Ebb-Tide Optimism on a Climate-Changed Island
RICK VAN NOY is a professor of English at Radford University. He is the author of Surveying the Interior: Literary Cartographers and the Sense of Place and A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons. He is working on a book about climate change adaptation in the South.
MY FAMILY LIKES to accuse me of downplaying the total distance I plan to cover on outdoor trips with them. How far are we hiking? “A few miles,” I’ll say, vaguely. “Two hours, tops.” But then the venture will last three, and they will start to turn on me, which is why I always bring chocolate. I think I give a low estimate because I know that if I say we are hiking eight miles and it will take five hours, no one will join me, even though, in the end, we will all enjoy the journey. They’re on to me, but I do this subconsciously to myself as well. I take advantage of the brain’s “optimism bias,” which leads us to be more hopeful about future events than might be justified by a careful review of the available information.
And maybe I forgot to check, but I thought the hike from Sea Camp to Brickhill Bluff on Cumberland Island was seven or so miles, which seemed doable, even with packs. Yet on that summer morning, in the air-conditioned room at headquarters for Cumberland Island National Seashore, the ranger informed us that it was really ten. My son Sam, about to start his first semester of college, with several cross-country running awards behind him, blinked not. I am in decent shape, but the heat index for that late June day was 105. The only one to complain to about the trek would be me.
Hiking companions also like to accuse me of packing the bare minimum, only what we need, no luxuries or excess weight. Sam and I had gathered our gear on the spur of the moment, and I was doing a mental review. Tents and bags? Check. Enough food and water? I thought so. “My Brickhill Bluff people,” the ranger said, “boil your water.” I started worrying about the amount of gas in our small backpacker stove. I dug the cylinder of gas out of the pack and shook it. It felt about a quarter full. Enough for cooking, but for boiling water, I wished I had more. Optimism waning.
Sam and I were on this last-minute trip because Carol Ruckdeschel, resident naturalist and wilderness advocate, had said she could meet us on short notice, and that was too good an opportunity to pass up. I had embarked on a research project to learn more about what communities in the Southeast were seeing in terms of sea level rise and climate change, and experts I spoke with in Georgia said if I wanted to know what was happening on the barrier islands, particularly Cumberland, I should talk to Carol. She has lived on the north end of Cumberland Island, not far from Brickhill Bluff, permanently since the ’70s and comes by headquarters once a week to pick up
