(was) Away

El_ CI

Spent the last fews days in extreme green seclusion, see photo above. One of the only undeveloped barrier islands on the Atlantic coast, Cumberland is decidedly outside of the  20th century framework. Not, however, outside that of the 19th or the 21st, and this may be worth pointing out.

Though it has no paved roads, retails shops, bridges, gas stations, restaurants and a strictly limited population of visitors, CI is not in its native state. It was clearcut in the 17th-18th century and planted with Sea Island cotton. So the massive maritime forests have grown up in the meantime and only appear to be ancient. The ruins of the plantations those cotton crops supported are only a sort of bonus homage to the imperial past the newer forests now shroud.

Not unrelatedly, today it has decent cellphone reception, a generous stash of bicycles in good working order, a climate suitable to many types of citrus fruit trees and sustenance gardening, ample sun, wind and tidal energy resources (all yet untapped, save for a little gardening) and few other distractions for the contemplative figuring-out of new energy sources, cures, sad songs, epic poems, etc. Of course, rising seas may alter the shoreline configurations in the future.

But still, for now, it exists as a kind of future past. Something to consider.