Only the most dedicated travel there. A man will take you in his red rowing boat. From the landing stage you’ll hear hammers – stones breaking. There’s distance in the eyes of each passenger. The boatman knows it. A toenail, beak, the tip of a wing is already formed in that other eye. Trees have long gone, cut for camp fires. Some stay months, digging, hammering, others summon storms, waiting for winter to bring cliffs down onto the beaches. They risk mud. There are no birds other than cannibal gulls. Waterproofs rustle, there’s occasionally a drift of coffee. In summer people bring tents, stake claims like fishermen. - He rings me on a phone that doesn’t work. Odd words, words blocked out. He talks in sentences I hear a third of, like someone’s jamming it, the frequency hijacked or squatted. It hurts my ears, as if we’re trying to talk with dust storms, electric storms, particles interrupting, as if between us are prairies, plains, continents where radio can’t travel, waterless, over ...
For the time being it was the great fact of the world. (Willa Cather)