By Jane Fishman
Savannah Morning News

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Jane Fishman
Morning News Columnist
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On a barrier island seven miles off the mainland, the world as we know it slips away. Without trying, we forget people's birthdays, the march to Baghdad, nursing home dramas. At the end of the first day, we're left with a hunger the size of Alaska and we don't care. Bring on the pumpkin soup, the lasagna, the apple pie.

I admit it. We're easily amused. It could be a sawtooth pin shell we spot at the beach; the splash of an alligator slipping into safety just three feet away; the ridges of a sandbar displaying a blueprint of the current, a topography that never repeats itself twice.

It could be the Darth Vader-like shell of a horseshoe crab; the dreamy nature of fog on the beach; the flash of an Eastern blue bird. We spot him peripherally through the branches of a grey-green cedar tree. That's the best we can do. This is a bird that won't let us see him directly.

On Ossabaw Island, without the chatter of TV or the tug of e-mail, without the sounds of an air-conditioning unit kicking on and off or the alarm of a car outside our window, we can hear the braying of a burrow, sounding to some of us like a shofar (or ram's horn) issued during the Jewish New Year.

On a walk past acres and acres of marsh grass, we can see hundreds of cobwebs shimmering with beads of dew, hanging like miniature hammocks. On another walk down a causeway that will never see concrete or orange construction cones, we see the smallest of clams or snails attached -- determinedly -- to more marsh grass.

Nearly 80 years after a Michigan family bought the island and built a mansion, Ossabaw -- at 25,000 acres, the size of Bermuda -- doesn't look much different than it did when the Spanish arrived 450 years ago. No small miracle there. Not that developers such as Charles Fraser didn't try. They did.

But Eleanor Torrey West, the daughter of the family from Grosse Pointe, held her ground. She figured the world had enough Hilton Head Islands, enough Myrtle Beaches, enough recreational areas. That even if people never visited Ossabaw, it would be enough for them to know that at least there's one place in the world like this that still exists.

Which is why when she sold the island to the state of Georgia in 1978, the terms included one stipulation: the island would be open to groups interested in exploring cultural, natural and scientific research.

I went with 10 watercolor painters from Atlanta after art teacher Carla House, energetic and eccentric, wrote and sent a proposal to the Ossabaw Island Foundation. We stayed in a newly renovated "clubhouse," not far from the dock on the north end of the island, decorated with splendid John Earl photographs. There were bunk beds and numerous fireplaces. For three days, the group translated to color and paper the majesty of live oak trees -- one 400-years-old -- blooming algae and Spanish moss.

This is a group that puts dead birds in the freezer to paint later; that describes a good painting as one that "reads well" or "makes a broad statement;" that likes to argue the value of Van Dyke brown and hooker green; that emphasizes the value of "dark negative spaces" and falling in love with pushing the pen around. It's an intense group, one minute chattering magpies, the other hushed with focus.

But when we got an invitation to visit Sandy West, no one minded walking to the big house behind the arched stone walls and the sign: "this property protected by moose security system."

"OK, kids," said the congenial West, who just turned 90 and was wearing blue jeans and open-backed blue suede shoes. "Let me show you the sunroom first. You'll notice that all the doorknobs are different."

West, who lives by herself, seemed pleased by the company. Trailed by her old dog, Jonesie, and framed by the archways of the dark interior doors and a 10-by-12-foot plate glass window that faces the ocean, she looked at the work of the visiting artists, nimbly crouching on one knee to see better.

Then, a fire in the background of the open two-story living room, she spoke of her pet pig, Lucky, now 16; her feelings about those who would change Ossabaw; and the Genesis Project of the '70s, which paired artists and scientists and gave them time to think.

"It was something to see," she said.

Walking out into the close of the day, we look east, past the palmettos, the marsh grass, the tidal creek, the ocean, and we spot a rainbow, then a second rainbow.

Now that was something to see, something that exists whether anyone else sees it or not.

Jane Fishman's column runs Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. She can be reached at gofish5@earthlink.net or at 652-0313.