It is unbelievably magic.
And a Pandora's box of strange emotions.
I lived on a remote island paradise, and worked there as a nature guide.
It was about 300m long. It took 20 minutes to walk around it. Maybe 5 minutes to run around it.
35 people lived on it, and I was one of them. We all worked in a tiny resort hidden amongst the trees.
My time on the island created some of the most magical experiences of my life, some of which I'll outline here.
But it came with a peculiar psychology. Something about being on a small island for a long time affected me mentally and emotionally. "Island fever" or "cabin fever" is probably well known, but another interesting effect was "island time" which screwed with me.
On the dark side, Death can find the weak more easily on a tiny island than on the mainland.
And when you permanently leave the island after a long period of time, you are permanently different. Wired differently. In a way that I hadn’t fully realised until I wrote the story here.
For me, I left the island with a profound sense of "magic" embedded in my body.
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THE ISLAND
The island was Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
About 400 tourists visit the island each day.
I worked here: http://www.greenislandres
ort.com...
No ATM on the island, so cash was hard to come by. You had to ask the resort reception to give you cash out of their cash register.
Mobile phone reception was non-existent once you stood amongst the trees. No mobile phones ringing. No people glued to Facebook.
You could step off a boat, onto the sand, walk in amongst the trees… and lose touch with civilised reality if you wanted to.
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THE MAGIC
Your first few days on the island are euphoric. You can't believe you are here.
The water is unbelievably clear. Thousands of fish hunt around in the shallows in packs, separating around humans or predators like they do on TV nature shows. Turtles pop their heads out of the water.
The sun is warm. The beaches are clean. The ice cream is cheap.
Sunsets make spectacular golden pathways glittering on the sea, and you feel you can walk across that golden path into Heaven.
My first day there, I go for a swim in the ocean just off the beach, and "Oh My God! It's a TURTLE!!" I'm under the water so I don't shout it, but I think it so loud and with so much force that the thoughts press from my brain out through my face and into the water in front of me.
About 10 meters from me are a couple of turtles munching on a patch of seaweed with all the peacefulness of tiny, round, brown cows in a field. Except they are under the water. And they are not cows.
My body thrills with excitement, my nervous system overloaded with golden electricity. There is something absolutely wonderful about being in the presence of a wild and beautiful being.
I want to leave the turtle alone - it's wild and untamed. I don't want to be one of those weird people who get all giddy around wild creatures, and run up to them and scare them away.
But I can't stop my body from paddling towards it as softly as possible, trying to get as close as I can without scaring it away. I'm within 10 meters. Then 7. Then 5.
"Oh My God! It's going to let me TOUCH IT!!"
I was a child again, lost in the moment, seeking to experience something magical which had never happened before in my life - *maybe* I'll get to touch it with my fingers - touch the shell of a living, wild turtle. And it would *allow me* - a kind of friendship connection between us.
But before I could get any closer, it flipped itself away, creating a safer distance between us, and not really caring to share the moment with me.
It didn’t matter. I had got up close to a turtle. A being that was free, with a different intelligence and understanding of the world. A gorgeous wild spirit.
That was enough.
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THE WORK
They pay you money to be here, to live here. They call it "your job".
On the first day of "your job", they hand you a glass of champagne and tell you it's part of your job to share a "welcome drink" with new resort guests by the pool. You find that you like drinking free champagne by the pool.
During the day, they point at gorgeous colorful fish in the sea, and tell you it's your job to drop a little bit of food in the sea every day and make the fish happy. You find that you like making fish happy. People take photos of the fish while they dance in the water, fighting for the food, making the water boil like spaghetti in a pot with all their action.
At night, they walk you out to a deserted beach just 2 minutes away, point at the stars in the sky, and they tell you it's your job to bring people here to look at the stars. You stand around gazing at stars, and chase some crabs on the beach. You find that you like the stars. A lot.
So you start doing "your job" each day. You drink champagne. You feed some fish. You point at stars. People smile at you, and you feel great.
You work 2 hours each afternoon and evening, but get paid for 8.
"What should I do with the other 6 hours - do I have to do heaps of paperwork?"
"No,", they say, "you can do whatever you want. As long as you keep your work phone with you so we can call you if we need your help. The person who had the job before you used to go home and watch TV."
I spent my 6 hours each day out on the beach dreaming and looking at the sky, or writing a book on a crappy laptop that permanently died after just 3 months, or talking to pretty girls that worked elsewhere in the resort.
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THE BEAUTY
Everything jumps out at you as being unbelievably beautiful. The women seem more attractive than usual. The men appear stronger, more masculine. You imagine everyone who isn't a slave in the resort must be someone rich, or famous, or magnificently important back in their home country.
The sand feels crunchier.
The sun warms and relaxes your muscles more deeply than normal.
Your boss is not as much of an idiot as other bosses.
There are so many positives it is overwhelming.
You feel like you have hit the jackpot in terms of lifestyle - literally, you are living in the most gorgeous place on Earth.
And they give you money to be there. Not a lot of money, but who cares?
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THE STARS
The stars are 3 times brighter. Like something out of childhood tales of Aladdin with the genie in the lamp.
If you have lived in cities all your life, and you go somewhere like my island, there is a profound shift in your perception and mental state when you first see the stars at night.
In a city, the light from the city bounces off the clouds and atmosphere, creating a slightly reflective layer that blocks a lot of detail of the sky beyond. It's faint - but it creates a kind of dome ceiling above you.
Out there, on the island, away from the lights, there is no dome. The sky is unleashed, and has no barrier. You walk out from under the trees, onto a dark beach, and look up.
POW !
The universe fills your vision, and pushes open your eyelids, and expands the bubble of your mind.
The stars are so white-bright it's like they have moved forward in the sky towards you, trying to come closer to you.
The black of space is sooooo black. You always thought the sky was black at night. You realise what you have been seeing in the past was just a dark shade of purple - not true black.
The spaces between the stars "feels" impressively deep. Mind-bogglingly deep. Unfathomable.
Your mind does not tangle with the light reflected by the air or the clouds. Your mind does not experience a barrier. It simply "flows". Out there. Out past its normal boundary. Out beyond the stars.
And that feeling of “flow” is incredible. A feeling of unbelievable freedom. Your mind is floating. Expanding. Easily and naturally. And somehow, "everything makes sense". The brain is doing something awesome - overriding all your problems, doubts and fears. "Everything is OK," your mind says. "That little stuff doesn't matter. I have a bigger vision now. And the vision is awesome. I'll make my life worthwhile somehow..."
Every… single… time... that I did a star-gazing tour and led a group of city people out onto the beach at night, and had them all huddled in a loose group on the sand, and then said the magic words, "Look up!", there was an instant reaction.
"OOOhaaaahhh". From all the different voices. From all the different cultures.
Everyone reacted the same.
"OOOaaaahhhhh…."
Then excited gibbering to each other, pointing up at the stars.
The universe was flooding their brains. And they loved it.
Hearts expanded like a soft warm glow around all of us standing there on the beach, gazing at the heavens.
I'd leave them be. “Take as long as you want…”
It is always magic to experience the stars.
Couples would kiss. Friends would lean closer to each other, and talk and laugh. People would smile at each other, without knowing each other's names.
It was magic.
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THE SAND
The sand was not normal sand made from tiny rocks. It was tiny pieces of broken coral. The whole island was simply the broken down skeleton of an old reef, populated with trees on top to hold the whole thing together.
The "sand" was rougher under your feet. Unpleasant to walk on in a lot of places. You had to feel your way forward sometimes. Or wear shoes on the beach, which wasn't cool. I went barefoot the whole time, and just put up with the occasional pain. And sometimes when you lie down to sun bake, you get jabbed by sharp pieces of bigger jagged coral that hasn't broken down yet.
The sand was home to hundreds and hundreds of little crabs, smaller than your hand. Some were only as big as your fingernail. "Ghost crabs" they called them, because they are white and only come out at night.
They were funny little crabs, harmless, peaceful. You can chase them on the beach and they run in front of you like crazy white spiders. Or bury themselves in the sand, hoping you will leave them alone.
They used to hide from me by burying their eyes in the sand. "As long as I can't see the big scary monster, it must be gone…" the crabs would say to themselves. Their bodies would still be sticking out of the sand, but their eyes were buried. I would pick them up, gripping the back of their shell between my thumb and fore-finger, and they would wriggle their legs in surprise - genuinely surprised that their trick had not worked.
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THE FISH
The fish were not afraid of you. They swim by lazily, eyeballing you. You are just a great big jellyfish in the water that can hardly move. They are little speedboats, cruising around and sometimes shooting forward so fast you can't keep track of them with your eyes - like little bullets under the water.
They are masters of their territory. While you are a visitor - an alien from a strange world, visiting their habitat.
I got challenged once by a trigger fish while I snorkelled in its territory about 50m out at sea. It was the size of a small dog. Usually fish scoot away if you approach them in the water - if you make a sound or a splash or get too close. This one came straight at me. At the speed of a walking human.
Nothing to be alarmed about, while it was far away. From a distance, it looked beautiful. Amazing, even.
When it got within 5 metres of me, it started gnashing its teeth. I hadn't realised it had one-inch needle-like teeth poking out of its jaws. Now I noticed big time.
It swam straight at me, gnashing its teeth as it got closer. My heart started pounding - I couldn't help it - it was a primal thing. My body was reacting to a threat, to a danger. If we had been on land, I would have laughed at such a small thing baring its teeth at me - it was only the size of a tiny dog. But in the water, I was unable to move away - I could only move at the pace of a jellyfish, while it could move like a racing greyhound if it wanted to.
It came close enough to eyeball me - to literally stare into my eyes, and threaten me with its teeth. About 2 metres away or slightly less. I looked into the depths of its black eyes, saw an intelligence there sizing me up, weighing me, judging.
Then it turned aside a few degrees, and curved away to my right. And disappeared.
Weird.
I saw fish cruising in packs that would have measured as long as your leg (called Giant Trevally), cutting through the swarms of small 2-inch fish that sought safety in the shallows.
I used to throw bits of food to them as part of my fish-feeding job. They would hang around in the water like hungry black dogs, circling and watching me standing on the jetty above the water.
If I lifted my arm to throw some food... the moment the little chunk of food left my hand and arced through the air... they would shoot forward like missiles, estimating the complete travel arc and its landing point, and their mouths would snap up the food in the moment that it hit the water line.
Amazing eyesight, speed, power.
And out beneath the water at the end of the jetty lived a big old groper - with a body as long as your leg - the "old man of the sea", a fish decades old that had made the island his home.
(That's not exactly the right species in the picture, but it's the only one on Wikipedia, so it will have to do.)
He was a bit of a socialite, preferring to hang around the jetty where he could observe the snorkelers, scuba divers and the occasional gang of naked swimmers dive-bombing off the end of the jetty (they were the staff from the resort).
This big old fish casually swam past me one day as I walked ankle-deep in the tiny waves lapping the beach. He was so close I could have put my foot on him. He didn't have a care in the world - just slowly ambled past, and went on his way. Like a big brown log, with eyes on the front and a mouth that could have swallowed my foot whole.
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TURTLES
Turtles never let us touch them. They were right there, about 20 metres from the beach, nearly every day. They were not afraid of us, as long as we kept at least 5 to 10 metres away. They were usually there in the clear water, munching away on seaweed at the bottom of the shallow water.
I used to point them out to visiting people while we walked along the jetty above the water. "See that brown rock there?" I'd say, pointing at a round brown "rock" below us in the water. They'd peer down… "Yes, I see it…" "Just wait…" I'd say. We'd all wait. And a few minutes later, the "rock" would rise up through the water, and a turtle's head would pop out.
If you've never seen a turtle gasp for air after 15 minutes in the water, it's an amazing experience.
Before they surface, you can't really see much detail, because the water distorts your vision - everything is hazy. All you can see is a brown "rock" coming closer.
Suddenly, their head breaks through the water's surface into the air. And you SEE this amazing creature, up close and in detail. That scaly, leathery pattern on their faces that make them so distinctive - kind of like a giraffe pattern, but the pattern is smaller and shaped like diamonds. Their mouth hangs open with a darkness inside, literally like a small cave where no light penetrates. And they let out a forced sigh, like a human swimmer who comes up from the depths and desperately needs air. "Paaaaaahhhhh!" the turtles say. And then they gasp in more air.
But it's their eyes… Their eyes captivate, hold your interest. It's hard to say what it's like to see turtles' eyes as they stare up at the sky, gasping in that air. Dark, liquid orbs. A different kind of intelligence inside them. And tears… it looks like they have tears in their eyes. Obviously it's the salt water - they've just surfaced from the ocean. But still, it looks like an ancient being has risen from the depths with tears in their eyes. And you wonder what they know, to make their eyes look so beautiful and sad…
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CABIN FEVER
If you have never experienced cabin fever before, an island is a great place to feel it.
It sucks. Whether it's on an island, a ship, a plane or anywhere else where you get cooped up, it sucks.
But on an island, it sucks less.
The dazzling waters around the island are magical when you first arrive.
They soon become your prison.
You are "locked" in a jail cell that looks like an island.
What you feel, as a real sensation in your body and in the depth of your being, is a desperate need to "get off the island".
You need to escape.
And go to bigger pieces of land where there are shops, and people, and roads, and cars.
You need to get on that boat, and spend as much time as possible on the mainland.
At any cost.
At the cost of your job - you don't mind if you "accidentally" miss your job’s start time by getting stuck on the mainland because you missed the boat to the island.
At the cost of your bank balance - you will spend all your money on the mainland, to "reward" yourself for having to suffer isolation and imprisonment on the lovely island.
At the cost of social dignity - you find yourself talking too much to strangers and cafe staff on the mainland, trying to get some sense of "normal" back into your life.
You find yourself feeling desperate to be part of civilisation again.
You need the land to stretch further under your feet than just a few hundred meters or so. You crave the freedom to walk in one direction for as long as you want, and not reach a barrier such as the salty blue sea and be forced to turn back for home.
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THE URGE TO DO CRAZY THINGS
I experienced a kind of passive-aggressive mentality that went hand-in-hand with the cabin fever.
The more that the cabin fever set in, the more I began to fuck with people. To play little social games and experiments with them, to see what I could get away with, just to amuse myself mentally and stimulate myself, and to combat boredom.
And they did it to me. Everyone was doing it to everyone.
Nothing bad. Nothing violent. Nobody stole stuff. We didn’t beat each other up.
It was just little irritating crap to drive each other slightly crazy, but not full “Jack Nicholson in that movie” crazy.
Someone might put fruit in your shoes while you sleep, so when you wake up and get dressed for work you can’t get your foot into your shoe.
That kind of thing.
One guy who worked in the resort with me got drunk one night and dressed up in a woman’s dress and make-up so he looked like a bizarre version of a woman. He was as attractive as a gorilla in makeup. Then he ran throughout the resort screaming like a banshee. I mean, I do some silly and crazy things, but this was serious shit. He ran all over the place, in front of the 5 star restaurant with all these peaceful honeymooning couples eating expensive dinners, and in front of premium 5-star guests paying as much money for one night in the resort as we earned in a week.
The manager on duty eventually grabbed him and sent him home to bed.
In the morning, the boss pulled him in for an “interview”.
“Why did you do it?” asks the boss.
“I don’t know.” says banshee guy.
And he really didn’t.
You can’t control what you do after a while - you have to let out steam in unpredictable ways, otherwise you mentally crack.
Banshee guy received discipline (a warning letter), and had to promise to never do it again. Imagine if your employment record had a bit of text on it that said: “Works well under pressure. But occasionally dresses up as a woman and runs around screaming in front of strangers.”
He didn’t get fired because it was almost normal for someone to “freak out” like that on the island.
Some people would swim naked and hope they got caught by other staff (I was one of those kind of people).
One guy dyed his hair electric green. Then had to shave it off before he started work the next day (wild hair color was not allowed at our resort).
Another guy tried dancing on the helicopter landing pad, drunk as a rock star, and fell off the side, falling 2 meters onto rocks below head-first. He came to work the next day with a broken face. Everyone just shrugged. “It happens,” they said. What they meant was, “it happens a lot here on the island”.
Everyone who lived on the island long-term simply took this mild level of craziness all in their stride. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s simply part of island life.
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ISLAND TIME
The longer I worked on the island, the more I became influenced by "island time".
“Island time” means that when you are on the island, 9am no longer means 9am anymore. It might mean 9.15am or 9.30am.
In a city, there are rhythms - traffic lights stop and start, people rush around and disappear into shops and pop out again later. You get a sense that time is regulated.
Out on the island, time simply stretched away in front of you like the endless ocean, getting hazy at the horizon.
Time is not seen in precise focus any more - it’s as though you see it through a heat wave, wavering like a mirage in the desert - hazy, flexible and fluid.
The stronger the grip of "island time", the more flexible time gets - 9am might eventually mean “any time in the morning up until noon” if you stay on the island too long.
This had dramatic effects on my ability to turn up for work at the right time.
Here was the problem: all of us working in the resort on the island had to start at a certain time, and finish at a certain time. Sound familiar? Eg, 9am start, 5pm finish.
9am is an exact time, when viewed by a rigid person like "your boss". It’s the time written in numbers on a computer screen. These times are not flexible. Not fluid. They are as rigid as nails driven into your soft little brain.
Whatever shows on your boss's computer screen is the "right time", and it makes the boss happy. It follows a predictable, mechanical rhythm.
But there is nothing mechanical about a small island. No mad rush of rhythms. The only real rhythm is the sun coming up in the morning, and sinking into the sea at night.
The “right time” written on a computer is very different to "island time".
The “right time” is a physics text book. “Island time” is poetry.
Having 2 types of time in your life is a bit of a drama.
For example, I was supposed to start work every day at 4.15pm.
But I would turn up on "island time", which meant anywhere between 4pm and 4.30pm.
This aggravated the freak-juice out of my manager. He would point at my name on a time sheet, with the word "Start" next to it, and after that came "4.15pm".
I "start" at 4.15pm, according to the "right time".
It was written in black and white on a page, and that page was stuck to a door in the office, so that meant it was "the rules".
No problem. At one level, I get it - everyone obeys the rules so things work smoothly. I also studied physics at university so I understood the concept of time fairly profoundly.
But I found it hard to obey anything involving the “right time” and "the rules" while living as a free spirit on the island.
The “right time” of 4.15pm was like a log stuck in a river of free-flowing time, with the water pushing on it and separating around the alien object, refusing to merge with it. Whereas I was floating naked in the water, flowing past the log and on towards the sea. One with the flow of life. Hoping to meet a turtle along the way, and float out amongst the stars.
The part of me that lived on the island and swam with the fish, and found magical turtles laying eggs on the peaceful beach in the dawn light, and showed people the magic of the stars in the heavens at night, and made love with hypnotic women on deserted beaches under the moonlight… the guy who didn't give a fuck about money or whether he would still be employed the next day… this guy simply didn't sync with the “right time”.
My poor boss and I would have daily arguments, that always went something like this:
My poor boss: I *need* you to be here, dressed and ready for work, at 4.15pm.
Me: Why?
Him: Because that's when you start work.
Me: But I start work when I get here and actually "start work". I can't start work if I am not here.
Him: (pauses, then ignores the philosophy). Look, just turn up a few minutes before you are scheduled to start.
Me: I could do that. But you know it’s hard for me guarantee it. And if I come here 5 minutes early, will those few minutes really make a difference?
Him: No.
Me: So… if I turn up 5 minutes late, does that make a difference?
Him: Yes.
Me: So 5 minutes early makes no difference, but 5 minutes late makes a big difference?
Him: Yes.
Me: How?
Him: It just does.
Me: You mean the productivity lost in those 5 minutes makes a difference to the company's profit?
Him: No. You know it doesn't.
Me: Oh. (Pause… we stare at each other…) Well… if it doesn't make a difference, why do I have to be here?
Him: You don't. You don't have to be here. I wish you would leave. But we have to employ someone to do your job. And at the moment, you're all we've got.
Me: Yes, I know. That sucks. (Pause…) What if I turn up just 3 minutes late instead of 5, does it matter?
Him: (laughing) Look, you and I both know that it doesn't matter. It… doesn’t… matter. NOTHING MATTERS. I just need you here at 4.15pm.
Me: If it doesn't matter, why do you need me here? What if I stay home and you just call me when you need me and I'll come here?
Etc, etc.
This went on every day for months.
And I kept turning up late every day.
It was simply "island time" vs "right time". And on the island, "island time" wins.
It got to the point where I would get a knock on the door of my little island home 15 minutes before my work time. I opened the door to see my manager standing there.
"Are you actually coming to work?" he would ask.
"Yes, I'm just putting my shoes on," I would say.
He would stare at me. I was dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts. My work uniform was probably crumpled on the floor somewhere.
I would pantomime reaching down and picking up my work shoes, and slowly putting them on my feet.
He would leave, somewhat satisfied that there was a chance I was serious about coming to work on time. And I would go back to relaxing for a while. Then I would freak out and realise I was going to be late… and I would arrive at work on island time, regardless. Even if I tried to turn up on time by leaving my home early.
It wasn't something I could control.
"Island time" continued to bug me until the day when I got tired of the whole thing. It just magically went away. Something switched inside me and I decided it was easier to turn up to work at 4.15pm instead of talking philosophy for half an hour with my manager. Somehow I aligned with the “right time” on the computer clocks. I aligned with the time written next to my name on the time sheet stuck on the office door. Maybe I just got bored with the whole "time" conversation with my poor boss, and wasn't getting any humor out of it anymore.
(Epilogue to the "island time" battle with my poor manager...)
I ended up talking to that manager many years later, after not seeing him for all that time. Both of us had moved off the remote island and now lived in civilisation. I asked him what it was like to work with me. He said it was excruciating trying to get me to do stuff. But at the same time, he enjoyed the philosophy and thinking about why I had to turn up for work at the “right time”. :)
It turned out he liked having the "rules" challenged and bent into odd shapes by well-meaning free spirits like me.
I wish I'd known that earlier, while I was working there. Then I would have turned up an hour late instead of 5 or 15 minutes every day. And everything would have been fine.
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IMAGINATION
You tend to dream a lot.
I mean, imagine stuff.
Something like this: "When I get off this island, I will…. [ insert big achievement here ] ", you say to yourself, gazing out over the sea at the most gorgeous sunset you've ever seen in your life.
“I can’t wait to get away from this place and do [ insert another big dream here ],” you say, as you swim around with fish colored like rainbows.
You are surrounded by a type of heaven that you were pining for before you arrived here, when you used to work in those horrible things called "cities" - places where all the trees have been replaced with huge concrete boxes, and where no living creature dares to go except humans, lizards and insects.
And here you are, on an island, surrounded by unspeakable beauty, and you find yourself contemplating ways to leave it, to go back to somewhere like a city - to return to civilisation triumphant - as some kind of hero.
You find yourself dreaming of "big things" that you could do with your life. More and more you dream, as the months go by. Coupled with "island fever" - the urge to get off the island at all cost, this becomes an unstoppable force that is destined to make you eventually leave the island and seek ways to put those big dreams into action.
It's not enough to be surrounded by paradise.
You need… more.
It’s something undefinable.
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MEDICAL
My island was classified as a "remote" island, which means it was too far away for the normal medical services to respond to any emergencies in any meaningful way.
What that means is…
You are on your own.
If you are on medication, and run out of tablets, and start shaking, there's nothing we can do right now to stop it. You are going to shake like a vibrator for about an hour - the time it takes for a helicopter to get here from the mainland hospital.
I saw people who got stung by jellyfish - the BAD kind. The kind that makes you wish you were dead.
It was part of my job to know about jellyfish, and in the official text book it said that if you get stung by this kind of jellyfish, you will experience unbelievable, mind-bending pain.
And then it starts to get bad - you will have a kind of spiritual and psychological meltdown, where you literally believe and experience that Hell is coming towards you, the End of the World is coming now, that the Doorways of Doom are opening.
(Research if interested: Irukandji syndrome)
The poison is in your brain, working away on your perception, and nothing will stop it. Nothing on our small island, anyway.
You are literally going to Hell.
That was a wild thing to read in a text book, and then see people staggering around with jellyfish poison in them, with Doom in their eyes and Hell opening to receive them… AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO HELP THEM.
They had to wait up to 2 hours before they could get on the boat and arrive on the mainland where there were professional medical people who probably pushed enough drugs into them to make those Doors of Doom close and bend back the other way into Hell itself.
Sure, we have basic supplies and equipment. We can patch you up if you cut yourself. We can sew skin back together. We can give you pain-killers.
But if you stop breathing, it's 50-50 whether you will make it.
And if you have a heart attack, well… you are in deep shit.
We had a defibrillator - one of those machines where you pick up a metal thing in each hand and slap it on someone's chest and yell "Clear!", then zap them with an unholy amount of electricity to try and jump-start their heart.
I was trained in how to use it, and how to keep someone alive while we waited for the mainland hospital's helicopter to hopefully arrive in time. It takes nearly one hour for the helicopter to fly from the mainland hospital across the ocean to our island. We have to keep you alive for one hour. Breathe life into your lips, pump your chest to keep blood flowing through your brain, and zap you with hair-raising jolts of electricity. For one hour. There is nothing else we can do.
That was freaky, knowing that if I was out on that beach in the dark with 30 resort guests on a night tour, showing them the stars in a wonderful sky, and if someone collapsed on the sand, I'm the only thing that stands between them and Death coming to claim them. And all I’ve really got as medical tools are my hands and my breath.
OK. That’s fine. Most people choose not to think about it. And most people are fine, and have a great time on the island.
But here's the thing.
It's a small island. 35 people live there. Maybe another 30 to 80 were guests in the resort. Everyone keeps to themselves. The beach is often deserted - especially in early mornings, afternoons and at night.
There's simply not a lot of eyes watching everyone all the time.
So if you have a breakdown of some kind, or worse - a heart attack - maybe no one sees you. Or they don't find you quickly enough - especially when time is ticking and each second matters. Maybe a mobile phone doesn't work when the call is made to bring the zap machine or medicine ASAP - maybe the battery is flat. Our phone chargers were not always reliable. Maybe the phone's reception doesn't work - we didn't always have a clear line of sight to the phone antennae for our wireless phones, particularly at the far ends of the island.
Any little thing could go wrong, and even one minor delay or problem in the chain of events can make a massive difference to the outcome.
We simply didn’t have the technology or resources. It’s not like stepping back into the Dark Ages. But you won’t realise how much you miss high technology and fast phone calls to hospitals until you are on a beach convulsing, and the Doors of Doom are opening.
On the mainland, or a larger island with more resources, it's not a problem. There are always more mobile phones on the people around you, for instance. If one phone doesn't work, try the next one. We didn't always have that luxury on the island.
On the island, if any little thing goes wrong…
…then right there in paradise, right on the beautiful clean beach, in broad daylight under a golden sun in a wonderful blue sky, surrounded by happy people…
…life can pass out of someone's eyes, and fade away into the atmosphere somewhere.
That's how I saw my first dead body.
And it brought home just how remote we really were out there.
On that day, there was a guy snorkeling in the water, lying face down, floating peacefully. Looking at the fish.
It’s broad daylight. About 10am. There's about 200 people on the beach.
He's maybe 30 meters or more out from the beach - too far for someone to just walk into the water and touch him to see if he would respond.
Imagine you are standing on the beach in your swim gear - a nice bikini, or a pair of swim shorts. You are on holiday. Looking out at the blue ocean with swimmers everywhere. You are happy. Everything is perfect. There is a small crowd of people on the beach, all sun baking and having a holiday.
You don’t pay any attention to that one guy. He looks just like 50 other people snorkelling, lying face down in the water, barely moving - every one of them looking down at the fish in the water.
Except this guy is having a heart attack. That's why he's not moving much.
It happened often enough that all us staff were trained in how to respond to it.
On the beach are 2 lifeguards, scanning the water constantly for this type of thing. They are trained. They have seen it before.
It's just that you just can't tell if someone is just relaxing in the water looking down at fish... or if they have passed out and are dying. Everyone looks the same. All you can see is the back of their heads, their backs and legs. There can be 50 people floating in the water, most of them not moving much.
The lifeguards constantly scan the swimmers, looking for danger. Sometimes you just get an inkling that something just ain't right - "That guy hasn't moved for a minute. This could be a situation... Shit - is it real or not? Get the boat - let's go check him…. (watches for a few more seconds)… SHIT - he's still not moving - GET THE FUCKING BOAT!"
Adrenalin kicks in. The lifeguards are a blur of action. The boat zooms out to the guy.
They pulled him out of the water.
They pushed life-giving air into him using mouth to mouth while he was still in the boat, as soon as they pulled him out of the water. His body receives the air forced in. But his system won’t kick-start. He is far far away, maybe already gone.
The boat zooms back to the beach. They dump him in the sand. One lifeguard continues mouth to mouth and pumping his chest.
The other lifeguard makes the call - "Bring the defibrillator NOW!"
I was on my day off, so I hadn't been called to respond to the emergency. It was another guy who got the call. He had to sprint for the defibrillator - run faster than he's ever run in his life. Snatch it off the wall in the main office. Run back to the lifeless body on the beach with a crowd of people gathered round dressed in bikinis and swim shorts with sad, worried faces.
Maybe 3 minutes has passed since they pulled him out of the water. Maybe less.
While our guy ran with the heart-shock machine, a call went through to the mainland hospital. Emergency doctors ran for the helicopter, and it lifted off into the air. But it would be 40 to 60 minutes before it would reach the island.
It's now deeply apparent how limited we are on the island. How important medical help is when bad shit happens. We don't have a full set of skills. We don't have a doctor. We don't have a full hospital-grade medical supply or equipment. We just have a "shock machine" and some basic drugs, we know how to breathe into people's bodies, pump their chest and keep them alive with our mouths and hands - basic human stuff. All we can do is keep you alive until the "real doctors” get here in the helicopter.
If it's a simple situation, we will succeed, and you will live. But you have to be fairly alive to begin with.
If you are in "the grey zone" between life and death, with a tenuous hold on life, you will say goodbye to the Earth and the Sun and life as you know it. You will walk in another world. Your family will say goodbye to you, before this day is over. Before this hour is over.
The helicopter coming out is “protocol”, which means they have to leave immediately and try to get here in time, every single time we make that call. They have to try. Even if there is no chance they will make it, they still try. But based on experience, they already know that a lot of times they will arrive, pick up a body and go back to the hospital with it.
Sometimes, you are just destined to go back to the stars.
They shocked him once there in the sand, breathed into him, pressed his chest, and shocked him again. Cycle after cycle.
Word got round through the staff.
I heard about the situation maybe 40 minutes or so after they pulled the guy out of the water.
Sometimes you can keep them alive that long.
I went to see what I could do.
The manager on duty had done his best - taking over from the lifeguards and zapping the guy's heart and doing CPR to try to oxygenate the brain for 40 minutes while the helicopter flew out to the island from the hospital. 40 minutes non-stop, trying to stop the guy dying or turning into a brain-dead vegetable.
This manager and I had done our training together.
When I arrived and said, "Anything I can do?", I could see the guy was turning green. Lack of oxygen throughout the body. The manager shook his head. Too much time had passed without a response. The guy’s face and body were stiff. Rigor mortis had set in. This guy wasn't coming back. Death hovered in the air around him, then reached out with a cold hand and stroked the nerves in my stomach.
The helicopter was still in the air, not too far away, but now their arrival with their professional medical doctors would be useless.
The family had been called from where they were relaxing in the sun somewhere else on the island. They arrived at the body just as I was leaving.
There was nothing I could do.
Nothing anybody could do.
That's the risk of being on a tiny, remote island.
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THE QUIET, AND THE NIGHT IS "ALIVE"
Quietude dropped out of the sky every night, and settled like blanket over the island.
A lot of guests were honeymooners - seeing the world together. They tended to disappear to their rooms and not be seen again until morning.
Some guests were on holidays and in party mode. They wanted to stay up all night, and often complained that there was no night-club or late night bar open until dawn.
However, you couldn’t really “party” on the island.
The dark and the “quiet” hung like a thick curtain throughout the trees surrounding our buildings. Our light from the flame lamps and the soft eco-friendly fluorescent bulbs pushed the dark away a bit. But the dark resisted, and pressed back on the light. We all hushed a bit, our voices lower. Laughter would ring out occasionally, then die away. Most people spoke softly to each other after dark, their faces lit by our flame lamps.
It wasn’t a bad thing.
It stimulated a sense of romance, which was awesome - the soft lights and quiet darkness.
But beyond that, at night the air around us - the dark itself - felt pregnant. Waiting. Expectant. Like there was something watching us. Like there was something “alive” in the darkness. And we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves by disturbing the quiet.
This all sounds very child-like. Like there are monsters in the cupboard, or monsters under the bed. It wasn’t like that - it wasn’t childish. People weren’t afraid. They just didn’t want to upset the balance. Nobody told them to keep quiet. They just did, of their own accord. Hundreds and hundreds of people, from all different lands and languages, all keeping quiet of their own accord, night after night.
I was often walking about in the dark as part of my job on the island. I had to go to the beach at night, to pack up the chairs from the day guests, and collapse the beach umbrellas they had used for shade from the hot sun. I was supposed to take a torch to light my way. Most of the time I left the torch behind, and just walked through the forest by the feel of the path beneath my feet.
My “night vision” would slowly awaken, and I could see the night world as my ancestors did - in shades of lovely midnight blues, sometimes bathed with silvery, pale-golden moonlight.
It was a profound thing to experience the ancestral view of the world. The moment I left the light behind, and padded softly into the dark forest and got swallowed by the trees and the silence and the “something” in the air… everything changed. My perception changed. I could go from staring at the internet on a computer in the office, walk out the door and into the forest… and step back 10,000 years or more into a primitive state.
And the primitive state was… electrifying.
I could smell the trees more clearly - husky, dry smells similar to sandalwood mixed with coconut.
The sound of the ocean waves was like a call, asking me to come through the trees to the beach.
I always felt a tingle of excitement when I walked into the dark of the forest. Like being hooked up to a big battery and switched it on. My whole nervous system was “wired” and tingling. I don’t know why. It just seemed to happen, as soon as I left the human light behind.
The primitive part of my body seemed to have instincts on high alert, constantly searching for anything unusual in my peripheral vision. Anything dangerous, anything unusual, and anything “magical”.
Every time I stepped into the dark without a light, where the trees were pressing in muffling all the sound and blocking all the wind, my body tensed for an “encounter”. What I thought I would encounter, I’m not sure. But I had a heady cocktail of danger and adrenalin running through my system on high alert. Danger and adrenalin are two very exotic spices.
I *wanted* that danger to come to me. I didn’t go into the dark to get away from the humans. I went in there looking for something. An “encounter”. Something to challenge me. Something I had never seen before. Something to thrill me and force me outside of my normal thinking box.
However, sometimes it’s better not to gamble with too much danger, I guess.
Because of things like this:
There was a crocodile farm in the middle of the island. Over a hundred crocodiles lived there. The kind that eat people. The kind that say “hello” to you by grabbing you in its 2-inch teeth, ripping you underwater and shaking the living crap out of you until you die.
One time a massive crocodile escaped from its pool in the middle of the island. He was supposed to be jailed behind a fence. Somehow the owners accidentally let him escape in the dead of the night. He wandered out through the forest in the dark, heading for the beach.
He walked along the same paths I walked.
He probably liked them just as much as I did, feeling the wind on his skin, and looking up through the trees, searching for star light, listening to the wind in the trees, the leaves making that faint “wisha wisha” sound - like they are whispering things about you, or trying to tell you something but you can’t understand it.
A giant, dinosaur-style predator, walking along the star-light path, seeking the ocean and the waves. His ancient habitat, his ancestral home.
And here I am with my habit of leaving my light behind, and slowly and softly padding my way through the dark at night, trying not to make a sound.
What if we meet? Then what? Sure, we have stuff in common. We both like night walks. We both like being lazy. We both like lying around in pools on the island. But it probably ends there.
I wasn’t walking in the forest that night. So I missed that “encounter”. I was on the mainland somewhere.
That big old crocodile simply walked out to the beach, and lay down on the sand, looking up at the stars. Similar to the people on my star-gazing tours. The universe would have flooded his brain, and made him feel happy..
They found him there the next day, still lying there in the sun, soaking up some nice warm rays, and they took him home. Put him back in his pool. Locked the gate. Fixed the fence.
Obviously, they never told the newspapers. “Giant man-eating crocodile escapes captivity and found sun-baking on crowded beach near oblivious tasty tourists” is a newspaper headline that never appeared anywhere.
While I loved searching the island’s dark interior for “encounters”, and feeling the thrill of danger and adrenalin in my body, and seeing the night world through my ancestors’ eyes… I didn’t want to experience something that could actually kill me.
So I think I found my limit.
It didn’t stop me though.
I still went out walking in the forest most nights, transforming my perception and looking upon a world of exotic deep-blue and silver beauty.
I kept doing those night walks nearly every night that I lived on the island.
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THE LOSS
As the months go by you experience a curious affliction...
You become conditioned to breathtaking beauty.
Doesn’t sound like much. But when you first arrive, you are so euphoric that you feel like you are floating 1 meter off the ground. Then as the weeks go by, a giant invisible hand slowly presses you back down to earth, then keeps pressing you down until your feet are stuck in the sand. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Except now you feel “stuck”. You can’t jump around with excitement any more. You have to shuffle in the sand, while everyone else is running.
The excitement wears off after 1 to 2 weeks. You begin to expect gorgeousness, rather than be surprised by it.
Live-on staff like me would shrug and say, "Just another day in paradise" in a kind of deprecating tone, like it was something we had to suffer through.
I think we said it because something had been lost. We had all experienced that majesty and amazement when we first arrived. And over time, that feeling was lost, and replaced with "Oh yeah, here's that beautiful stuff again. I saw it yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before…"
We see other "new" people arriving and squealing with excitement, pointing at turtles or fish, or giggling as they get ready to swim in the water and get up close to the fish. We know the feeling. We remember. We went through it too. That amazing rush like champagne bubbles hitting your brain - "Oh My God! It's a TURTLE!!!"
I saw people literally hopping up and down with excitement at what they were seeing - literally bouncing on their feet because they couldn't stop the electrical excitement flooding their nervous system and jerking their muscles.
I loved that feeling. It's why I took the job and moved there. It's why I lived permanently on the island.
But…
For us live-on staff, we can only remember the feeling. We can't feel that way anymore. It doesn't arrive in our bodies like it used to. It is gone. Like that turtle, it lets you get up close one time, then flips away and it is gone.
We want it back. We want to feel that way again - the "Oh My God!" feeling of breathlessness when a shark appears for the first time near you, or a whale jumps out of the water unexpectedly.
We sooooo want to feel it. But we can't.
It has been replaced by something else… a monotone of familiarity.
And familiarity breeds something like a fuzzy, dull kind of pain. Not sharp pain - it’s not noticeable like that. More like eating cold left-overs from the fridge while everyone else is drinking champagne and having a party. You want champagne too. But your fare is cold left-overs. You can’t join the party.
A kind of emotional boredom sets in, if you are not careful.
"That way leads to the Dark Side," Yoda would say if he came to the island for a swim and listened to our problems.
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THE WISDOM, AND KEEPING THE MAGIC ALIVE
Over time, if you can remain tuned to the magic, and not give in to the melancholy of familiarity or the loss of childish excitement, then something else cooks up in the pot inside you. Another feeling. Something different.
Rather than excitement flooding through your body at levels you cannot control, your body remains "open" to magical levels of stimulation. You feel them so often, that in the end they become the norm.
You simply become used to strong, positive, overwhelming feelings.
You become hard-wired to live in a more magical, vibrant, stimulating, breathtaking world.
Your nervous system becomes more pliant, more able to handle the magic without "freaking out" like new people do, bouncing all over the place on legs they can't control in the moment.
It's like the pipes that carry the magical fluids of feelings throughout our bodies are permanently wider, more easily able to accommodate a greater flow.
When something amazing happens, the high intensity feelings simply course straight through all your wide open pipes in one sweeping movement. You don't feel sudden excitement. Just a beautiful, tingling sense of being "alive". Like champagne bubbles tingling through your bloodstream.
You simply smile, while new people bounce and scream.
Because you know this feeling. You've experienced it before. A thousand times.
Whether it's caused by the experience of a moonrise over the wild ocean, or sipping champagne under rainforest trees with someone lovely, or swimming in the sea alone under the stars, or fish swarming around you in the water, or the night when the sky was carved up by shooting stars that stretched from horizon to horizon.
It’s a unique feeling, being conditioned to live in a magical world.
It feels something like...
Trust. (It's happened before. It will happen again. The magic will always flow.)
Combined with appreciation. (Oh my god - this is amazing!)
Combined with that tingling, elecrifying feeling of being alive.
Mingled with… " I know you. I've seen you before. You are an old friend. And I love you."
That feeling became so common to me on the island, that when I eventually left it was hard-wired into my body.
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WHAT HAPPENED NEXT...
I no longer live on that island.
I have lived in many places since then - both cities and remote places.
But I carry with me that sense of aliveness that many people do not have.
And I still look up at stars most nights, and breathe in the magic.
I still stand on beaches at night, feeling the wind on my skin, and allowing my ancient primitive "night vision" to awaken and turn the world into shades of silver and midnight-blues.
I still look into the eyes of fish and birds that come near me, and I wonder what they are thinking.
Somehow, the magic from the island came with me.
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