The Calculus of an Island
By far the most common question I get is, “How many people live on that island?”
Matinicus isn’t exactly famous for simple answers to simple questions (and neither am I). People don’t really care about that number anyway; they’re just at a loss for a better icebreaker. I wish they’d ask something more interesting, like what kind of airplanes fly our mail and groceries in. What is this universal interest in the number of people? Do they ask citizens of Rockland or Warren that question? But both friends and strangers ask, a lot, and I struggle to answer in earnest. It is a waste of time. A meaningful answer would probably require differential equations.
Were I better schooled at this sort of minor social interaction, I’d have learned years ago to just make something up and be done with it. Next time, I may just reply, “500” and see what happens.
That would be wrong, of course, but so is any other number anybody might offer. The census enumeration for Matinicus appears a random-ass attempt to count noses on some arbitrarily chosen day and reflects nothing useful. It’s not as though anybody added each day’s headcount for a solid year and then divided by 365, which would give you a number that was also wrong, but explainable.
I remember when some poor hapless census folks were stomping around the island a couple of decades back, more or less lost, with maps from the Stone Age and a curious problem of doors slamming in their faces. It did used to be true that a certain contingent of workers signed up for island berths with hopes of staying off the radar until the sheriff, the ol’ lady, and the IRS had forgotten about them. These days, “on the lam” is no longer such a significant portion of our demographic. If that makes us gentrified, we’ll just have to suffer that indignity.
You cannot get avocado toast here.
Our kids attend a one-room school, we depend upon a bunch of highly skilled bush pilots, the patient might ride in the back of the pickup truck because there is no ambulance, and we pay electricity bills to our freestanding power company with no tie to the rest of the grid. It’s Alaska without bears.
Regular readers of this column have heard this all before, so I am begging their pardon, but it astonishes me how often I am asked the same questions. I thought I’d already told everybody in Knox, Lincoln, and Waldo Counties, plus the regulars hanging round at the State House and several local drinking establishments, everything they’d care to know about this island.
You’ve likely heard that joke about the out-of-towner eating breakfast in a village diner? He asks, “How many people live in this town, anyway?” The waitress looks around the room, counting customers. “Twenty-seven,” she says. “Wait a minute…” she thinks, and calls out, “Where’s Bill this morning?” A customer shouts back, “Bill died yesterday.” She looks at the stranger. “Twenty-six.”
Most people who claim residence on, vote at, fish from, or pay property taxes to Matinicus maintain another home as well these days. Not all do, but it’s very common. That does not make them “summer people.” They come and go at will, even year-round, if they can camp without running water or they have a house with pipes that won’t freeze. Most have to make up their minds in November to drain the water, dump the last of the rotgut into the sink drain trap, and leave. Very few of the island’s native-born--those folks who can really call themselves “from” here--stay all winter these days. This past winter you could count such historic islanders on one hand and still snap your fingers. If a “real islander” is someone who never leaves, then most who live and work here must be some fraction of an islander, a decimal of a citizen.
The mathematics gets into the stuff with the Greek letters and college-level calculations pretty quickly. The answer is not an integer.
I really shouldn’t be admitting this. I ought to promulgate the fiction that this is a buzzing and exciting metropolis in the wintertime, stable and sufficient, in order to attract fun new people. Sure, the peace and quiet is nice, but we are seriously short-handed. It’s not quite populated enough to resemble civilization.
Imagine a sine curve: at the peak of the wave, mid-summer, the maximum population, when every bed is full. I have no idea how many beds there are on this island; a couple hundred, I suppose. From late August into the following January, the headcount steadily decreases until bottoming out at a midwinter low you can count on your fingers and toes.
We’ll be starting up the hill soon.