Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it- a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to the very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.
Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,- the poor little Indian's skeleton.
What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quahogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring's Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea, Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road. they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.
Really, this entire chapter from Moby-Dick is a love letter to Nantucket, full of legend and poetry. Look at that last image: ". . . the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales." I probably didn't need to repeat those lines, but I love them so much that I couldn't resist. It really paints a picture of the place and people who live there.
In a lot of ways, the description of Nantucketers sort of reminds me of the residents of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We are rugged folk who don't really slow down for bad weather. Sure, schools get shut down because of snow and ice. Yes, the Mackinac Bridge is closed in due to high winds (mostly to protect non-Yoopers from being blown over the railing into the Straits of Mackinac). I can remember one sub-zero Saturday afternoon when I saw an older woman fall on the sidewalk outside of church. I rushed over to see if she was injured. "No," the woman said, "but if you could just help me up." I lifted her to her feet. She limped into church and stayed for the whole Mass. Two months later, I found out that she had fractured four vertebrae when she fell. That is a true Yooper story.
Most of my relatives live downstate or in Wisconsin. They are all very leery about travelling through the U. P. in February to attend my father's funeral. In fact, several people who were very close to my father have begged off, citing weather and ice and cold as the reasons. I'm not judging them. I understand their reluctance to travel several hundred Upper Peninsula miles. If you are not used to the weather in this rocky, shark-shaped piece of land, you probably should stay home.
My dad loved this place. When he was living in Detroit, he always drove to the U. P. for deer hunting season. He told me stories of waiting at the Straits to take a ferry from Mackinaw City to Saint Ignace before the Bridge was built. (If you're a Yooper, you don't have to say "Mackinac Bridge.") The cars and trucks would be lined up for hours, he said, and people would walk up and down, selling sandwiches and coffee to the waiting hunters. In the summer, my dad and mom would pack all us kids into the family van and drive from Detroit to the far end of the U. P. We would stay in a camp in Gay, Michigan, not too far from Lake Superior, for two weeks, taking saunas and fishing and making bonfires.
Even though my father was born in Detroit, in his heart, he was always a Yooper. He moved us to the U. P. when I was seven or eight. I have very little memory of living in Detroit. My childhood was in Ishpeming. The Upper Peninsula is my home. It's where I'm rooted. When I write poems or essays or stories or blog posts, I can hear the waves of Lake Superior lapping in my ears. I carve my images from snow and ice.
Once he moved to the Upper Peninsula, my dad didn't leave it very often. Maybe for a funeral or wedding, but that's about it. I think he enjoyed the isolation of this land. Enjoyed being surrounded by water. It was the closest he could come to living on a deserted island. I think that's why I like the U. P., as well. I like the idea that, if somebody wants to visit me, they're really going to have to work at it.
Over these last few days, I've been trying to find my father in myself. We were very different people, with different beliefs and values. Yet, we were exactly the same in our love for this place. He made sacrifices to move his family here. I made sacrifices to keep my family here. Yet, I wouldn't change a thing about my life. To paraphrase Wallace Stevens a little, one must have a mind of winter to live in the Upper Peninsula.
My dad had a mind of winter. So do I.
Saint Marty is thankful this afternoon for his Yooper father.
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