Departure
All too soon our visit ends. We must board the boat
or plane and return to our mainland life. But though we leave the
island, the island does not leave us. For we carry away memories: of a
bull moose feeding in an evening lake, of fog rising from a wild rock
shore, of night talk around a warm fire. And perhaps we try to put it
all togetherto see what the island has meant to us.
For some, the scientist particularly, the island has
meant a chance to study nature in a place where man intrudes but little,
and isolation produces a unique ecological laboratory, a nearly closed
system.
![](images/nh8bp.jpg)
(Photo by Rolf O. Peterson)
For most people, the island has meant a brief
experience of wildernessa glimpse of the primordial world and of
oneself as a human animal in it. The wilderness value of Isle Royale
calls, I think, for some discussion, because it is a fragile thing
requiring careful protection. More than to any other national park,
people go to Isle Royale primarily for a wilderness experience. Yet,
embracing 200 square miles of land and water, it is a small place as
national parks go. As more people come to enjoy its wilderness, each
person's wilderness experience is diminished, since solitude is its
central ingredient. Clearly, there are limits beyond which visitation
must not go. What those limits should be, how they should be achieved,
and how much freedom visitors should be allowed once they get to the
park are questions the Park Service wrestles with and with which all
Americansthe "owners" of Isle Royaleshould be concerned. In
both a psychological and an ecological sense, Isle Royale has a limited
carrying capacity for people as well as for wildlife.
Stuart Perry, editor of the Adrian, Michigan,
Daily Telegram, foresaw the problem in 1931, when he wrote,
"[Isle Royale's] value lies in its solitude and primeval condition
rather than in any natural wonders. If there were natural wonders, it
might be the duty of the public to make them as accessible as possible,
but in the circumstances I maintain that the duty of the park management
should be to make the place as inaccessible as possible in order that
its peculiar value and charm may be conserved." To some extent, this
painful remedy will have to be applied.
Another important part of the Isle Royale experience
is the opportunity it gives us to be human. In this basic situation, we
learn again the simple joys of eating after hunger, getting warm after
being cold, drying out after being soaked, or resting after a long day's
hike. And we learn again the value of the individual. With pressures
removed, fewer people around, and a dependence on those few in case of
emergency, we recognize our need for each other and have the chance to
know each other simply as unique human beings. The common experience of
all these things creates a special fellowship.
Finally, living on Isle Royale even briefly gives us
a rare chance to gain perspective on ourselves and our civilization.
Somehow the remoteness and the difference of this place wipe out our old
images and allow new ones to form against the simple, natural background
around us.
And so we return to our man-made world, shocked by
its concrete and cars, but knowing that the island remainsa
contrast, a restorer, a measure of our civilization.
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