Choosing Creativity

For centuries, only seabirds and driftwood reached the island of Rapa Nui That was before Easter Sunday 1722 when the Europeans landed here and renamed it Easter Island. Before plastic and other garbage washed ashore its beaches. Before 85,000 tourists visited the island every year.

The isolation fostered creativity. Nowhere is the creative process more evident than the statues built by the Rapanui people. Staring up at them feels like a holy experience. As I admire their size, the way they stand guard looking inward at the island from the coastline, I can’t help but wonder about my own legacy.

I visit the local museum, and it become even more evident that the relationship between humans and rock was special. Not only in the construction of ahu and the carving of moai. The Rapanui people used rocks to create gardens when erosion threatened the soil, placed rocks on peaks to create channels diverting water, and used extensive cave systems to create a microclimate where banana trees and sugar cane thrived.

Everywhere I go, I am reminded of the work of the ancestors— from imagining how many men and years it took to move and carve these boulders, to figuring out how to use every available freshwater source and cave on the island. I think about my own ancestors. I wonder what they’d have to tell me about what is enough.

 Being on the island blurs the line between living and death for me, and more often than not I think about people I’ve loved who’ve passed. Maybe because I’m in my mid-forties, the tender age when I know loss and I’ve reckoned with the fact in the coming decades, I’ll witness more of my loved ones dying. Or maybe it’s because everywhere I turn on this island someone’s ancestors carved out of rock are looking at me with a pulsing question—What will you create with your life?

In the small town of Hanga Roa, there’s more garbage than I would have guessed from an island that values sustainability and recycling. The town embraces a leave-no-trace plan and doesn’t have public bins to throw away things to encourage tourists to pack it out. But tourists can be lazy and entitled. More than once I’ve seen someone casually let a sandwich wrapper or plastic water bottle slip from his hand onto the ground.

 It sickens me, especially when I remind myself I’m a tourist too. I try to be meticulous about my behavior. I rent a bike instead of a car to explore the island. I bring a backpack to carry my groceries. I stay at a cabana that sometimes has electricity, sometimes not. Still the question gnaws at me if I’m doing more harm than good just by being here.

 I don’t want my contribution to this island, or to this planet for that matter, to be the trash I leave behind, the remnants of what I’ve consumed. As I pedal around the island photographing the Moai, I think of how easy it is to consume, how often I want a snack or cool drink, or to buy a souvenir. At night as I settle into my cabana without electricity, I wish for something to watch or listen to, for some distraction from my thoughts.

 This time when I look up at the Moai I think that I’ll someday be an ancestor, and feel a pressing urgency to leave a legacy my descendants will admire. I’m learning from being in a remote place is there’s a certain beauty of having to figure things out without electricity or other conveniences. Spending uninterrupted time has helped me connect to deeper thoughts.

 Opting for creativity over consumption requires trusting that even if we won’t see the results in our lifetime, we give our children and grandchildren the chance to enjoy the same natural world as our ancestors.