Having seen the faces of all my fellow passengers on the ground, in Kwajalein, I had become aware of the varied Mi-cronesian world represented among them: there were Pohn-peians, returning to their island; there were huge, laughing Chuukese – giants, like Polynesians – speaking a liquid tongue which, even to my ears, was quite different from Pohnpeian; there were Palauans, rather reserved, dignified, with yet another language new to my ears; there was a Marshallese diplomat, on his way to Saipan, and a family of Chamorros (in whose speech I seemed to hear echoes of Spanish), returning to their village in Guam. Back in the air, I now felt myself in a sort of linguistic aquarium, as my ears picked up different languages about me.
Hearing this mix of languages started to give me a sense of Micronesia as an immense archipelago, a nebula of islands, thousands in all, scattered across the Pacific, each as remote, as space surrounded, as stars in the sky. It was to these islands, to the vast contiguous galaxy of Polynesia, that the greatest mariners in history had been driven – by curiosity, desire, fear, starvation, religion, war, whatever – with only their uncanny knowledge of the ocean and the stars for guidance. They had migrated here more than three thousand years ago, while the Greeks were exploring the Mediterranean and Homer was telling the wanderings of Odysseus. The vastness of this other odyssey, its heroism, its wonder, perhaps its desperation, seized my imagination as we flew on endlessly over the Pacific. How many of these wanderers just perished in the vastness, I wondered, never even sighting the lands they hoped for; how many canoes were dashed to pieces by savage surf on reefs and rocky shores; how many arrived at islands which, appearing hospitable at first, proved too small to support a living culture and community, so that their habitation ended in starvation, madness, violence, death?
Again the Pacific, now at night, a vast lightless swell, occasionally illuminated, narrowly, by the moon. The island of Pohnpei too was in darkness, though we got a faint sense, perhaps a silhouette, of its mountains against the night sky. As we landed, and decamped from the plane, we were enveloped in a huge humid warmth and the heavy scent of frangipani. This, I think, was the first sensation for us all, the smell of a tropical night, the scents of the day eluted by the cooling air – and then, above us, incredibly clear, the great canopy of the Milky Way.
But when we awoke the next morning, we saw what had been intimated in the darkness of our arrivaclass="underline" that Pohnpei was not another flat coral atoll, but an island mountain, with peaks rising precipitously into the sky, their summits hidden in the clouds. The steep slopes were wreathed in thick green jungle, with streams and waterfalls tracing down their sides. Below this we could see rolling hills, some cultivated, all about us, and, looking toward the coastline, a fringe of mangroves, with barrier reefs beyond. Though I had been fascinated by the atolls – Johnston, Majuro, even Kwajalein – this high volcanic island, cloaked in jungle and clouds, was utterly different, a naturalist’s paradise.
I was strongly tempted to miss our plane and strand myself in this magical place for a month or two, or perhaps a year, the rest of my life – it was with reluctance, and a real physical effort, that I joined the others for our flight onward to Pingelap. As we took off, we saw the entire island spread out beneath us. Melville’s description of Tahiti in Omoo, I thought, could as well have been Pohnpei:
From the great central peaks…the land radiates on all sides to the sea in sloping green ridges. Between these are broad and shadowy valleys – in aspect, each a Tempe – watered with fine streams and thickly wooded.…Seen from the sea, the prospect is magnificent. It is one mass of shaded tints of green, from beach to mountain top; endlessly diversified with valleys, ridges, glens, and cascades. Over the ridges, here and there, the loftier peaks fling their shadows, and far down the valleys. At the head of these, the water-falls flash out into the sunlight as if pouring through vertical bowers of verdure…It is no exaggeration to say, that to a European of any sensibility, who, for the first time, wanders back into these valleys – the ineffable repose and beauty of the landscape is such, that every object strikes him like something seen in a dream.
Pingelap
Pingelap is one of eight tiny atolls scattered in the ocean around Pohnpei. Once lofty volcanic islands like Pohnpei, they are geologically much older and have eroded and subsided over millions of years, leaving only rings of coral surrounding lagoons, so that the combined area of all the atolls – Ant, Pakin, Nukuoro, Oroluk, Kapingamarangi, Mwoakil, Sap-wuahfik, and Pingelap – is now no more than three square miles. Though Pingelap is one of the farthest from Pohnpei, 180 miles (of often rough seas) distant, it was settled before the other atolls, a thousand years ago, and still has the largest population, about seven hundred. There is not much commerce or communication between the islands, and only a single boat plying the route between them: the MS Microglory, which ferries cargo and occasional passengers, making its circuit (if wind and sea permit) five or six times a year.
Since the Microglory was not due to leave for another month, we chartered a tiny prop plane run by the Pacific Missionary Aviation service; it was flown by a retired commercial airliner pilot from Texas who now lived in Pohnpei. We barely managed to squeeze ourselves in, along with luggage, ophthalmoscope and various testing materials, snorkelling gear, photographic and recording equipment, and special extra supplies for the achromatopes: two hundred pairs of sunglass visors, of varying darkness and hue, plus a smaller number of infant sunglasses and shades.
The plane, specially designed for the short island runways, was slow, but had a reassuring, steady drone, and we flew low enough to see shoals of tuna in the water. It was an hour before we sighted the atoll of Mwoakil, and another hour before we saw the three islets of Pingelap atoll, forming a broken crescent around the lagoon.
We flew twice around the atoll to get a closer view – a view which at first disclosed nothing but unbroken forest. It was only when we skimmed the trees, two hundred feet from the ground, that we could make out paths intersecting the forest here and there, and low houses almost hidden in the foliage.
Very suddenly, the wind rose – it had been tranquil a few minutes before – and the coconut palms and pandanus trees began lashing to and fro. As we made for the tiny concrete airstrip at one end, built by the occupying Japanese a half century before, a violent tailwind seized us near the ground, and almost blew us off the side of the runway. Our pilot struggled to control the skidding plane, for now, having just missed the edge of the landing strip, we were in danger of shooting off the end. By main force, and luck, he just managed to bring the plane around – another six inches and we would have been in the lagoon. ‘You folks OK?’ he asked us, and then, to himself, ‘Worst landing I ever had!’
Knut and Bob were ashen, the pilot too – they had visions of being submerged in the plane, struggling, suffocating, unable to get out; I myself felt a curious indifference, even a sense that it would be fun, romantic, to die on the reef – and then a sudden, huge wave of nausea. But even in our extremity, as the brakes screamed to halt us, I seemed to hear laughter, sounds of mirth, all around us. As we got out, still pale with shock, dozens of lithe brown children ran out of the forest, waving flowers, banana leaves, laughing, surrounding us. I could see no adults at first, and thought for a moment that Pingelap was an island of children. And in that first long moment, with the children coming out of the forest, some with their arms around each other, and the tropical luxuriance of vegetation in all directions – the beauty of the primitive, the human and the natural, took hold of me. I felt a wave of love – for the children, for the forest, for the island, for the whole scene; I had a sense of paradise, of an almost magical reality. I thought, I have arrived. I am here at last. I want to spend the rest of my life here – and some of these beautiful children could be mine.