Rust / resilience
Monhegan Island, ME / Gowanus, Brooklyn
The lacy remains of a boat decorate the rocks that underlie and surround Monhegan Island. With 70 year-round inhabitants, it sits austerely in the cold Atlantic, 10 miles off the Maine mainland. There, it offers a rest stop for migratory birds, which in turn draw flocks of birdwatchers. Come summer, bevies of seasonal residents and herds of tourists arrive to bask in the lack of roads and cars ... and the absence Lyme disease-causing ticks. It is one of the few places in New England free of them.
And that is no accident. In Spring 1997, Tony DeNicola, a wildlife management specialist was brought to the 4.5-square-mile island to kill its human-introduced deer — an essential vector for spreading Lyme. The Purdue PhD shot 52 deer, but another 25 remained. The next March, before any squeamish tourists arrived, Monhegans voted 31 to 23 to wipe them all out (the deer, not the tourists). Since then the island has had only two cases of Lyme. Monhegans, it seems, are as unyielding as their rocky coast.
The gentrification of Gowanus, Brooklyn, has been somewhat slowed by its hosting of the country's “most polluted canal,” a repository for 150 years’ worth of toxic sludge, raw sewage, and commercial garbage (a problem that sadly cannot be solved by shooting it). Hipster spread has also been dampened by Gowanus’s clusters of rough industry, like this metal yard.
Interesting story
I lived in Bangor and did not know this part of monhegan island history. Thanks! But the reputation of Gowanus has been etched in lifelong memory, as persistent as the toxins in the canal.