visit your third place

Drove across the big bridge into the fairytale world of the Island and left the city behind me in another universe. Here, on the other side of the bridge, are the salty winds of the sea and quirky villagers who live in their hundred-year old cottages with broadband connections. They are sea-faring folk with an uncanny way of looking at me which makes me feel like my cityness is something to be pitied and that I am a lost soul if I can't tell the difference between a catamaran and a catboat. I feel a desperate need to be accepted, to be one of them, although I know it's impossible. I know my hippie ear-rings, my city accent and my uncertain smile stick out a mile.

I am lucky to have friends here though. I sit at an ancient plank table in one of these old cottages with the musty, vague smell of old wood and fish nets around me. There are flowers on the window sill and a white cat carefully inspects my laptop before I’m allowed to turn it on. I get to hear the latest gossip about the villagers and I listen eagerly, as if it’s important that I learn everything about the people in this little community. This time of the year, it’s all about setting the boats out to sea as the ice is finally gone.

This is the Islander: tall and proud, standing straight even when the storm sweeps in from the sea, smelling of salt, with bright eyes that see all the way to the horizon, knows that everything he can see is his. Not afraid of the deep of the sea, knows how to fix the engine and gut a fish, looks after his neighbour, talks without hesitation of his roots stretching back generations in this same place. It is the Islander or the Island I fell in love with. Not sure which one.

In comparison I have no roots, I just drift on the surface, envious. If I could choose a home, this would be it. But you can't choose. The Island chooses you.