It is a sunny, early spring morning and I am reporting from an isolated gulf island somewhere in the wild west. With only the clothes on my back, a selection of musical instruments, my trusty Mac and two cats, your bold and adventuring Daily Ant reporter has been taken to the very edge of human endurance that tested her survival skills to the limit. Yes, dear reader, I have made it through the night.
Foraging yesterday for food, water, a cleaner, fresher laundry experience and a shopping mall with interconnecting walkways, I found only a grocery store, a handful of restaurants and gift shops, and 4,499 people all engaged in their own desperate struggle for existence in the densely forested terrain. While basic needs can be met here, people have little or no contact with the conveniences of pollution, landfills, multi-storey car parking or extreme traffic congestion, and all attempts to introduce these luxuries have been met with war-like cries and volleys of poisoned arrows.
Forty days and forty nights I have wandered in the wilderness and found no evidence of an Imax. These rugged island dwellers have to make do with concerts, plays, pubs, art galleries and museum exhibits, markets in the summer, beaches, parks, ocean views and beautiful sunsets. No-one knows how they do it, for few return from this place. Indeed, despite being advised that there is no charge for leaving the island, I have opted to remain in an attempt to document how these hardy folk manage to live under such challenging conditions, with no traffic lights or highways, flyovers or rapid transit metropolitan rail systems. People get by with only beachcombing, swimming and kayaking, studio tours and craft fairs.
Encounters with locals are liable to take place all the year round in a number of different locations, for an extensive network of hiking trails and paved roads penetrate the deep bush here and local guides are available to lead you through the back country in Gertie (the community bus) or the island taxi. Artists are abundant, as well as potters, dancers, painters, writers and actors, to mention but a few. Farmers, tradespeople, consultants and other entrepreneurs can also be spotted making their living in innovative ways, and wildlife is everywhere, with raccoons, deer and domesticated dogs and cats just a few of the interesting mammalian residents you may meet on your daily excursions.
There are no airports here, no factories, no department stores. Yet somehow the islanders cope. Breathing in the cedar-scented air, hearing the wind speak and the conifers creak their answers, they find peace.
We will continue to investigate.
2016-03-16
The Blethering Ant 