Haven't you ever had time you wanted to
get away from it all? In March/April 1978, www.motherearthnews.com
published a story about a couple who bought McLeod's Island — a
90-acre island off the coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia,
Canada.
They have a few animals, spend very
little on groceries, and are pretty well sustained by the island
itself. Although it does present them with some challenges:
"The sea, you know, is not called
"restless" for nothing. A glass-smooth bay (as we've
learned so well!) can churn-sometimes seemingly in seconds-into a
windswept chaos of currents and combers. We've also seen that same
bay (the one in which our island is located) thaw and then completely
refreeze in just hours on a single December day.
Winters up here can be especially
variable. Continual spring-like thaws throughout 1976's cold season,
for instance, kept our bay filled with slushy ice that was too thick
to push a boat through ... but too dangerous for even a fox to walk
on. We were marooned for three full months, from the first of January
until the end of March. Last winter's record cold snap, on the other
hand, filled the bay so solidly with pack ice that we could hike back
and forth to the mainland for our mail and toboggan loads of supplies
any time we wanted."
For some of us, we find the Internet
gives us the freedom to be able to work and live almost any place we
want to. These people didn't have that luxury. I use the past tense
as I can't find any current information about them. Who knows? Maybe
the tide swept the out to sea.
Life is full of sacrifices. Some are
just more dear than others. Still, I don't think buying an island is
in my future.
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