
Refuge on the Island

Memoir by Paul Burnham
Day 5, late evening: We returned to the coast and heaved on our boat’s anchor line — our lifeline. Stuck. Darkness descended, and we didn’t have any equipment with us. We had eaten our food. Even under our rubberized rain suits, our clothes were soaked from the incessant rain and from hiking through damp undergrowth. We had a butane lighter if we decided to build a fire. If we could start a fire.
We looked longingly at our boat. We had made camp on Harbor Island, three miles from the Alaskan coast. Now we were castaways on the mainland. People get stranded on islands, in broken-down pickup trucks, in foreign embassies, in bad relationships. Not on the mainland. I felt the irony of our situation — to be stranded in a place associated with safety, with surplus, with security, with protection from the elements: the mainland.
We had none of these. We examined our options: We could kindle a fire, try to keep it going in the rain, wait for low tide and see if we could unseat the anchor then. Or we could swim the 200 yards in the freezing ocean, flecked with icebergs, and risk a fatal muscle cramp on the way.
We’d swim it. I’d swim it. I swam in high school. I could go 200 yards in two minutes. If I reached the boat, I could pull up on the anchor line while my friend pulled from shore. And if the anchor didn’t come loose, I could cut the rope, and we’d only be out an anchor.
Rain. Cold wind. Boreal darkness upon us. House-sized icebergs floated in the bay. I scanned the dark water for the pod of orcas that had tracked us earlier, and listened for their rhythmic breathing. All quiet. I stripped down and swam for it.
Halfway. At 100 yards I thought I would rest for a moment to catch my breath. But even as I stopped, I felt my muscles tightening, beginning to cramp. I could only manage shallow breaths in the icy water.
One hundred yards. Who gets stuck on the mainland? I blinked and wiped the saltwater from my eyes. I could swim faster with my face in the water, breathing on the side, every three strokes, just like a race. I put my face in the dark water and swam.
I swung my arms. Anchors. I kicked. My legs felt like chains. I thought of the island. The dry tent. The gas stove. The hot food. The rock overhang, where we could build a fire and dry our clothes. We had to escape the mainland and its paradoxical dangers. The island would provide refuge, safety, protection.
An iceberg loomed just beyond the boat, bobbing in the saltwater. Five parts ice. One part rock salt. This ice cream maker would seize at any moment. My mind drifted from ice cream to bowls of hot chili, steaming fish chowder, warm corn bread, and a Spaniard with a strange name: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.
Cabeza de Vaca left Spain in 1527 with 600 men bound for America. They left 200 men in Hispaniola and sailed to Florida. He crossed what would become the Deep South and the Southwestern United States. Then he went far into Mexico.
I swam on. Over halfway. It would be useless to turn around. Too far. I turned toward the shore. Just to see. My friend looked small. The water felt warm on my back. But I knew it wasn’t warm. I knew this trick hypothermia played on the mind.
Ten years after landing in Florida, Cabeza de Vaca stumbled into Mexico City. Of the 400 men who had landed in Florida, only four remained. Some had left the expedition. Deserters. Some had been separated on rafts during a hurricane. Some were killed by natives or died from disease. Some had drowned.
Seventy yards to go. My hands went numb. I thought my ears would shatter if I bumped them. I wanted to turn around. The butane lighter might work. We could build a fire under a giant spruce tree. We could set a spruce tree on fire. We could set the whole mainland on fire.
Cabeza de Vaca discovered he had a gift; he could heal the sick. He raised a native man from the dead. He had come on the expedition as the chief treasurer — a financial controller, not a priest. Yet he had become a curandero, something very different from a priest. He used folk medicines and other means far removed from the traditional healings conducted by priests. He used the methods practiced by the natives. When he published his account many years later, some accused Cabeza de Vaca of sacrilege. They said the work of a curandero was not the same as that of a priest. His work was unorthodox. Some suggested excommunication.
Fifty yards to the boat. I thought I could just float on my back for a moment. But the freezing water had cooled the blood that now reached my core. My heart felt like an anvil at midwinter.
Cabeza de Vaca’s gift preserved the lives of many people. It may have preserved his own. Many years later, the Church appears to have censured him for having exercised a gift that was reserved for others, for having diverged from common practices, for having left the perceived safety of established institutions and traditions, for escaping the metaphorical mainland of his day and finding refuge on an island.
I reached the boat and used my remaining strength to pull myself in and heave on the line. The anchor came loose.
Around midnight, on the island, we built a fire under the rock ledge. From that little alcove, in the waning twilight, we could see the mainland. Only then did I again remember Cabeza de Vaca. He was a practical man, detached from dogma and tradition — the quintessential pragmatist. He escaped the mainland. He found refuge on the island.


