When an Island Returns

“NO MAN is an island,” wrote 17th-​century poet John Donne. True enough; in fact, even islands don’t always remain islands. The ancient island city of Tyre is a case in point. Alexander the Great fulfilled a remarkable Bible prophecy by building a causeway out to that island and destroying its proud city. Over the centuries, the causeway silted up; the island became a peninsula.

In France the island of Mont-​Saint-​Michel is also in danger of losing its status as an island. On the border between the two French provinces of Brittany and Normandy, Mont-​Saint-​Michel is a small rocky mount with a village at its feet and a fortresslike abbey perched on its crown. Looming up like a pyramid from the vast, flat reaches of a tidal bay, it has lured visitors for centuries. Ever since a bishop claimed to have a vision of “Saint” Michael there early in the eighth century C.E., pilgrims have flocked to the church and later to the monastery built on the site. Time was not always kind to the place. Passing centuries saw it ravaged by fires, besieged in wars, closed down during the French Revolution, used as a prison, and finally restored during the last century, when it acquired its tower and spire.

It was the sea that long seemed the most dangerous enemy. The Mount was sometimes called Saint-​Michel-​at-​the-​Mercy-​of-​the-​Sea. For centuries, pilgrims could reach it on foot only by crossing from the mainland at low tide, warily looking out for treacherous quicksands. The fast-​rising tide presented another danger​—people came to say that it could rush in with the speed of a galloping horse!

The greatest enemy of Mont-​Saint-​Michel, though, has turned out to be the land, not the sea. In the 1870’s a 3,000-​foot [900 m] causeway was built that at last linked the island to the continent. Since then, tides no longer sweep the bay clean as they used to, and sand is building up around the Mount. Today only the highest tides embrace the island’s rocky ramparts. Much work is being done to counteract this phenomenon so that the famous Mount will not end up as a peninsula like Tyre​—or as a mere granite outcropping on a vast, dry beach.