The Urge to the Isles

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world...

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles . . .

Thus, in the iambics of his Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson voiced the anomie that propelled the ancient Greeks to embark on fragile craft in search of islands where life, far from the mainland tensions of politics and war, would be eternally serene. That urge--or illusion --has never been stronger than it is today in the U.S. and Canada, where with aircraft, power boats and well-laden wallets, romantics and hard-nosed investors alike can seek modern Happy Isles remote from the purgatory of urban-suburban life.

Pristine Dream. The islands they buy may not be guaranteed happy. But in an era of shortages there is still a good supply of them available round the world, and many are being grabbed up like supermarket chicken specials. From the Atlantic Coast to the Canaries and the South Seas, many hundreds of islands can still be had. One reason is that aging owners, weary of battling for a living by scrambling for cod and crab, yearn for electric power, television, supermarkets, big cars and safe jobs. The island seeker, by contrast, hunts for a happy isle as pristine as those of Ulysses' dream, free of air pollution, real estate taxes, traffic jams, talk shows--and, he often finds out, devoid of plumbing or sewage system.

"We're selling dreams of kingdoms," says Real Estate Salesman Bob Douglas, 34, of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, who claims to have sold millions of dollars worth of rocky isles. Nor is there any likelihood of an immediate island shortage. There are an estimated 1 million outcroppings off North American shores alone, plus many more thousands of fresh-water isles from the lower St. Lawrence River to the westerly straits of Lake Huron.

Why the isle urge? It goes deeper than the fortress mentality of those who fear assault or long for solitude. While most bankers regard island buyers as psychiatric cases or at least outlandish Thoreauvians, a cool quest for profit is a major motive for many investors who never even set foot on their seagirt dominions. Off Nova Scotia there are so many islands--some of them mere specks on the chart--that they are almost beyond count.

The state of Maine is currently inventorying some 3,350 islands off its coast. A Boston cab driver who migrated to Cutler, Me., in 1966, bought a 25-acre island near by for $2,500. Today, with a cabin and a fresh-water spring, it will fetch up to $40,000. The 2,500-acre Bartlett's Island was once a village of 300 souls. It was bought by a radio writer for $68,000. After several lucrative changes of ownership, David and Margaret Rockefeller recently became the barons of Bartlett for $750,000, a cost that marked a 1,000% appreciation in less than 20 years.

There are some genuine Robinson Crusoes, like Robert McCloskey, an author-illustrator of delightful children's books on his island in Maine's Penobscot Bay, who are addicted to the sweet air, the silence, the succulent lobsters and the congenial natives.

As Jonathan Huberth, a freelance film maker and island owner, observes: "The answer to our alienation lies within ourselves, and escape to an island brings us closer to ourselves and to the questions we know to be important."

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