vectis

It’s hard to describe the Isle of Wight. When Stuart and I first met, I think he played it down a bit. Perhaps all natives do. Is it because it’s unremarkable to them? That can’t be it, because as we drove through the west side of the island and I’d gasped my delight at one more stunning vista, I asked Stuart and his friends, “You know how lucky you are to call this beautiful place home?” and they all said yes.
So perhaps it’s because it’s their little gem, their little secret paradise of Englishness. When Sharon and I were lazily discussing where the bridge to the mainland could feasibly be built, at the end of the conversation, I said, “well, economic and other reasons aside, I wouldn’t want a fixed link if I were an islander because I’d just be selfish. I’d want to keep this place to myself.” She smiled and agreed and perhaps I sold myself to her in that moment, to her and Dave and Stuart, as understanding a little bit about the quiet charm of the island.
I can’t wrap my brain around the difference between the island’s physical size and the size of the feeling it imparts. It’s only thirteen miles by twenty. That’s smaller than one neighborhood in Houston, about the size of Queens. Yet there are probably about a hundred little towns. The roads almost never go in a straight line, thanks to the majestic downs that intersect the island. The attitude and atmosphere from the southern tip to West Wight to Cowes to Newport changes almost completely.
Even though it’s small in size, it’s not small in spirit. It feels not just like an island, but like its own country. We went to explore Carisbrooke castle and when we got there early, we tromped down into town to buy breakfast of bread and cheese and coffee. When we got back to the top of the hill with our spread, we sat down and through a break in the trees could see the valley below with Carisbrooke town nestled right in. It could have been Switzerland or Austria, with its open-air freshness and quaint quiet.
The bus took us careening across the southern end of the island where the downs rise up from the cliffs and the cliffs drop down to the sea. It could have been the north of France, or Canada, in the majestic harmont between cliffs, downs, and choppy grey sea. But it wasn’t. It was this tiny island, this thirteen-by-twenty stretch of England that feels at once so English and yet so unique, so impenetrably island-cultured that people can’t help but refer to the land across the Solent almost as if it were a foreign world.
I am trying and failing to capture what it feels like to be in a place so familiarly friendly and pleasant, and yet so proudly different and remote. And I don’t mean remote in the sense of unconnectedness, I mean remote in the sense of removed, unlike, other-than. And I, being someone that has always lived under a certain standard of that remoteness, have fallen in love with this island. I loved every bend in every road. I had a peculiar connection and fascination with the sheep. And my American pronunciation and grammar, which I have so proudly and stubbornly clung to when visiting other parts of England, melted away a little. I had no problem asking Stuart to get me a jumper from upstairs, asking Katina if she wanted us to stop in the newsagents, putting my bags in the boot. I didn’t mind bending my ball-busting, charge-aheadness to the slower, more rocking gait of this bit of rock. I relished every minute of being foreign because it didn’t feel like I didn’t belong.
That’s what it is, I think. Somehow and unpredictably, the land I stood on led me to feel like there was something in it that I could belong to. Not a house or a photograph, but an understanding. Perhaps it’s that age-old kindred with your beloved’s homeland. But perhaps there’s just something I understood about the island, something I appreciated, something that meant it became a place much larger than just pensioners or regattas, just island-roads or esplanades. It really is its own, enormous, splendid place.