Russell, Franklin

A Canadian citizen, born in New Zealand, educated in that country and England, sometime resident of the United States. He has worked as a automobile mechanic, farmer, truck driver, laborer, streetcar conductor, and newspaper man.

Inside the island, a million birds sleep. The forest and grass conceal them and drip with the moisture of a night-borne mist. The gulls are silent and face toward invisible Greenland and a horizon of transparent, shifting colors. The sun shows its lip, light the color of blood runs across the sea and strikes into the spruces. The Secret Islands, 1965.

 

I traveled toward self-knowledge

but the journey was circular, Ibid.

 

An eider duck, immobile, six inches from my boot, moved slightly to allow a duckling to dig under her breast feathers, and I could see the question in her eyes. Ibid.

 

An island is a place of refuge
for men and animals;
its isolation
slows the insistent
thrust of time. Ibid.

 

I saw the island (Funk) close up as I glanced over Sturge's
shoulder, and I knew I was duplicating the experience of a thousand men before me. From the boat it seemed incredible that such a stream of humanity&endash;explorers, Indians, sealers, whalers, codfishermen&endash;had ever reached this lonely place. Yetthe island, and its auks, had drawn them as it was drawing me. Ibid.

 

I mounted the crest of the rock and Funk Island spread out, an explosion of sight, sound, and smell. I saw, but I did not see: I saw dark masses of murres in the distance; I saw curtains of buzzing kittiwakes . . . Ibid.

 

But on Funk Island, nothing matters. Death is nothing. Life is nothing. Chaos is order. Order is a mystery. Time is meaningless. The deep-throated roar of the colony cries out to a heedless sky. Ibid.

 

Gannets in flight seem to "fly on rails." Ibid.