View from the Pier

This image was taken on the Portuguese island of Madeira, which sits 530 miles from its Motherland and 378 miles off the coast of North Africa.  Romantic legends swirl around the discovery and early history of this subtropical, volcanic island.

Recorded history tells us that Madeira was discovered by Prince Henry the Navigator in 1419 but traditional tales told over the ages speak of earlier visitors to the island.  In one story, in the year 1336, a young English nobleman Robert A. Machin fell in love with Anna d’Arfet, a noblewoman of higher social standing.  Her parents opposed the match and the young couple eloped, sailing from Bristol for France on a chartered ship with a small crew.  Overtaken by gales and tossed about in high seas for two weeks, they eventually landed on a very heavily wooded island.  Within days, Anna died of exposure, and Robert too soon succumbed to the journey’s hardships.  The surviving crew buried the couple at a place that became known as Machico, building a small church to commemorate the star-crossed couple.

The lore continues with the crew setting sail from the island and making their way to Morocco.  There, they met a Portuguese naval pilot who they told about the land they had discovered.  The captain, Zarco, in turn, told his royal master, Prince Henry the Navigator, who commissioned an investigative voyage.  Reaching the thickly forested island, Zarco named it Madeira, “Island of Woods.”

The island’s Laurissilva Forest is in fact a piece of living history.  Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999 because of its biological diversity and level of preservation, it spans nearly 55,000 acres.   Covering about 16% of the island, this ancient rainforest is found on the northern slopes, forming a thick spine across the island’s center.  The forest is covered in laurel and mimosa trees, lily-of-the-valley, flowering shrubs such as yellow foxglove and Wollaston’s musschia, and various types of orchids, heather, and holly. This special ecosystem was once prevalent across most of Europe 65 million years ago–Madeira is now one of the only places on earth where this type of lush vegetation wasn’t wiped out by the Ice Age.

Various industries have flowered as a result of the island’s breadth of botany.   Wicker furniture-making is a significant trade on the island.  In particular, the cane furniture crafted in rural Camacha from local willow trees is renown, and exported all over the world.  Madeira’s wicker weaving expertise is showcased in another island pastime—the Monte sleigh ride–that is considerably less pastoral and peaceful.

While stories abound of how or why this novel activity came about, it’s agreed it dates to the 1800s.   This was the era in which Mary Anne Evans penned The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Middlemarch.  In a cruel irony dictated by convention of the times, she wrote these hugely popular classics under the pen name of George Eliot, as the idea of a female author was unthinkable in those days.  And, in another instance illustrative of how the decorum of the times can dictate affairs of the heart, Mary Anne spent almost 30 years with George Henry Lewes as his “spiritual,” but not legal, wife.  Lewes was already married when he met Mary Anne, and divorce was considered impossible in that age.  While Lewes’ marriage had long been over in his eyes due to his wife’s infidelity, Mary Anne was publicly censured and disowned by her family for her decision to live openly with him.  Ultimately, her identity as George Eliot became an open secret, and her literary success led to wider social acceptance.

In the spirit of adventure and 21^st century open-mindedness, my husband Tom and I made our way to a street corner in Monte, a leafy suburb high in the hills outside Madeira’s capital of Funchal.  Scattered about the intersection were clusters of men in white flannels and straw boaters, talking among themselves with the easy jocularity of long-time comrades.   On one corner sat an old stone building—laughter drifted out of its windows and one of its walls sported the jackets and hats in the picture above.   Ahead, outside the wrought iron gate of The Monte Palace Garden, more men in white milled around rattan chaises outfitted with plump floral cushions, big enough to seat two.  These wicker sleighs were mounted on wooden runners, which we later learned were greased with suet.

And so, without giving ourselves too much time to ponder what we were getting ourselves into, we climbed into one of the big wicker baskets.  Two men smiled hello and each grabbed a rear corner of the sled and steered it into the road.  The men took a few quick steps to push off, jumped on a fender of sorts on the back of the sleigh and we began to plummet down a steep hill toward the glittering Mediterranean, covering one mile in seven heart-pumping, pulse-quickening minutes. As we approached each curve in the snaking road, the men stuck out a leg, using their feet as brakes, leaving the scent of burning rubber in the air behind us.  More than once, they leapt off the sleigh altogether, fighting gravity to keep the contraption from smashing into the high walls separating this raceway from the homes along it.  I screamed, clasped Tom’s hand tightly, my glasses flew off my head and I screamed some more.  I distinctly recall wondering whether I was really having fun, or really not having fun.

That trip to Madeira was Tom’s and my honeymoon.  Unlike Anna d’Arfet’s and Robert Machim’s gale-force courtship and elopement, Tom and I tied the knot after a decade of dating, and a history dating to our college days almost 30 years earlier.  I am happy to say that while we do avail ourselves of an adrenaline-inducing adventure periodically, unlike Mary Anne Evans and George Lewes, Tom and I eventually made our relationship a legal as well as spiritual one—and have increasingly opted for the road paved with less drama.

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