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Ok so maybe I'm procrastinating. Dragging my feet a little. Eking out the summertime memories here. I don't think anyone would blame me, but just in case, I did have some excuses planned for you (last weekend I was in Connecticut, the weekend before I was in Istanbul. Truly strange but truly true!)
But forget all that. Because honestly, in my mind's eye, I hope I will always be right here on this beach, on this gentle August evening, ginger beers that would become dark and stormies gently rolling in surf, with this on the tapedeck and sand up to my ankles and nothing left to do but build a bonfire and watch the sun going down, over the ocean, as it should be, for ever and always.
It is absolutely incomprehensible to me that it has been two whole months since my plane touched down on West Coast soil, two months since the sweetest two and a half weeks of my 2012. Maybe because I think about these places and those people so often each day that, in my mind, I've never ever left.
In a history of fine island summers, I'd say this was definitely one for the books. The finest visitors, the finest reggae mix tapes, the best berry picking and the very best and most adorable lighthouse docent I ever did meet.
I took three big fat rolls of photos this trip, and these are from one of the first orders of business we got down to: our annual boat camping trip. Mom, Dad, Dag, Dog and I all piled into the Albin and set sail for our favorite spot. We ate hot dogs and fried our spuds up with fresh rosemary and garlic and gathered feathers in our hatbands and slept outside so we could watch for shooting stars. Our own Moonrise Kingdom.
...I'm homeward bound, at looooong last!
My family's land is beautiful, and being only about half a mile inland, on a quiet night you can hear the surf crashing down on the beach in North Bay. Even so, I remain more than a little jealous of those folks who have managed to snap up a piece of waterfront property. To wake up and see the sea in your front yard, to watch the sun set over the other dusky blue humps and take a moonlit stroll on the shore at a minute's notice? That would be a bit of all right, all right.Every winter, I tend to get a bit restless at some point and take off from home for a walk that usually ends in a bit of light trespassing. Our sweet but short warmer months tend to attract a lot of vacationers in the summer whose houses then stand empty for the better part of the year, and it's pretty irresistible to go peeping at the windows of some of these places now and then. They run the gamut from multi-story, sterile monstrosities to cozy little cabins--the one pictured above being my very favorite and of the latter variety. Built decades ago by relatives of one of the oldest families on the island, it has everything you could ever need to live a comfortable, quiet life: a bedroom, a loft, a modern gas range and hand-operated water pump in the kitchen, a wood stove for heating, a beach-combed collection of delicately salted shells and other pale detritus, and a piano. And, a huge set of windows facing a wild, watery, ever-changing amphitheatre. I fantasize that some day I will have the means and the opportunity to buy, or even just rent it for a week...but until then, it's the art of the snoop for me.
I finally got three rolls of film developed last week, and suddenly I feel like I have more photos than I know what to do with! Some of them have been sent off on secret missions, a few are waiting in reserve for a special announcement, but until then I will get on with sharing the rest.We may not have a had white Christmas, but I did have a white winter vacation this year. It was the first time most of those ducks had ever seen ice or snow, and hi-jinks ensued. Ducks are so dang cute, I think these guys may have put me off chickens forever. I spent a lot of time lurking around the house, taking pictures of my Mom's weaving studio, my growing stack of National Geographics. We also did a good bit of bushwhacking and trail building in the woods around our place, and I still have the blackberry vine marks around my ankles where they got in above my socks and worked their mischief. The water was snow-blue and everything was still crusted in white the morning I left.
By the time I see my homeland again, winter will have miraculously turned to mid-summer and the garden will be blooming.
Watch/Listen!
One of the best parts of going home to the island in summertime is that it means I get to work with flowers again. Above are a couple of my favorite bouquets that I made for sale at the Farmer's Market in Friday Harbor. I was inspired by sunsets, long walks on the beach, and Dag's sweet Hawaiian shirt ;n )
I grew up helping my mother plant, weed, harvest and arrange the cut flowers on our farm, and it's had a lasting effect on my brain and my life. I doodle flowers, I dream about flowers, I obsessively save and dry flowers and stick them in jars and vases and hang them on my walls. There's a special corner of my mind--way in the back where I keep secret, special, important things--reserved for the imaginary corner florist shop I will own someday, somewhere, somehow.
