There was a point in time at which Judy said to me, “Can we please not go to any more islands for our holidays?” Since then, we’ve visited five of the Hawaiian Islands (with two trips to the Big Island), Martha’s Vineyard, and this summer made our third trip in seven years to Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Although I was born on Manitoulin Island, I’ve not made the Island my home for any extended period of time since I left to attend university in 1971—but vacationing on an island always seem to calm my mind and restore my weary soul. And Judy has stopped asking that we not go to islands any more.
An essential part of the island experience is the water crossing required to reach it. I’m almost as fond of ferries as I am of islands (although I’d much rather fly to the Hawaiian Islands than take a ship). To be suspended for an hour or two or three between the mainland and the island, to be sheltered in a watercraft designed to cut through the seas and bring you safely to the other side, to lose sight of one shore and wait until the other one appears, is to prepare the heart for a different way of living while on the island. We were already starting to unwind last month when we boarded the Isle Royale Queen IV in Copper Harbor, Michigan for the three hour, 87 km trip to Isle Royale, where we would spend a week hiking and camping—a U.S. National Park which lies stranded in the northern waters of Lake Superior like a windswept, 72 km long, 14 km wide rocky reef. By the time we reached the other side the routines of daily living were fading from our awareness—helped along by the fact that there is no cell service on the island.
The water crossing to Isle Royale reminded me of my childhood experiences on the S.S. Norisle, the coal-fired steamship that travelled between South Baymouth (on Manitoulin Island) and Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula from 1947 to 1974. It was also a three-hour trip, and while there was always the option of exiting via the swing bridge and highway connection on the north side of the Island, the ferry always seemed to me to be the proper way to leave the Island. After the passage the ferry dropped you off directly in Southern Ontario, which for me as a child was another world: The place where my grandmother and aunts and uncles lived, the country of church camps where other children shared my vocabulary, the land of American T.V. stations and exotic experiences like the C.N.E. (the only family vacation we ever enjoyed). Sure, the journey could be gruelling: The old boat rolled from side to side like a bathtub in heavy seas, but I was fortunate never to suffer from seasickness.
The experience a lengthy water crossing offers is symbolic of what is known as liminality: betwixt and between two states. Roland Harwood says, “Liminality means being on a boundary or threshold; a fragile and brief moment when a transition occurs.” Liminality is as precarious and exhilarating as crossing Lake Huron on the old Norisle: Hanging between life and death within the steel structure, 1,000 horsepower steam engine throbbing below decks. You could either stay in the forward lounge and through the windows watch the horizon bob up and down or step outside and feel the wind in your hair and the spray on your face, holding on to the railing to avoid being tossed overboard. One scholar (writing about Walt Whitman’s poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”) said, “On the water, ferry travelers can find an interlude where the material world gives way to the fundamentally spiritual existence that permeates it.”
As Harwood goes on to write, “The concept [of liminality] originated from anthropologists studying the ambiguity that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage (e.g. a bar mitzvah) where participants no longer hold their initial status (e.g. being a child) but have not yet begun the transition to the new status they will hold once the rite is complete (e.g. adulthood).” Liminality creates a neutral zone: betwixt and between, where you have left the familiar shore but haven’t yet arrived at the new place. Gail Sheehy used the word “passages” to describe those predictable “crises” in human growth and development, turning points that usher in a new stage, “a crucial period of decision between progress and regression.” A passage, whether it be a physical or psychological experience, is a liminal space.
Liminality creates a neutral zone… where you have left the familiar shore but haven’t yet arrived at the new place.
Unlike our recent passage from Copper Harbor to Isle Royale, the crossings of life are often unchosen and even inevitable. Thanks to medicine and greater awareness of what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, the progress of aging is not as straightforward as it once was, but the passing of years still brings a progressive letting go. Likewise, job loss, early retirement, marriage breakup, the end of an intimate relationship, moving to a new city or a new country, beating cancer but waiting for the clean bill of health—all leave the traveller in a liminal space, betwixt and between. We may have known how to live well in the familiar place, but a journey of self-discovery begins when the ferry embarks for the other side.
This space is what William Bridges called “the neutral zone“—a time between the old reality and the new one, a time when critical psychological realignments and repatternings can take place. Even if the transition is uninvited, we can transform it from a rude intruder to a kind guest by welcoming the generative insights and piercing revelations about the condition of the heart it brings. When betwixt and between in a neutral zone or a liminal space, we have the opportunity to see and hear with underutilized senses.
As I mentioned earlier, the concept of liminality was first used to describe the middle stage in a rite of passage where the participant is standing on the threshold of a new identity, wavering as it were between two worlds. One night in the summer of 2006 while camping with Judy on a rocky, windswept point of land on the shore of Lake Superior in Pukaskwa National Park, I had such an experience. We were laying beside each other in our tent before sundown, thoughts submerged beneath the wall of sound created by the waves pounding on the nearby shore. We felt suspended between heaven and earth. Suddenly, I began to weep, barely squeezing out the words, “I haven’t really loved my children.” By this time, our children had all left home. While they were still with us, I had loved them as best I could, but at that moment I realized I had often paid more attention to the needs of the small, struggling church I was leading than theirs. There would be no chance to relive those years when our children were young, but the insight I gained in that liminal space has guided me through the years since then where I’ve learned (and, I hope, practised) what it means to truly love my adult children.
Liminal spaces, like water crossings, prepare us for the next stage in our spiritual and emotional journey of human growth and development.
Unless otherwise noted, all text and photos © 2019 Edwin Wilson
