American summer

I’d come, like many others, to revel in the opulence and slow pace of another era, and I felt it from the moment I turned my car down the riverfront drive that winds past the small manses that are quaintly called Goodyear Cottage, Mistletoe Cottage, Moss Cottage and Indian Mound Cottage, which was owned by the Rockefellers. As I pulled up to the Club, with its high turret that defines the building, and passed the croquet pitch, it was like a scene from a movie where you peer into a cracked, stained old sepia photograph and the setting instantly comes alive as you are transported to another age.

I met a couple in the hotel’s richly wood-paneled lounge that afternoon who remembered the island before it became a living museum. The man had grown up on Jekyll Island and told me that as a kid he had prowled through the old homes playing hide and seek with his friends. The doors were never locked, he recalled. But no one dared go inside at night, as shadows, creaking floorboards and overactive imaginations brought the past to ghostly life. Where affluence, order, unabashed grandeur and the strict rules of behavior between servants and masters once held sway, the chaos of  kids and the entropy of time swept in and took over. Then somebody said, “Hey, people might like a peek into the lifestyle of the rich and famous.” And the renovation of the club and cottages began. And the doors were locked again.

Now it’s a quiet, beach-swept wilderness for those of us who want to bask in the same glow, walk the same paths, sleep in the same rooms, eat in the same opulence as those who once passed for American royalty. So, on my first night, I tied a double Windsor knot on my silk Armani tie, donned a freshly pressed suit, walked from my fourth-floor room down the same winding wooden staircase that once felt the custom-made shoes of a river of millionaires, to the elegant Grand Dining Room. The room has changed little since the Club’s heyday. I was seated in front of the fireplace — the same fireplace where Vanderbilt and Rockefeller may have gazed into the flames in a moment of peaceful thought. And for the unhurried course of the sumptuous meal — from the slow bottle of California Syrah to the she-crab bisque and buttery filet mignon to the tangy perfection of the Key lime pie and a glass of port — I felt the exquisite and expansive tug of gentlemanly ease.

“I know why they came to Jekyll,” whispered a bird watcher named Jim, a willowy 72-year-old from Syracuse, New York, whom I met the next morning along a path that skirted the edge of the salt marsh. “It’s unpredictable, wild and serene all at once. Despite those big beaches, restored mansions with their manicured lawns and croquet and all the bike routes — take five steps off the path and you’ll run smack into raw wilderness. I’ve seen everything from crocs to woodpeckers livin’ their lives right in front of my nose. That’s why I come down here every year and have now for 20 years. And guess what I saw this morning?”

“What?”

“A bald eagle. How ’bout that?”

On Jekyll, the past beats like a second heart. I found it in strange and wonderful places on this island off the coast of Georgia. It comes out of a gauzy, distant memory in the twilight of an evening, just as the lights of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel illuminate rooms that once felt the tread of the wealthiest men in the world. It escapes in faint breaths from the echoes and creaks of the wooden staircase. It comes alive in the slow clop of horses’ hooves along the 10 miles of hard-sand beach. And it whispered to me as I wandered among massive live oaks that give this island an ancient weight, dripping with a thousand Spanish-moss dreamcatchers.

Each issue of ISLANDS Magazine explores the most beautiful island destinations in the world, from tropical island outposts to the sophisticated gems of the Mediterranean. Our top-rate photographers and writers discover the quiet beaches, boutique hotels, and unique cultural experiences that make island travel unique.

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