Part paradise, part prison

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

The Grand Cayman Islands in the crystal-clear Caribbean Sea near Cuba attract a lot of scuba divers and other water sports enthusiasts.

There is a rather lengthy chapter on the island of Ni'ihau on Hawai'i. The author was fortunate enough to get a personal tour of the island with Ni'ihau owner Keith Robinson. Associated Press library photo

What is it about islands anyway?

That's the question at the heart of a new book called "Searching for Crusoe." No two islands are the same, yet we tend to lump them together in our minds.

Islands inspire feelings of passion, serenity, romance. They also are places of fear, retreat and imprisonment.

People go to islands to find themselves, and sometimes end up losing their minds. Some islands provide peace of mind; others trap the body and the soul.

So what is it about them that keeps so many of us enthralled?

Author Thurston Clarke (a distant relative of the Hawai'i missionary Thurstons) set out to visit a dozen islands as different from one another as can be, hoping to find out what they had in common.

His answers, if any, are rather inconclusive. But his journey through places near and far, historical and up-to-date, real and imagined, sure makes for entertaining reading.

Clarke, who lives on an island in New York state's Lake Champlain, can take his pick of thousands of islands to visit. He discards all the obvious choices, every place from Maui to Manhattan to Mykanos.

Instead, he tries to get a representative sampling of special, still mostly unknown places. Among them are the Vietnamese prison island Phu Quoc, the holy Greek island Patmos, the romantic Banda Neira in the Spice Islands, the slowly disappearing Maldives, the rugged British isle of Jura, the splendid isolation of Micronesia's Kosrae, even the utopian Norwegian islands of Eigg and Svalbard.

Since money apparently isn't a worry, Clarke flies off to some of the remotest spots on Earth and literally disappears for weeks. Isn't that part of the island lure?

Yet he finds that islands are almost always part pleasure and part prison. The same tourists who can't wait to get to their dream island vacation, can't wait to escape a few days later. Islanders too often want to leave, only to spend years yearning to return.

In Mas a Tierra, off the coast of Chile, Clarke finds the original inspiration for Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" novel, perhaps the book that still defines our modern island mindset. It's a cold, forbearing place that manages to keep a tight psychological grip on some of its residents, who'd rather die in poverty than live comfortably on the Mainland.

In the Maldives, he finds pleasure and prison principles side-by-side. Some islands are so thoroughly despoiled by tourism that they are living hells. A few miles away are perfectly preserved paradises, where development is barred forever. It's nip-and-tuck to say which one an islander prefers.

There's even a lengthy, interesting chapter on Ni'ihau. Clarke hangs around the privately owned Hawai'i island long enough to make friends with owner Keith Robinson, who ends up giving him a personal tour of the island usually off-limits to visitors.

"I suppose you could praise its stark beauty, but it was really the runt of the Hawaiian litter," he concludes. Which really isn't the point. In the end, Clarke finds out it's the islanders who make an island special.

Take Banda Neira in the Spice Islands, where a would-be king dreams of restoring nutmeg to its rightful place in the world marketplace. Or Micronesia's Kosrae, where many youngsters are named after American presidents, including Nixon, Reagan and Kennedy. Or Jura, off Scotland's coast, which was preferred to anyplace in the world by author George Orwell. Or Espiritu Santo in Melanesia, where any number of residents could vie to be the original model for Michener's Bloody Mary in "Tales of the South Pacific."

"You will not find 'islomania' in a dictionary, but the phenomenon exists just the same," Clarke claims near the start of his journey.

His book is living proof that the islomania does exist. Still, it's one of those things that you can't be adequately explained.

Mike Leidemann can be reached at 525-5460 or by e-mail at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com