Chapter Six of Lifting
Yesterday continues the “biography inside a biography” narrative. This
chapter follows Bishop’s life from the time she left Nova
Scotia in 1930 to the point when she left for Brazil in 1951. As always, Bishop’s
life was filled with fascinating, strange, (un)predictable twists and turns. This
was the time in her life when she fully established her writing career, an
important period for any writer.
Researching and exploring this time took me, again, to many
unexpected places, none so unexpected as Sable Island.
Like all Nova Scotians, I was fascinated by Sable Island
growing up. Because most of us here believe we will never visit this isolated
sandbar so far off the coast, it holds a mythical kind of magic in Nova Scotians'
minds — and especially alluring are the wild horses that have lived there for
centuries.
Horses near West Light – photo by Zoe Lucas
Bishop heard about Sable Island
early on. Her great-grandfather was likely shipwrecked there in the mid-1860s, that
is what family oral tradition held. As she wrote to Katharine White on 21 June
1951, “Of course I heard so much about it when I was little that it has haunted
my imagination most of my life.”
When I learned that Bishop actually visited Sable Island
in 1951 I was astonished. It is no easy feat to get there today, so getting
there then would have taken focused determination — like her trip to Newfoundland in 1932,
another remarkable island a journey, which is also part of Chapter Six.
Bishop not only visited Sable Island,
she also wrote about this trip. Her intention was to write an article for The New Yorker, which never happened – Brazil
intervened; but she worked on “The Deadly Sandpile” for some time. There is a
remnant of this article in her papers at Vassar Collage. During the trip, she
kept a diary. It, too, is at Vassar. I obtained photocopies of both these
documents and transcribed them. The journal is extensive, so it was a
considerable task.
Having an excuse to research Sable Island
was a bonus. As anyone in Nova Scotia – or Canada for that matter, perhaps globally –
knows, if you research Sable Island your path will take you to one of its most
famous residents: Zoe Lucas (who has lived on Sable Island
since the 1970s and knows more about it than any other person). I met Zoe many
years ago through mutual friends. She was quite interested in the fact that
Elizabeth Bishop had visited the island. When I lived in Halifax and when Zoe ventured to the
mainland, we would meet for breakfast and have wonderful conversations about
all things Sable.
Zoe being
investigated by a foal. Photograph by Janet Barkhouse
And then the day when Zoe asked me if I would like to go to
Sable Island! Are you kidding!! She had invited her good friend Janet Barkhouse
(the daughter of beloved Canadian children’s writer Joyce Barkhouse, whose book
Pit Pony, about a Sable Island horse
used in the coal mines of Cape Breton, is a classic), and there was an extra
seat on the fixed-wing aircraft that ferried scientists, bureaucrats and
visitors to and from the island.
Pilot Debbie getting ready for take off at the Halifax airport. Photograph by Janet Barkhouse.
On a gloriously clear day in May 2008 we went. I will never
forget catching my first glimpse of the long crescent of white sand in the
middle of the ocean.
Approaching Sable Island. Photograph by Janet Barkhouse.
Bishop approached Sable
Island on the Coast Guard
ship Cornwallis, so her experience
would have been much more gradual and mysterious. As she wrote in her diary, “We were about a mile off SI; not
rough but quite a swell, as there usually is apparently. The fog came &
went rapidly – sometimes one could glimpse the island, then it wd [sic] disappear in an instant. A stretch
of yellowish sand, high dunes with beach grass on them, a tower … frame-work of
the new lighthouse.”
My visit that day was unforgettable and I will be eternally
grateful to Zoe for this gift. Whenever I tell people I’ve been there, they
say, “Really! Wow!” I had the rare opportunity to see directly what Bishop saw and understand something of why she was so
fascinated by this island, why we are all so fascinated: the horses, the Ipswich
Sparrow, the interesting residents, the sand.
Me (right), with
station master Gerry and Janet. Photo by Zoe Lucas.
Bishop
described the island thus: “Anyone familiar with the accent of Nova Scotia will know
what I mean when I refer to the Indrawn Yes. In all their conversations Nova
Scotians of all ages, even children, make use of it. It consists of, when one
is told a fact, – anything, not necessarily tragic but not of a downright
comical nature, – saying “Yes,” or a word half-way between “Yes” & Yeah,”
while drawing in the breath at the same moment. It expresses both commiseration
& an acceptance of the Worst, and it occurred to me as I walked … over
those fine, fatalistic sands, that Sable Island with its mysterious engulfing
powers was a sort of large-scale expression of the Indrawn Yes.”
Me on Sable Island! I'm just a little happy!
Photo by Janet Barkhouse.
When I mentioned to Zoe that my father, Herb, was quite interested
in Sable Island, she gave me a beautiful
moon snail shell to give him, which he greatly prized. Over the next several
years, Zoe sent my father many astonishing objects from her vast
collection, accumulated during the over 40 years that she has lived
there. So delighted was he with these marvelous gifts, he as set up a little
display in his house: “The Sun
Room Museum.”
Herb's Sable Island display. Photo by Brenda Barry.
He’s a fortunate man because now that Sable Island
is a National Park, such removals are no longer permitted. His pleasure in all
the objects Zoe gave him is unalloyed and he’ll show his collection to anyone
who will look, and get them to sign his guestbook. I think Bishop would have envied Herb his treasure.
If you want to find markers in Bishop’s life that reveal she was,
in spirit, a true Nova Scotian, one of the most obvious is her fascination with
Sable Island and her determined effort to
visit this place. That she didn’t complete her article is no failure, really. Bishop
wrote slowly, was fascinated by so much, and died too young — she left much
unfinished.
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