel for a particular place or type of landscape.

Today, the relationship between environments and humans is a field of study known as humanistic geography. Yi-Fu Tuan, a widely respected University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, has published several books exploring what motivates affective ties to a particular place, including one titled Topophila (1974).

Tuan suggests that these emotions can be based on more than an aesthetic appreciation of surface-level natural features in the landscape. A place, he argues, can impart its qualities to people who spend time there, "making them into the sort of people they are."*

Inspired by Wylie’s sonnet, this piece explores my love for Plum Island, Massachusetts—a place whose rugged qualities are inextricably linked in my mind with the hardy self-reliance I admire in “the sort of people” whose DNA I share.

*From Tuan’s 2014 Farewell Lecture: http://www.yifutuan.org/dear_colleague.htm

PLUM ISLAND

Winter 2013: a Plum Island cottage topples into the ocean.

There are good reasons not to love Plum Island.  

To start with, the place gives islands a bad name. Everyone who studies postcard geography knows that an island has idyllic white sand beaches dotted with colorful umbrellas. Majestic palm trees are linked by swinging hammocks. Nestled up against the shore there's a jeweled ocean that shimmers turquoise in the distance but is diamond-clear at your feet. The bright island sun warms bare skin and lifts moods. The water is warm enough to wade in without wincing, but cool enough to be delightfully refreshing. On the best islands, lovers lie side by side on bug-free beaches, snoozing and sharing sleepy, salty kisses. Waitstaff regularly emerge from thatched-roof bars and silently appear towel-side bearing daiquiris on a tray festooned with fuchsia orchids. Scents of pineapple and mango fill the air.

Plum Island violates all these expectations. 

A Massachusetts barrier island that takes a beating for the mainland, Plum Island has bruises and scars from its over-exposure to the elements. Winter storms regularly re-shape the coastline, eroding the dunes, burying sections of the jetties, and hauling one or more ocean-front cottages out to sea. Familiar natural landmarks disappear and, Brigadoon-like, magically reappear a decade or so later. It's unnerving. Every summer it's a different beach. 

Instead of palm trees, on Plum Island there are dense patches of spiky Marram Grass and scrubby, malformed wild rose bushes half-buried in the dunes. The water is not aquamarine or cerulean; it's deep indigo with gloomy undertones of dark grey. The tides are menacing. Swirling fans of lacy foam will tease the naive or over-confident into the mouth of the island's strong undertow—a fiendish vacuum that can suck in a sturdy fisherman, flip him head over heels, and drag him, arms flailing, out to the deep water beyond the breakers. 

And the water at Plum Island is not just cold. It's Rose-clinging-to-a-board-as-the-Titanic-sinks cold, aka freezing. The chill comes from the Labrador Current, a cold current in the Atlantic that brings chunks of melting icebergs from Greenland into the waters off New England. The current keeps northern coastal waters chilly throughout the summer. Even on a hot August afternoon, the icy temperature of the ocean off Plum Island causes a sharp, stinging pain that prompts involuntary 

exclamations ill-suited for the ears of the children shoveling sand into buckets nearby. 

That sand, by the way, is decidedly un-exotic. It's coarse, gritty, and abrasive, of the type used to create sandpaper. It’s possible to find postcard-beach sand on Plum Island, but you have to make the trek to the far, uninhabited south end of the island. There, above the high tide mark, is a strand of soft, fine-grained purple sand, the result of pinky-purple minerals deposited by a glacier during the last ice age. To get to Sandy Point, however, you have to drive six hot, slow, dusty miles, bouncing over potholes the size of lobster pots. If you stop along the way, be prepared to defend yourself from swarms of green-head salt marsh flies that want to eviscerate your flesh. One good reason to stop is to pick beach plums, the tart, cherry-sized fruit for which the island is named. But be careful: the Prunus Maritima (aka beach plum) shrubs tend to be guarded by sneaky patches of poison ivy. Needless to say, there are no orchids.

And yet, this small, forgotten step-child of an island holds a special place in my heart.

My affection for the Plum Island landscape is, no doubt, partially tied up in nostalgic memories of time spent there as a child. But the draw is based on something more. There’s a parallel between characteristics of the island and qualities of the people I associate with my time there— in particular, my maternal grandmother—Irene Donovan Lewis. The island doesn’t try to woo you: it is what it is. Grammie was like that—quietly self-assured and unapologetic. And just as the island endures despite the changes wrought by Mother Nature, Grammie was stoic and resilient no matter what challenges Fate had in store.

Like many women of her time and social class, my grandmother never questioned whether hard work was an essential part of life. At home, in her flowered house coat, she swept and mopped, knitted and sewed, baked and canned. Her basement shelves were stocked full of homemade items. Canned vegetables from the garden. Jars of jelly made from blackberries her father had planted when he first came over from Ireland. Irregularly-shaped blocks of lard-and-lye soap that we used to remove popsicle stains from our sundresses and to ease itchy skin when we had poison ivy.

My grandmother had few needs and fewer wants. The family cottage at Plum Island was built, by my grandfather, for camp-style living. There was no hot water unless you heated a kettle on the pot-bellied stove, which was powered by driftwood. The entrance to the bathroom was outside because no sandy feet were allowed inside. The kitchen door was a salvaged double-Dutch door that was usually half-open at the top. On “wicked hot” days, we would wait in line in our swimsuits, as if bellied up to a bar, and Gram would bring us lemonade in Flintstones glasses.

Gram knew how to “make do” with whatever materials were at hand.

There was no running to the store if she were missing something for a recipe. She fearlessly substituted alternate ingredients and expected us to eat the result, even if it tasted odd. If a cake refused to come out of the pan, she made trifle with the cake crumbs. When we forgot kerchiefs to cover our heads for mass, she pulled bobby pins and folded tissues from her cavernous purse and improvised head coverings. When I finished writing a letter and complained that there were no envelopes at the cottage, she got the pin cushion and showed me how to fold my letter, then blanket-stitch around the edges to seal it. There was nothing worth fussing about in her world. Problems could be solved with ingenuity. And if they couldn’t—well, your job was to accept it and move on.

The iconic image that comes to mind whenever I think of my grandmother is a vivid memory of her standing at the ocean looking out to sea. She looks strong, she is perfectly still, she is perfectly content. She is part of the island landscape.

Plum Island beach, sometime in the early 1960s

It’s low tide. Towels are tossed on the sand. Flip flops are kicked in the air. We race across the scorching sand, a mixed-age gang of cousins with varying degrees of sunburn, and screech to a halt as our toes hit the water. We do a manic Irish jig, hopping from one foot to the other, arms akimbo, reacting to the cold shock. Dilly-dallying, we avoid full immersion, dancing backwards to evade the scalloped waves until we’ve adjusted to the ocean’s temperature.  Once fully wet, we body-surf for hours, jumping and riding the waves until our swimsuit bottoms sag like diapers, and we have to wade in deeper to surreptitiously twist the crotch of our suits and rinse out the accumulated sand.

The entire time we are shrieking and splashing, a lone figure stands at the shoreline impassively watching the horizon. My maternal grandmother—Irene Donovan Lewis—is supposedly watching us while my mom and my aunt relax in their beach chairs, alternately reading and chatting.

But Grammie is not watching us. She’s looking out to sea, like the sweetheart of a sea captain waiting for his ship to pull into view. I stand next to her for awhile, waiting for the sand to cover my feet and root me like a tree. I keep looking but no boats or buoys are visible. There’s nothing to see today—unless you can see the coast of Ireland in your imagination. Which perhaps Grammie does.

A big wave crashes. My younger cousin falls face-first into the surf and, sputtering with a mouthful of sand and salt water, struggles against the retreating wave to regain a standing position. Without a word, my grandmother bends slightly at the waist, lowers her arm, and like a Deus Ex Machina, hoists him back among the living.

It’s now high tide. My mom and my aunt have gone back to the cottage to start supper. The waves are lashing the beach with a punishing fury, so we kids stay up in the dunes, our bodies turned away from the water, sorting our collected shells and braiding beach grass into jump ropes. We start discussing overheard adult gossip about the mysterious Hermit of Plum Island, a recluse who lives in a driftwood hut near Sandy Point. Inspired and imagining ourselves stranded like Robinson Crusoe, we pick our way along the high tide mark, sifting through seaweed, sticks, broken shells, cigarette butts, and other debris, hoping to gather enough driftwood to build our own fort.

Hours later—or so it seems during a childhood summer—my grandmother is still standing at the water’s edge. Her feet buried in the wet sand, her arms folded under the ample bosom of her one-piece skirted swimsuit, she calmly faces the sea, apparently oblivious to the Arctic chill of the water that rhythmically swirls around her ankles. Not infrequently, the waves splash high enough to coat her shoulders with the icy glitter of salt spray. She never moves or flinches. I think to myself: it is as though the sea is battering a boulder that will not budge.

The feeling of pride and comfort evaporates when I remember that, though large boulders look like a permanent part of the landscape, I have seen them vanish from one summer to the next. In the game of rock-versus-sea, the sea always wins.  So I invite my grandmother to come and sit with us, solemnly warning her that the powerful undertow can be dangerous. I am standing in front of her, my back to the waves, so she can see my face and know that I am serious.

Mother Nature chooses this particular moment to teach me a lesson. The sand beneath my feet is abruptly sucked out from under me by a child-sized tsunami. I lose my balance and topple backwards. Water, seafoam, and sand are all around me, in my eyes and in my mouth, as I am dragged under by a tremendous force. I fight my way to the surface and try to recover my footing. Before I can find the bottom and propel myself toward the shore, a monstrous wave crests over my head and arcs toward the shore, closing me inside its watery fist. Everything goes dark.

I have no memory of being rescued. What I do remember is my grandmother’s advice: “Never turn your back on the ocean.”

Island Philosophy

Though offered as simple, practical advice, that phrase—“Never turn your back on the ocean”—has come to have deeper meaning for me over the years. Many times, presented with an overwhelming challenge or coping with an inconsolable loss, I have worried that I will be sucked into the depths of fear or sadness and be overcome by dark thoughts. It has helped me to recall that phrase, to imagine myself on the beach at Plum Island, rooted in the sand like my grandmother, calmly facing the sea. 

The ocean, in this mental image, is a metaphor for the Big Scary Things we experience as humans—opportunities and losses, joys and sorrows. If we turn away from them, we are in danger of being overpowered and losing our footing. If we face them, if we bury our feet in the sand and confront them, we can not only survive their power, but may learn to recognize the beauty of their ebb and flow.

My grandmother faced a number of Big Scary Things in her life, but she never turned away. As a teenager, she worked for minimum wage in the woolen mills amid the deafening noise of the industrial looms. Later, she worked as a housemaid, washing, mending, and starching lace curtains for a family anxious to keep up appearances after their wealth had been depleted. As a young wife, she gave birth to six children in her own bed, including one—my mom—who almost died of a lung infection as an infant. When she welcomed her husband home from the war, he was missing three fingers. No matter what happened, Irene Lewis took it in stride with a cup of tea and a faint smile of resignation. She did not expect life to be easy, so nothing fazed her.

Even later in life, when she had a stroke and the strong arm that had yanked children from the clutches of the undertow hung limply by her side, my grandmother was, for me, an example of strength and grace under pressure. Like Plum Island, she bore the scars of life experience, but had a beauty all her own.

I love Plum Island for many reasons, but especially because it reminds me I am descended from an Irish grandmother who, aware of its power, appreciative of its beauty, and willing to brave whatever Mother Nature or Fate might have in mind, stood on the shore of a scrubby little island and went toe to toe with the Atlantic. 

Irene Donovan Lewis at Plum Island.

Footnote

The Hermit of Plum Island was a real guy. His name was Jack Helfant and he lived at Sandy Point from 1962-1965. His shack, which started out as a raft and later became a rudimentary houseboat, was made of canvas and driftwood with a hay roof.

Officials challenged Jack’s right to set up camp on public land, but he argued that he had served nineteen years in the Army and was owed a place to live. In the end, they let him stay.

LIVE AND LET LIVE - Ipswich. Mass., town officials have voted unanimously not to Interfere with Jack Helfant's desire to live as he chooses on a desolate beach of Plum Island. They were earlier concerned about sanitary conditions In and around his shelter, but the town health officer visited the place and found Helfant shaved and in clean clothes with "everything In order". Helfant, 45, a veteran of 19 years Army service has lived in his houseboat-shack for over a year.

The Portsmouth Herald,

Portsmouth, New Hampshire,

July 17, 1963 -- Page 16

Jack Helfant passed away just a few years after the above photo was taken. His obituary appeared under National New Briefs in the Nov. 22, 1967 edition of the Chicago Tribune. The announcement stated that “the one-time hermit of Plum Island, near Ipswich, Mass., has died, apparently of heart disease.” He was 49.