Pitcairn Island

                                    SOLID GONE

Fed up with condition of the American Dream, and the state of the world in general, the family next door, packs up and moves to the most remote place on earth, Fletcher Christians’ Pitcairn Island, to rediscover what matters most…life.

 

 Where was the outrage? That was the one thing I couldn’t figure. Where was the bloody OUTRAGE! It was enough that most of the country had watched their retirement & every egg in the nest vaporize in over inflated stock markets, while CEO’s absconded with billions. It was something again that America had a president, not even elected buy popular vote, obsessed with a war that would galvanize every terrorist organization in the world against us. It was not enough that his administration had increased the military budget to 400 billion, to protect Americas’ freedoms, which were being taken away left and right by wiretaps and personal searches, but that they had obtained the funds at the expense of education & Medicare. 

 Did it not bother anyone that the U.N. had voted to allow the sale of 60 tons of Elephant tusks, opening the poaching floodgates once again?  Did it tweak any concern that our own state of Colorado voted to cut back on school budgets in order to increase prison spending? Or that the forest service had determined that trees were the chief cause of forest fires, and if not clear cut would lap up water needed for more subdivisions. It was not enough that the world was going to hell in a hand basket, it was that nobody seemed to care...or even notice.

WHERE WAS THE OUTRAGE?

Who cared that 30 years of clean air standards were being tossed out the window, that Alaskan wilderness was about to be drilled to bits. That the polar ice caps were melting. That snowmobiles had turned our greatest national park into a eye burning speedway.

 So what, that a busload of Israeli school children were just blown up by a Palestinian ‘Martyr’…and 200 young Aussies had died, just trying to boogie down. Did it matter that Ozzie’s Ozborn, a trash mouthed, a half- baked rocker was now an American hero?

What happened to my generation of young radicals, who would burn draft cards & flags in defiance of government, burn bra’s in defiance of gravity, burn brain cells in defiance of growing up. What happened to those folks…people that cared?

 Now, I’m an average guy, middle age, middle income, soft in the middle, middle of the road politically but I was getting middled about America.

 It was then, that the powers to be down at corporate America sent me a new Visa Card with a fool’s limit.

“Take that vacation you always wanted.” It said. “Remodel that bathroom!”

 Did all their demographics not spot a man on the edge? What if every “Preferred Customer” on Visa’s list…basically all of us… suddenly said “OK, good idea...the hell with the bathroom...let’s go.”

 That’s when I decided to move, on the wake of Fletcher Christian, to Pitcairn Island…the most remote place on earth.

 

 Now, charging a new life on a Visa Card is probably not sound financial advice. However, on sound financial advice I had bought JDS Uniphase. I was through with sound advice, done with payments, through with towing the line. I wanted stupid. I wanted to burn that mortgage, burn a dozen insurance policies, paid by me, betting on my own miss-fortune.  Life being already short in the scheme of things, it was time to re-prioritize. Time to live.

 So, if you could distance yourself of all outside influences, worries and conundrums of the world, what would be left? Was there a place in the world where all was right? Where the only concern was

family, fun, and the pursuit of food and drink. Could a 20^th century suburban family unit rise above TV, Wal-Mart and hot water to sit on some jungle isle & swat mosquitoes?  Away from all the un-happiness in the world, could you be happy? Could tales around a campfire replace Harry Potter. Would coconut shells replace Bionical Meglatron Legos? Could we still relate to each other?

 In today’s world of E-mail, cell phones and satellite TV there are few places untouched by worldly influences.

 Pitcairn Island is one of those places. A place settled by a small band of British Mutineers, themselves fed up with the establishment, and their beautiful Tahitian girlfriends. A jungle atoll so remote, it’s only contact with the outside world is a monthly supply boat from Tahiti, 1500 miles away.

 Now, we would be on that boat. Refuge’s from a world gone mad.

  Of course not to be taken for radical lunatics we would tell everyone that we were simply off for a Hawaiian Holiday. That way if we found America was still the best bet around we would be able to return and fit back in. Our children would still be allowed to visit their playmates. We could still sip wine with friends and refinance the American dream.                Cvqs            nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

 

                              

                                        GONE: Chapter II

 

                               Pitcairn Islands: A brief history

When Fletcher Christian and his merry band of mutineers tossed Captain Bly in the drink they were naturally in search of a place to hide that was well off the beaten track. Pitcairn Islands was such a place. Unmarked on any map at the time, the three uninhabited atolls lie 4000 miles west of Chile, 4150 miles south of California, 3300 miles east of New Zealand and about 1400 miles southeast of Tahiti, their closest neighbor. In a word, the Pitcairn Islands are in the middle of no-where, as far from any other civilization, other than the poles, as one can get. Even Fletcher Christian, who had passed by the islands on a previous voyage, nearly had a mutiny on his own hands trying to re-locate them.

 As you’ll recall from the story of the Bounty after the mutiny Christian & his men returned to Tahiti & persuaded their girlfriends to accompany them in starting a new life. For two months they bumped about the south Pacific until finally spotting Pitcairn. Christian, going ashore with a landing party, discovered fresh water and fruits, it was lonely and warm, and with the ships stores of pigs & chickens they could easily survive. The Bounty was stripped of all valuables and set afire to avoid detection from passing ships.

 The little community would remain un-detected for years.

 Within four years a half dozen of the mutineer’s killed each other in jealous disputes. A few others were killed by their Tahitian wives  who in turn were killed by the mutineers. By 1794 only four mutineers and ten women survived. However by 1798 the islanders had settled in with their fate and had become quite happy chasing pigs and each other about the tropical paradise.

 Then in 1799 a Scottish mutineer by the name of McCoy, discovered how to brew a potent spirit from the Ti plant and within a short period four of the remaining five men had killed each other.

 This left one John Adams the sole male survivor of the party that had landed just ten years earlier.

John Adams proved a fair and capable leader of his community of ten women & 23 children. From a rescued bible he taught all to read write & pray. The work was shared and no male was allowed to marry until he could support a family.

 It was a handsome, virtuous group that the British HMS ‘Briton’ discovered in 1814. The Captain of the Briton was so impressed by Adams example and the charming islanders that he deemed it inhumane to arrest Adams for his crimes and left them be.

 Over the years more passing ships bartered tools & clothing and the tiny outpost became even more British.

 In 1828 John Adams, known as “Father” to everyone on the Island passed away. Without their leader the English government felt it necessary to relocate the islanders, so in 1831 all were relocated to Tahiti.

 The Pitcairners did not feel at home in Tahiti. The Tahitians moral standards were well below the displaced islanders, and they had no immune system to the newly encountered infectious diseases. The first to die was Fletcher Christians own son, Thursday, the first child born on Pitcairn. Ten others died shortly thereafter.

 The remaining 65 Pitcairners longed to return to their home & in 1831 an American captain, William Driver agreed to take them for $500.oo The Tahitians raised the money through donations they so pitied the misplaced people.

 The British government then sent one Joshua Hill to govern the island. Hill who turned out to be severely “Mentally Unstable”, abolished drinking, made himself “King of Pitcairn” and had just about the entire population under house arrest before the islanders revolted and tossed Hill off the island.

The islanders then drew up their own constitution giving women the right to vote and making schooling compulsory, 50 years before Briton followed suit.

 In 1845 a huge storm decimated the island, but the hundred islanders hung on and rebuilt.

 Fresh settlers in 1882 brought trouble when one fell in love with a girl already engaged. New laws were then passed forbidding strangers from settling, unless they were found to benefit the island in some manner. In 1890 Pitcairn Island was visited by a boatload of American Seventh Day Adventist missionaries. They found an entire populace that knew the bible cover to cover, being the only book there, were total abstainers, strict vegetarians, and unscrupulously honest.

 The missionaries baptized them anyway, and left disheartened.

In 1914 with the opening of the Panama Canal a ship a month visited Pitcairn and ended it’s isolation.

 Now days a small supply boat arrives once per month from Tahiti, this time it carries a small band of refuge’s from a mad, mad world…the Church Family.