This post is for Stephanie.
And that's how it took 6 hours to run one errand off-island. Yep, six hours. We left Friday Harbor at 1:40 and returned at 7:40.
I now understand why some people here only go off-island once every four months. It's really exhausting. I mean, I like the ferry ride itself. I love being out on the water. Love it. It's the waiting before and after and the overall time it takes that gets me.
They have a name for it here: Island time. And we're on it now.
My blogging friend Stephanie has moved to the San Juan Islands of the west coast - between Vancouver and Seattle. She comes from the LA and Chicago. She has been confronted with a huge adjustment in time - she is experiencing "Island Time". Time when the simple things seem to take a long time - especially if you have to take the ferry to go to the mainland.
My face to face friend Cynthia, has left PEI for a weeks trip to Toronto. She is experiencing the reverse - the frantic time of the big city.
"was there always this many people in toronto? peopled out."
I had the same experience as both Stephanie and Cynthia. I believe that Island living does change our perception of time.
When I first arrived on PEI in the mid 1990's, the bridge was not built. Getting on or off the Island was a journey into another world. In the summer, you could never be sure that you would make the trip. It is quite a feeling to be the last on the boat or worse, the first not to get on. "Running for the boat" was an experience that all shared. Even if you were driving from Vancouver, that last few hours, it was pedal to the metal as you did your best to make the crossing on the schedule.
There was no way to be sure of the time that it would take to make the crossing - so this meant that you had to stop believing that you could control the time of your journey.
On the other hand, with distances so short on the Island, you had more time in the day. In a big city, it is commonplace to spend 2-4 hours a day getting around. Getting to work, daycare, shopping, dinner etc are all major consumers of time. So all the rest of the day gets compressed. We sleep less, eat in a more rushed way, go from one task to another. We don't stop to chat. It's heads down.
But on PEI we get back most of this time. Say 3 hours a day. This is a huge amount really when you factor in sleep. So time moves more slowly. We stop to chat in the street, in the shops, wave at people in cars - because we are going slow enough to notice!
In Arabic there is a term - Buhkara. It is defined as Manana without the sense of urgency. Buhkara would be an idea familiar to Islanders. Things in the service area move sloooooow. It is surely part of the total view of time. Things sometimes never happen. Like many traditional societies, Islanders hate to be overtly rude. So when your plumber says that Yes he will come on Tuesday - Yes does not mean Yes. It is easier not to turn up than to say No.
So sometimes time stands still!
I winter with no tourists there is even more time. All the yard work goes. There is parking everywhere. There is no traffic. Few visitors. Time slows to a crawl. Space shrinks too. We retreat to the kitchen, home office and bedroom. Only the dogs get us out and about.
All this is normal for natives but for new folks like me and now for Stephanie, adjusting to Island time is hard. But when you do adjust - then returning to the big city seems like being exposed to madness.
Everyone looks haunted and harried - and they are. They are all in time deficit. They don't have enough time. So much of the social oil is not there. I walked down the street in Toronto the other day and a man stepped out onto the street from his gate. I said "Good Morning" - he looked at me as if I was mad. My son, embarrassed as hell said "Daaaad!!!! This is Toronto!".
There are so many people! I have to switch off all my social radar. I feel the crush and I have lost a lot of my social armor. It's exhausting just to be in contact with so many people.
I also get ill nearly every time I go to the big city. I have lost some of my immune system - like the Incas?
So Stephanie - if you can allow Island time to sink in, you will find that your armor drops, that you notice more, that you align better to the seasons and the world itself. If like me, you learn to love this, then it will be hard to fit into the time stressed big city again.
