Haust Draft 1

Crane Island Journal: Book I Sample (first 20 of 92 days in Haust)

Prologue

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You can know a place, in a way, by traveling through it, but to have a deep sense of a place you have to live there, experiencing the landscape, the weather, the natural world of living things, and the human world of culture, community, houses, and politics.

When visiting the San Juan Islands, and especially Orcas in 1984 with our young Boulder family, passing through by green and white Washington State ferry, I wondered at the lives of people whose homes were visible through the firs here and there on the shore. What was it like to live on an island? A beautiful one, at that. And an island with mountains as high as Green Mountain above Boulder. 

Forward

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From October 20, 2010 through October 19, 2011, I kept a daily journal of our life on Crane Island, a private island at the south end of Deer Harbor on Orcas and north of Shaw Island, across Wasp Passage. This is it, the first of four volumes: Haust, Vetur, Vor, and Sumar, autumn, winter, spring, and summer in Old Norse.

Introduction

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The San Juan Islands are an archipelago in the Pacific Northwest of the United States between the U.S. state of Washington and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The San Juan Islands are part of Washington state, and form the core of San Juan County.

In the archipelago, four islands are accessible to vehicular and foot traffic via the Washington State Ferries system.

One: Scavenging Firewood

(first of twenty days/journal entries; nineteen more follow below. Complete Journal has 365)

For over a year, I had been thinking about a pile of tree trunks abandoned near Well House 1 in the Crane Island common area. With our F-150 pickup temporarily on the island, it made sense to consider cutting them into 16-inch sections and bringing them back to the house, about ¼ mile away, for splitting, stacking, and then burning this winter in our wood stove to supplement our inefficient electric baseboard heating.

It was a sunny October day. The grass in the field adjacent to where the logs lay was intensely green, soft, and luxurious. Why don't the island deer browse here rather than trying to find a way into Yvonne's garden?

But what about burning wood? Isn't that polluting – adding CO2 and particulates to the atmosphere? Shouldn't the logs be allowed to return to the soil? Are they a feeding station for birds? Why not let them act as nurse logs for the next generation?

Letting the logs rot would have the same effect as burning them – releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In either case, it's certain that other trees will grow on Crane and quickly recapture the CO2 sequestered in the logs. If the wood is burned hot in a modern wood stove, not much particulate matter is released – no visible smoke. And it seems to make sense to use a local heat source rather than electricity or propane that has to be transported long distances at considerable effort, expense, and environmental impact.

There were ten trunks, the largest being 18 inches and the smallest about 6 inches – Douglas fir, alder, western red cedar, and others – each about 10 feet long. A Douglas fir stump stood nearby, broken off about 8' up, the source of one of the trunks in the jumbled pile.

Where did they come from? Who cut and stacked these trunks and left them to rot? Why? At least three were deadfalls, toppled in winter storms onto the common area meadow. Perhaps Jim Johansen or Tom Temple or Gary Sale, our water system manager, had been involved. But since no one wanted the logs, they were fair game for an island scavenger.

Douglas fir, known for its thick bark and strong fire resistance, is often used for construction framing. It also has a beautiful grain that lends itself to trim, doors, and moldings. They grow like weeds in the Pacific Northwest – in the rainforest to 8' diameters and 300' high.

Alder, a brittle and easily breakable deciduous tree with gray bark, is related to aspen, birch, and beech. On the ground, they rot much more quickly than Douglas fir. Often growing in wet areas, in clumps, and in peculiar shapes, they look unkempt next to the straight and elegant Douglas firs.

Cedar trees are wonderful. Rather than spiky, their needles are flat and soft to the touch with the pattern of their bark running vertically. Cedar is particularly resistant to rot, thus its use in decks, posts, and other exposed wood.

Because I had to park my pickup 100 feet from the pile of trunks, I brought along our dock cart to carry the cut sections from the pile to the truck. With a Poulan 18" chainsaw (Yvonne's $105 purchased at Sears "scratch and dent" store south of downtown Seattle) and gas and chain oil, I was ready to begin cutting.

Since some of the logs had been lying there on the ground for several years, I expected some to be too rotten and unusable, and that turned out to be the case. Three fir and a single alder, wet, sporting dense, tough, clinging fungi, clearly weren't worth the effort of cutting, moving, and splitting, but the rest looked promising, if not perfect.

Besides the obvious cautions about chainsaws and bodily harm, they require a certain amount of care. When cutting wood, the blades will stay sharp through many trees, but cutting into soil, sand, or gravel can ruin a chain quickly. So cutting trunks on top of other trunks isn't a problem, but trunks on the ground can be. How do you cut them through without ruining the chain – when you can't roll or lift them?

The cedar, not surprisingly, was in the best condition, even with its bark peeling off. The alder, on the ground, wasn't usable. The fir, with an inch or two of rot on one side, looked usable.

Because these trunks had been down for several years, they were drier and much lighter than fresh-cut, live trees – and very easy to cut – the chainsaw like a knife through butter. Cutting the cedar was a particular pleasure – because it's highly aromatic – with a characteristic clean scent – perhaps what keeps insects, fungi, and microbes at bay.

But loading the cart, dragging it to the pickup, and tossing 30 lb sections into its bed made me feel stiff, weak, and old – at least for a while until my muscles warmed up and stretched out. Mostly it felt good to be outside in the autumn sunshine in a beautiful place with no one around using a very manly power tool and knowing that we would have plenty of firewood to be cozy this winter.

After about three hours of effort and two truck trips, I had a pile of trunk sections piled at the foot of our Ranger sailboat - out of the water and on its trailer for the winter. The open question remained: Would these sections split easily, or were they too soft? The concern was whether the splitting maul would bury itself in the wood rather than force it apart and break into sections.

Two: Perfect Windfall

Cloudy, misty, tank at 10 feet.

More than a year ago, a winter wind pushed over a 60' double-trunked Douglas fir. The shorter, dead trunk jammed itself into a big, ill-formed alder, with the longer, living trunk and crown nearly hitting the roof of well house 2, but distracted by a 20' dead fir, 4' to the east. The root ball, now half-visible, stuck up about 6', and was the source for a 24" diameter trunk. The root ball held the lower trunk about 4' off the ground. The dead fir at the other end held the crown 15' off the ground. Dead branches and spikes off the lower end also served to prop up the fallen tree.

Green for months, the wind-toppled fir eventually died and turned brown. Because its top was so close to the well house roof, held back by another, smaller dead tree, it appeared to be a danger to the well house. Because the tree floated, held up at one end by a dead tree, in the middle by branches, and at the bottom by the root ball, it looked like it might be a danger to anyone trying to cut it down and into pieces.

Our Water System Director and former sometime-arborist said he would take care of the tree, but being busy, he didn't get to it. A danger to the well-house but a danger to anyone who tampered with it. What's not to like? But without a way to transport the trunk sections home to be split for our wood stove, a half-mile distant, I couldn't generate much enthusiasm to tackle the project. With our pickup on the island for a while and needing to set in a winter firewood supply, the double-danger task was irresistible.

Setting out about 9:00 on a sunny October day in the low 50s, I parked at the intersection of Circle Road and Rocky Road. "Road" probably too strong, really, since both were single-lane gravel tracks that off-season didn't see any wheeled activity for weeks at a time. I walked to the nearby 8' cube with a peaked roof and set my chainsaw, two-stroke gas can, and gallon of chain and bar oil on the remains of a gravel pile, one of several around the island that served as sources for filling potholes. This one was severely depleted because Jim Johansen had taken several John Deere tractor scoops from it in July to refresh a path at the Clarks who would host the Crane Island Golden Anniversary party a few days later.

The question: could I cut the tree down without harming the well house or myself in the process? Yvonne had gone to Orcas for meetings and wouldn't be back until afternoon. As far as I knew, only Tom Temple, down Rocky Road, and Lou Falb, all the way on the other side of the island, were around, and neither had any particular reason to move off their properties that day. What if something fell on me, and I got trapped under the trunk or a branch? What if I was careless with the chainsaw and severely injured myself? I didn't have a cell phone. No one would come until too late. But I did have my Nikon camera on my belt, since I was intending to document the project. I could use the video recording feature to tell my sad story before my demise. Yvonne or someone would eventually find the video on the camera where I tell what happened and that I love everyone. Enough! Time to get to work.

I first cut through the trunk about 20 feet from the root ball, where the trunk was above 5' above the ground, surmising that the upper part of the tree would drop, and the lower would hold in place. I could then cut sections in the lower part and see what to do about the upper. Since there was a chance that a cut might bind the saw between the two sections before they fell apart, I first cut a few inches from below and then cut a triangular slice from above, leaving plenty of space for the trunk to buckle into as the top portion of the tree fell away from the bottom. That worked just right.

I cut 16" (or so) sections down toward the root ball, first trimming any branches. About 8' from the bottom, at an 18" diameter, I quit cutting and left the horizontal stump. With the diameter exceeding the saw bar length and sections becoming increasingly heavy, it seemed prudent to curtail my greed for more. The summer before, transporting a big fir in sections from Chris Thomerson’s house on Orcas – by truck, dock cart, boat, and then dock cart to my splitting area, I'd injured my back on the second to last section and that put me out of commission for a few weeks. And I didn't want to have the problems my son Noah was having with his back when a random twist brought him to his knees in pain and made it impossible for him to do anything but lie down or stand for weeks – until, discouraged with a pain-killer regimen, he tried a hang-board – and that did the trick.

Going back to the upper portion of the tree, I cut it about 10' along, where it was now about 5' off the ground. I trimmed branches and sliced that part of the trunk. I did the same thing two more times – on each occasion, the higher part of the trunk dropped lower so I could work on it. After pulling the crown out of the dead tree holding it, I dragged the crown and branches away from the well house to an open area under a mature grove of cedars and firs.

What a contrast! I'd been working in thick salal, sea spray, and small, crowded firs and among big branches that had broken and were hanging down from the busted big alder that now dominated the area. But 20' away, there was no understory, just clear needle-covered ground and a few rotting trunks amid big trees that captured the sunlight before it could support new life below. The old-growth forest looked elegant with its life all above. The new-growth forest, along the road and where the soil had been disturbed to dig the well and build the well house, was teeming with life in chaotic profusion. A towhee bounced along the trunk sections I'd cut looking for something good to eat. I'd seen spiders and beetles as I worked. The climax forest wouldn't support much life – not birds or deer or even many insects. Only the messy border of new growth would.

Getting the sections into the truck bed was a bit of a struggle since carrying them out of the tangle where they lay threatened to trip me, the branches hanging down from the alder wanted to poke me in the eye, and some of the sections weighed 60 or 70 lbs – (lift with your legs I said to myself). Back home I tossed the new, excellent quality Douglas fir sections on top of the pile of questionable slices I cut and brought home the day before from a pile of rotting trunks near well house 1. Quite a pile – certainly more than a cord once split (8' x 4' x 4') to add to the two cords already stacked and covered. We'll be warm enough this winter and I won’t have to go hunting for wood until next summer.

Three: Foggy Dawn

Dawn light gathered to reveal – not much of anything. Overnight fog had crept north from the Strait of Juan de Fuca through Cattle Pass and the channel between Lopez and San Juan Islands. Orcas wasn't visible, nor Bell Island; morning with a 100' depth of field. No matter; by noon, the fog would be gone, and we didn't have to go anywhere until then.

At the top of the driveway, at Eagle Lane, the large-leaf maple had shed most of its leaves, now a yellow and brown carpet over the gravel, marked with channels from a September downpour. Last fall, Yvonne raked the leaves off the lane for the compost pile and because left where they lay, autumn rains made them a slippery mass, a real problem when I tried to get the U-Haul truck out the January day we moved in.

Fog-bound, somewhere between Bell Island and the southeast corner of Crane, as it headed for Wasp Passage and Friday Harbor, moving but invisible, the Yakima, a big green and white Washington State Ferry, sounded its horn in warning and then again.

Just past the Community Center on Circle Road, going uphill, I could see the level indicator on the island's 35,000-gallon concrete water tank. Ten feet again today. No evident problems, small background leaks, and regular usage from the three currently occupied houses on the island.

Near Nielsen's driveway on Circle Road, I came upon Wilma Sale waiting for husband Gary, on his way in a slow-going tracked power shovel he would use to lift a new fiberglass septic tank off the truck Wilma had driven to that point and then dig out the 40 years old failing tank and replace it with the new one.

We talked about heating systems – they had just poured a concrete floor over tubing they would circulate hot water through to warm their new barn. One hour a day in four 15-minute periods would keep the barn at 55 degrees – a good temperature for working and keeping the place dry.

Gary came up soon in the power shovel, and we talked briefly about the two hydrants he needed to install – on Eagle Lane and on Sunnyside – as well as the coliform and cross-connect plans we owed the county. With the power shovel on the island, Gary thought it would make sense to excavate a trench from well-house 6 uphill to the tank so he could lay cable to connect a float switch in the tank to pump timers in well houses 6 and 5. Unexpected heavy water use on a weekend last spring (many visitors) had caused the tank level to drop to its 7 ½ foot fire reserve. With no water flowing out of the tank, houses at the highest point in the system would run out of water first. Thus, the Hawkes, up from Seattle to enjoy the weekend at their Crane house, lost water and had to leave the island sooner than planned. Unacceptable.

Gary is the water manager – the homeowners association hires him to oversee the system and make required reports. I'm the board member responsible for the water system. Having a tank float wired to the timers in the two nearby and most productive wells meant that Gary could set the timers to pump aggressively but when the tank level exceeded 14 feet, the top, the pump would be shut off, overriding the timers. At times of high use, with the tank level falling, the pumps would not be interrupted, and the system could work to bring the system back to its full level.

Between Gulf Lane and Sunnyside Lane, I spied a black beetle with a brown abdomen moving around in the gravel and pine needle littering Circle Road. I often see these beetles, usually it seemed making a beeline to cross the road – to get to the other side, I suppose. This one moved randomly, looking for slugs to eat perhaps. But every so often it would fall over to its left. How peculiar. A six-legged creature should do better than that. I looked closer; only two legs, front and rear on its left side. What was the story behind that amputation or birth defect?

Heading home after walking a two-mile circle. At the community dock, I started across Och's meadow, everything coated with a very fine dew left by the fog. As I had seen many times before, the tiny droplets made visible usually hard-to-see spider webs strung between the tall standing drying grass stems. The higher, bigger webs were systematic and elegant, usually with the maker positioned right at the center so as to feel any tugs on the web from potential-meal visitors. By number, most of the webs were small, close to the ground, irregular, with denser stitching, and with no maker visible. Same goal; different technique.

The fog hides, and the fog reveals. It depends on what you're looking for. The fog creates a quiet, hushed, peaceful place, but it also causes those moving in it to speak in rich tones, sounds when vision fails.

There's the "Ashenhurst" sign Yvonne wood burned on a piece of driftwood, pointing through a copse of salal and small fir, to the path to Yvonne's bamboo north gate and home. Looking forward to a hot cup of English breakfast tea.

Four: Buyer’s Remorse?

Cloudy

Corrina, our bonus daughter, called just after noon from daughter Jeni's, where she was staying temporarily until she could leave India to stay with Arjun, to see whether they were in love. He wants to come to the U.S. to study music. Corrina is applying to graduate schools in the administration of not-for-profit art organizations or something like that. Yvonne was at the Deer Harbor Community Club knitting group and also setting up for Saturday's yard cleanup there.

In October 2006, we lived in an owner-built Victorian with a garage we had converted into a guesthouse/deck/sleeping porch, a boathouse/shop with my office in a loft my son Eric and I had created shortly after we bought the house in 1997. Yvonne had a big, raised bed garden, and a greenhouse, the property ringed by a deer fence. On the side of a hill with southern exposure, with scattered Douglas firs and cedar, fruit trees, native plantings, lots of deck, covered and exposed, a hot tub, a new IKEA kitchen/dining area in a great room, one bedroom down, another up, and a family room, with a south deck and an east deck, furnished with Swedish farmhouse furniture. We'd done a lot of work ourselves and spent a lot to do things we couldn't. But – it wasn't quite what we wanted. Though we could see a little of Deer Harbor, basically we had no connection to the water. The house wasn't laid out well, the living room was low-ceilinged, there wasn't enough storage, and the crawl space was home to rats. We could make massive changes to the house but would never get our money back.

On the way back from a yacht club trip to Sidney BC, we cruised by a house on the east side of Crane Island near Pole Pass that Yvonne had seen advertised for sale. A group of kids was playing on a beach near what we thought was probably the house. Yvonne liked what she saw from a distance. We had talked with the listing agent, Al Decho, on the Sidney cruise, and we called him Monday to see the house. It was empty, and he arranged a tour for Wednesday. We loved the house and made an offer that was accepted on Thursday. Working with our friends Ken and Kate Wood, who had sold us the Deer Harbor house, we listed, had an offer, and accepted it Saturday. We then made an offer on the Crane Island house, and Dean and Iris accepted it. We were going to move.

We'd bought the house in Deer Harbor, on Cayou Valley Road, on impulse. When we visited Orcas in August 1998 we were smitten by its beauty, found the Deer Harbor hamlet charming and bought a house with no clear plan about living there. Crazy maybe. On the other hand, though we loved Boulder and had raised our kids there, and had family and dear friends in Colorado, it seemed increasingly overrun by monied California and New York refugees and its western college town flavor was morphing into a caricature of itself, a kind of Boulder theme park. The roads were crowded, the trails were crowded, and tourists were everywhere. Too precious. We had become disenchanted with Boulder.

Something similar had happened with our house in Deer Harbor. Though we had done lots of work inside and out to make it what we wanted, it now felt inadequate. The house was poorly designed and built. It had no view of or access to the water. We had too many neighbors too close. The Crane house solved those problems or at least made those problems solvable - with a little work.

But we'd created new issues we were only beginning to become aware of. It wasn't easy to live on an island without ferry service. It had power and phone but the Crane Island Association was responsible for its own docks, roads, wells, water system, airstrip, and fire and rescue service. At first that was interesting but there was an emerging realization that it was a lot of work. How long would we want to make the effort? What would happen as we got old and couldn't work so hard or needed medical attention or got tired of having to deal with the Washington State Ferry Service?

Would we make some new impulsive decision and head off in an unexpected direction?

Our conversation was realistic but not very much fun and Yvonne pointed out we were getting nowhere. We can't live asking big questions too often. She suggested and I agreed that we table the discussion and quit picking at the future. We have a wonderful life right now. Time for a Netflix DVD and hot tub soak. 

Five: Fall Clean Up

The community water tank is holding steady at 10 feet. No sign of the storm.

Because Yvonne is the chair of the Deer Harbor Community Club Ground Committee, she is responsible for the health and attractiveness of the grass, gardens, and plantings around the Community Club building and around the Post Office. Likely unique or nearly so in owning the building housing the local post office, the Community Club managed to buy the building from Wyndham Properties two years ago after the company refused to renew the lease for the Post Office, and it then was almost certain that we would have to drive to Eastsound or the ferry landing to pick up our mail. Even more important, the Post Office is the place where we meet one another, unplanned, to exchange news and gossip when picking up mail from postal boxes, buying stamps, or shipping presents to grandchildren. It's a stage for the theater of community.

Yvonne is a great organizer. She sees clearly what needs to be done and can recruit and direct people to accomplish a shared goal. Since it owned the Post Office site, the Community Club needed to keep it looking good as a matter of pride and practicality. The Post Office is adjacent to the Resort at Deer Harbor and just across Deer Harbor Road from the Bell Marina at Deer Harbor. The Community Club building and grounds are set back off Deer Harbor Road a quarter mile north and within the boundaries of the Deer Harbor Hamlet.

The weather for the day didn't look promising. A strong low and high waves off the west coast of Vancouver Island, our protection from direct exposure to the storms of the Pacific. Rain and wind likely Saturday. Certain on Sunday. Yvonne had announced the fall clean up at the monthly potluck and sent emails and talked to those likely to participate – the core group that always turns out and does most of the work. As an incentive, Yvonne would serve lunch – turkey chili, cornbread, and chocolate cookies. Pam Smith would also bring a pot of chili.

At the Post Office, where the clean up would begin, later moving to the Community Club site, volunteers began to appear even before the scheduled 10:00 a.m. starting time, carrying rakes, shovels, clippers, and other gardening paraphernalia. By 10:15, 20 volunteers were on hand, raking leaves, pulling weeds, and scraping green growth through concrete cracks and joints between the roadway and retaining wall. Mostly gray-haired in their 60s and 70s, a few younger and older, all working continuously, effectively, cooperatively, happily – with intermittent conversation and news swapping.

Yvonne managed the group without having to do much explicitly – other than tell people what she thought needed to be done. They worked out the details, moving in and out of roles and jobs, lending and borrowing tools. Bob brought his pickup over from his home nearby, and cuttings, sweepings, and shovels full went into the bed.

Shasta daisies, unappealing to the local deer population that likes to browse all unfenced gardens, had spread enough to obstruct the parking lot exit and pedestrian approach. Yvonne put me in charge of digging most of them out, and as I laid clumps on the adjacent sidewalk, others carried the clumps for transplantation across the parking lot to a mostly empty bed and where Yvonne and I had installed two posts and signs in the spring making it clear that the parking spaces were for Post Office patrons.

With the Post Office grounds cleanup complete at about 11:45, the group migrated to the Community Club where Yvonne issued orders and began to set up for lunch. Howard Barbour, club president, had spent the morning there installing two posts, side by side with enough space between them to hold a nautical, cross-style flagpole he'd built from an appropriately sized tree trunk he found floating in and retrieved the waters of Deer Harbor. The concrete holding the poles needed to be set a week or two before the pole could be raised. Later on, Howard scampered up the roof to the belfry where he installed a new pull rope that hung down from the bell into the front hall of the building below, used to call children to class during the years the building served as the local one-room school before the consolidation of the schools to Eastsound.

James, our youngest son, in a neuroscience Ph.D. program at UCLA, called about 5:00 responding to my suggestion that we try Apple's videophone service called FaceTime between his iPhone and our MacBook Pro. Yvonne was skeptical about the value of the service. If you talk to someone on the phone, why do you need to look at them too? In this case, FaceTime (or Skype or whatever) turns out to be well-suited to our needs. Yvonne and I could both see and talk to James and his boyfriend, Keith, beginning his Ph.D. in philosophy at USC. A more satisfying connection. And Keith could show us the Gruyère cheese pâte choux appetizers that he had prepared, and we could see the filled champagne flutes they would have with dinner shortly.

Six: Unsustainable Health Care

Some wind this morning from the predicted storm but little rain. Water tank at 10 feet.

Suzanne Olsen, moderator for the Orcas Island Unitarian Universalist Fellowship for the last two years, reported that her recent moose hunting adventure with her husband John in the Bella Coola Valley had been a great success. They had come back with a large supply of moose meat (No, they didn't bring the head). They enjoyed the friendliness of the guides and locals, but most of all, she said, she appreciated the time with John, being part of an activity he enjoyed and had mastered: hunting, which she was both ignorant of and tentative about.

The UU fellowship was formed in 2000 by Nanette Graham, a Santa Barbara refugee, and when it was clear she would have to move to Bellingham to be closer to major medical care, I volunteered to be responsible for services, to be the moderator. Nanette's style was Cruise Director Lite. The services were her party, and she made sure everyone had a good time. The congregation grew. My style is lectures on serious topics. The congregation shrunk. After five years of duty, I resigned, and Suzanne took over. Her style is poetic and intuitive. We've switched from rows of seating facing the lectern and chalice to a semi-circle, from show with Nanette to lecture with me to conversation with Suzanne. She has a gift and could have been a Unitarian minister if her life had taken a different turn.

After Suzanne lights the chalice candle, the light of truth and fellowship, and some of us come up to light additional candles, sharing a joy or concern, David Sarver, president of the Orcas Medical Center Board, fills us in on the state of health care on the island. From the outside, the system looks healthy and robust. From the inside, it's sick and unsustainable. I think about the fir I found Labor Day on my morning walk on Crane. It had broken off about 15 feet from the ground and lay across Circle Road. There was no sign of rot from the outside. There had been no wind. But the tree couldn't stand.

Until this summer, Orcas was home to five primary care physicians for a population of 5000. A more practical ratio, David says, is one doctor to every 2500. Two doctors have moved off the island because they couldn't make a living. One doctor operates within the Medical Center, a state-of-the-art facility built with donations and connected to a sustaining foundation. He is subsidized by the Medical Center. The other two doctors have their own offices and staff. One takes no money out of his practice. The other appears satisfied with low pay in exchange for living on Orcas and practicing in a low-key way. In David's view, primary care health delivery on Orcas is underfunded by $750,000 each year. Part of that deficit is made up by donations and the Medical Center foundation; the remainder by physicians out of their own pockets. That's nice for benefiting islanders – who have great care and don't need to adequately fund it, but as the doctors retire or leave Orcas and as donations dry up, Orcas may find itself in the same boat as many other rural communities – no local health care.

What is to be done? One alternative that the Medical Center has pursued is to reduce island medical care overhead (how many separate bookkeeping departments are really needed?) and redundancy (how many x-ray machines and office buildings are needed?) by encouraging the two outlier doctors to come into the Medical Center, operate independently but share the building and administrative overhead. So far, neither is interested.

A second possibility would be to create an Orcas medical care taxing district as San Juan Island did a few years ago. Orcas has one to subsidize the public library. Why not do the same for medical care? Past efforts have failed and given an anti-tax mood, David says the Medical Center Board won't attempt a referendum.

A third possibility relates to the way insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid reimburse primary care physicians – fees for certain services. David reports that primary care physicians have to spend more time providing services they cannot collect for than services they can. They are reimbursed for office visits but not for writing and tracking prescriptions, telephone calls, and reading x-rays – even though they must do these things to care for a patient. They can't make up the difference by charging more for office visits because the payers limit the amount they'll pay for visits. Primary care physicians – family practice, internists, and pediatricians – track individuals over time and can contribute more to a person's long-term health. Specialists see patients for a specific purpose and may never see them again. They deal with a situation, not the person. But specialists make double the income of primary care physicians on average, reimbursed at a higher percentage of costs than primary care.

The trick is to move primary care up the food chain. The closer it can come to the specialists/hospital world, the lower the subsidy required. San Juan Island is taking this step by working with Peace Health, a not-for-profit hospital group, to create an emergency room/small hospital in Friday Harbor. The center will house the island's primary care physicians, who will then be affiliated with the hospital. Reimbursement will be more substantial, and islanders will be able to get non-critical medical procedures without having to go to Anacortes or Bellingham. Were the Orcas physician's community centralized in the Medical Center and were a taxing district in place, Peace Health would be inclined to invite Orcas to participate in its Friday Harbor center, scheduled for 2012 operation.

But is that likely to happen? David doesn't have much confidence. The Orcas doctors value what they take to be their freedom and they're willing to sacrifice financially to have it. The Orcas population is perfectly happy with the health care they get – no waiting days for an appointment, for instance. San Juan Island came to understand they would all benefit from cooperation and shared responsibility. Maybe Orcas will get to that point once health care delivery slips as temporary, hidden, subsidies fade away.

I called Noah, our oldest son, living with his family on the water on Harstine Island, South Sound, just north of Olympia and talked first to his wife Natasha about Jonathan Franzen's new book "Freedom." She loved the writing but was disappointed in Franzen's portrayal of Patti Berglund. Too passive. Yvonne had said the same thing. No woman would act that way. Noah thought that the author's summary execution of his most interesting female character, Lalitha, was the result of fearing she would run away with the novel, as Mercutio tried to do to Shakespeare in “Romeo and Juliet.” And we talked about Franzen's take on freedom.

Seven: Options

It is raining now, finally, but not much wind. October is usually very wet but hasn't been so far this year. Tank at 10 feet.

First, there was the cell phone question. Yvonne would be going to Seattle Friday and staying over with Jeni to go to the Bring Back Sanity Rally at Westlake. Her cell phone wouldn't recharge and probably needed a new battery. Radio Shack in Eastsound didn't have one; the phone was too old. James gave it to Yvonne as a backup when he got his first iPhone, and it was probably four years old. I had disabled Yvonne's phone by laying it on the cockpit deck of our SeaSport, which at the time was pretty wet – so we put James' phone in service.

Verizon has good service for Crane Island, with a transmitter at the ferry landing, a straight shot about two miles away. Sprint is available outside the house, as is AT&T. T-Mobile works, we understand, but their coverage other places is spotty. Might as well stay with Verizon.

We have only one cell phone. After too many business years of being tied to one, I don't want to be constantly accessible. Our current plan, 65 Plus, allowed 200 minutes and cost about $30 per month, but Yvonne never used all the minutes even when we were traveling. The Verizon service rep was very helpful over the phone. We averaged 46 minutes a month; the most in July when 14 of us helped Borgfest in eastern Washington to celebrate Yvonne's 60th birthday and visit Grandma Opal's grave at the Burnt Ridge Cemetery outside Troy Idaho, just east of Moscow.

Prepaid daily service would make the most sense. Any day we used the phone, we would pay $0.99. Any call we made would be charged at $0.10/minute. Our August charges, the highest month, would have been about $16. We were now paying $30 every month. A no-brainer. I ordered a prepaid plan cell phone through the Verizon Website. It would arrive Tuesday or Wednesday. Yvonne would take it with her to Seattle Friday, stop at a Verizon store, and they'd set it up and migrate our current number to the new phone. We didn't want to risk buying the prepaid plan phone at a Verizon store because they might not have this – least expensive – phone in stock.

What about the rest of our communication infrastructure: local phone, long distance, Internet, television? Currently, we had the least expensive phone service CenturyLink offered; just a local connection with $0.45 per minute long distance (which we never used), prepaid calling cards, and iPod Skype at $3/month for long distance, 512kb DSL with Rock Island, a local ISP where we also had our email address, and DirecTV satellite cable access. Altogether, this cost about $140 per month.

My calling card was almost out of minutes, and Yvonne's would soon be. We could get refills, but that had become less convenient and more expensive. Yvonne wanted to be able to just pick up the phone and call long distance and not worry about it – and the same for guests – who probably had unlimited long-distance plans and might well expect us to have that as well – though their calls would cost us $0.45 per minute. I was less concerned about long distance since iPod/Skype calls were clearer and easier for me to understand, given my hearing loss, than a telephone handset. I wanted faster DSL, 768kb, the best the local service could provide. Rock Island DSL piggybacked on the CenturyLink lines. The higher speed would cost $10 more per month.

A recent mailing from CenturyLink advertised bundled specials with DirecTV satellite cable access. Cable access now costs $62 per month. Could we get a discount or cheaper plan? Or could we eliminate it altogether and get what we wanted through the Internet for free or nearly so? Yvonne watches Seattle news when she cooks dinner and sometimes Oprah and HGTV (Home and Garden). Some evenings, when not watching a Netflix movie (DVD or streaming), we watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and in Season, Mad Men. That's it.

CenturyLink was very helpful. We could have unlimited long distance, caller ID, and 768kb DSL for $75 per month and maybe get a $5 discount for having DirecTV provided we didn't have their basic plan. Though that wasn't net a lower monthly cost than we were paying for local phone, calling cards, and DSL, it did give us unlimited long distance and faster DSL. We would have the new modem Friday. We would need to change email addresses, something I'm not eager to do – not just because we've had these addresses for maybe eight years and so many people know them but because so many Internet services use these addresses as login IDs. It's going to be a bear to change them.

The next step was to figure out cable access. Could we get everything we wanted via the Internet and use Apple TV or something else to display that content on our TV? Hulu has Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert but with a week's delay. Mad Men is available through one site shortly after regular broadcast, but the quality isn't great. Seattle broadcast TV is available in bits and pieces from the stations' Website but not in a very convenient way. A new service Ivi.tv streams all the Seattle (and New York) stations for $5/month. It seems to work pretty well but not always. Their application has some bugs. And conventional wisdom on the Web is they'll be shut down shortly by TV stations and cable operators. Yvonne says she doesn't want to watch TV on a computer. That means buying devices, including new TVs, that work in the Internet to TV streaming world. And the content isn't quite there.

So maybe we could play off DirecTV against DishNetwork. There is no physical cable on Crane Island. But it turns out that won’t work. Even though there is little we want to watch, Dish doesn't offer both AMC and Comedy Central in the base package so we couldn't switch to any advantage. We would stay with DirecTV for now but very much want to dispense with cable access altogether as soon as possible. Maybe a year from now the broadcast, real-time content we want will be available through Internet streaming, and by dropping satellite cable access, it will make sense to buy the equipment it takes to conveniently watch streaming content on televisions (or whatever those devices become). It seems possible that at some point in the future everything will come through the Internet – broadcast TV, movies (e.g., Netflix), telephone, and the Web. That's going to be disruptive for telephone and cable companies but probably less expensive and certainly more convenient. Most of our Netflix watching is mailed DVDs. 

Eight: Boat Troubles

Windy, cloudy, 47 degrees.

This is the time of year the thermometer varies only a few degrees day and night. Thirteen years ago when we spent our first weekend in our empty house on Cayou Valley Road, we thought the big circular thermometer on the porch was broken since it seemed to hover around 48 degrees and never move. Much unlike our Boulder home, where the temperature often varies 40 degrees in 24 hours.

On Sunday, when coming back to Crane from Orcas, I noticed that the voltage indicator on our SeaSport dash showed 10 volts. It should show close to 14. That meant that the alternator wasn't working, and we were running off the twin batteries. Not good. After docking, I opened the engine compartment and looked at the V belt that was supposed to turn the alternator. Nothing obviously wrong. I felt the wires behind the alternator, and they all appeared to be connected. Not a good situation.

We'd returned from traveling about 10 days before and had the boat repaired at the West Sound Marina while we were gone. The boat had become impossible to start after operating fitfully for a month or more. Yvonne had towed me with our neighbor Margaret's boat. She was back at Ohio State for the fall semester, teaching anthropology. The problem, it turned out, was a sticky valve, and the stickiness was the result of seawater leaking through the port exhaust manifold. They'd pulled the head and had it machined. Reinstalling it, they replaced the port manifold, riser, and head and replaced the stub riser. The starter motor was clunking, so they replaced that. The forward prop was beat up, so they changed the prop and put a new zinc on it. They replaced a V belt, changed or topped off various fluids, replaced other zincs, cleaned and repainted part of the engine, and got the top RPMs up to 4200. That's good. But $3241.90 wasn't.

Well, that’s how it is with boats, at least many boats in a saltwater environment. It corrodes everything eventually. It will dissolve metal unless zincs are strategically attached and can act as sacrificial metal. They are intended to dissolve rather than other necessary parts of the boat exposed to saltwater.

The $3000 hit was unexpected and unplanned for (of course). In April, we left the boat with West Sound Marina for routine servicing. They called while we were in California to tell us that the U-joint bellows, what was supposed to keep water out of the stern drive, was leaking. Ultimately they had to pull the engine, replace the bell housing, bearing, dampener, replace the trim tab cylinders – which had corroded, and on and on. That bill was $5189.80. Almost $8500 in boat repairs. Was the boat worth keeping? How could we afford to continue to fix it? And now the alternator wasn't charging. We were running on batteries, and that wasn't sustainable.

Monday morning I used my multi-meter to check the battery voltage. Just over 12 volts. It should have been over 12.5. So the voltage meter on the dash was probably accurate, not broken. Now what? And I could no longer ignore the starter motor. It was supposedly brand new, but it had been clanking just like the old one before we took the boat in for the latest repair session.

I called Ian Wareham, the boat repair and maintenance manager. (The Wareham family owns the West Sound Marina and is active in Orcas Island life, boats, and competitive sailing). Ian explained that a wire had probably come loose from the back of the alternator and that if it had, I could push it back on its blade connector. OK, I'd check it.

A small wire was loose, but it wouldn’t be easy to reinstall. I had a hard time getting my hand to where it was needed, and I couldn't see what I was doing. I prevailed on Yvonne to lend me a mirror – not tiny but not too big. She had been very patient with me a few weeks before when I was working on replacing the electric window regulator (motor) for the front passenger side door in our Ford Freestar van. I'd never done it before (everything I do seems to be for the first time, I make lots of mistakes, take a long time, and never have a chance to apply what I've learned) and I needed to know how things were arranged inside the metal framework that held the cosmetic door panels on. She lent me a nice, double mirror compact, apparently an important beauty tool. I was very eager to get the window working because whenever I drove the van with Yvonne in the passenger seat, which was most of the time, I was subject to a continuous barrage of lower and raise the driver-side window commands. Yvonne's generous driving advice, already keeping me hopping, was now even more complicated.

In any case, I fixed the window, but broke the compact. She was so happy to have a working window that I was named hero of the day and the broken compact ignored. But now I needed another, bigger mirror that she used every day for some purpose it's not possible for me to fathom. It would end up in the bilge so I could see up toward the back of the alternator. The bilge was wet and greasy (though I didn’t tell her that). Yes, I could have it for a little while – BUT.

The mirror was wonderful. I could now see what I was doing and could she the wire with its slide-on connector and the blade it belonged on. But now everything was backward. Watching my hand in the mirror, I would move it down when I should have moved it up and vice versa. It made me crazy. Then – finally, the connector slid on. Now to see whether the alternator would charge. I started the engine and stared at the volt meter – 14 volts. Great! Once I ran the boat a bit, the batteries would be fully charged. Things were looking up.

I turned the ignition key to turn off the engine – and nothing happened. The engine wouldn't quit. I pulled out the "dead man" switch (a switch with a lanyard on it that when removed, causes the switch to depress) and nothing happened. What? Three years before I'd been blown across Deer Harbor from Crane Island because the engine stalled. I had to call Vessel Assist to tow me to the Deer Harbor Marina ($450) where I finally figured out that the lanyard holding out the switch had pulled out just enough for the switch to depress and disable the engine. But now that switch did nothing. The engine wouldn't stop.

I was bright enough not to try to pull the wire off the back of the alternator. Easy way to lose a finger. I took off the air filter and closed the choke. No air could get into the carburetor. The engine stalled. That wouldn’t be a very convenient way to turn off the engine. Yvonne wouldn't go for it, that's certain.

I called Ian back. Ah, he said, for some reason there's a little resistor missing from the circuit. That's what stops the alternator from continuing to feed the engine after the ignition.

Nine: Sailing Alone Around the World

For at least five years, five of us, now four, meet each Wednesday morning for ninety minutes of conversation over tea in Howard Barbour's one-room cabin next to his elaborate and productive vegetable garden, just above his house, shop, and outdoor brick bread oven, fenced to keep out the deer and with raspberries covered with netting to keep out birds and raccoons. Twenty-one gallons of raspberries, Howard reported, in two crops this year.

Howard offered coffee today, as well as tea, an experiment, he said, but it had no takers. Bob Harris and his wife Megan had moved to Eastsound from their longtime home on the ridge several hundred feet above, and were some of the first people we had gotten to know on Orcas 13 years ago. Bob had taught our son James to sail during our first summer on Orcas, a retired architect and then aspiring novelist, now recuperating from spinal surgery in a Friday Harbor nursing home. He'd had marginally successful knee surgery two years before and then over time was increasingly out of touch. The problem, Megan explained one Sunday at a Unitarian service, was that a constriction in his spinal column interfered with the circulation of spinal fluid. That was now presumably fixed, and Bob's mind had brightened up but his walking hadn't. An ornery, idealistic octogenarian, Bob found mingled beauty and stupidity everywhere he looked.

Howard, an Englishman, and Sheila Gaguin, his wife, had taught school in an Alaskan Inuit village just south of the Arctic Circle for nine years, coming down to Deer Harbor summers for sailing, sun, and warmth. David Sarver, a Hoosier with business and law degrees, had moved from California with his wife Maxine and was now president of the Medical Center Foundation Board. Chris Thomerson, another Englishman, had been an electrical engineer in England and later an organizational consultant here; like Howard, an avid sailor and with wife Lynn had cruised in the Broughton's this summer. Brian Cleary, a retired Oregon Forestry professor and entrepreneur, had sailed to the South Pacific a number of times and up and down the Northwest coast, now lived alone, not by choice, missing his beloved wife Judy, who I never met.

I had a topic: Would they be interested in doing an annotated ebook version of Joshua Slocum's “Sailing Alone Around the World?” I had a specific reason for raising the question.

For more than a year, I'd been pursuing an idea to create electronic versions of literary classics that would have a layer of annotations underneath the layer of the author's words, accessible from highlighted passages in the text that served as links to notes that provided explicitly the context modern readers lack but the author's contemporaries had. The notes would be a kind of reader's assistant, an expert at their elbow who had the answers the reader might ask as well as advice about what to look for and notice. The notes would address arcane vocabulary, the historical context within which the story takes place, and insight into what the author was up to in particular passages – and for the work as a whole. Like having an interesting literature teacher in the book you could call on at any time.

A retired literature professor who lived on Orcas and taught popular classes on nineteenth-century British literature (and some more modern, American, and German) was enthusiastic about the project. I created the software to make and manage the annotations and then convert them – with the author's text - into an electronic book for publication for Amazon's Kindle (a proprietary format) as well as the generally accepted ePub industry-standard format. After a great deal of hard work and experimentation, we published our version of Jane Austen's “Emma” in June. Seeing it in Amazon's catalog was very satisfying. Now we could test various marketing approaches and get some feedback, in terms of customer reviews on Amazon, to understand whether readers were interested and whether we had created something they could use easily.

But two weeks after publication, the annotator withdrew from the project and insisted I pull the book from the Amazon catalog. He wrote that he was ashamed of it. I didn't and don't understand. I bought a copy while it was available, have shown it to friends and family, and they find it attractive, interesting, well-written, and a snap to use. David Sarver read it and a friend of his read it. Yvonne is reading it now. All agree it's excellent. Whatever.

After this setback, David and Chris and I (they've been involved almost from the beginning) decided the idea was too good to give up on. I recruited Jens Kruse, a Wellesley German professor who has a house on Orcas, to do an annotated version of Kafka's “The Metamorphosis,” a fascinating, difficult, and popular novella. I simplified the software, with Chris providing some suggestions and sent it along with Jens when he and his wife Susan headed back to Boston in September. They would be back on Orcas for part of the winter to get a feel for whether full-time retirement might be an appealing plan for the future.

In order to recruit more annotators and get more books in the pipeline and to finally really test the idea in the marketplace we needed more books. Where would they come from? In 1895 Slocum was the first to sail solo around the world. His 37-foot Spray is one of the best-known sailboats of all time and a replica docked in Deer Harbor for the wooden boat festival this September. The book is well-written and tells a story almost inconceivable today when GPS, radio, satellite telephone, and Internet connection, desalinization system, fiberglass hulls in exotic shapes, and high-tech masts and rigging systems seem necessary components of any solo circumnavigation attempt. Not that others haven't and do follow in Slocum's wake, sailing simply. But he was the first, and he told the story in a compelling way.

Why couldn't we create an annotated ebook version of “Sailing Alone?” Brian, Chris, and Howard knew sailboats and blue-water sailing. I know a little. David volunteered to read Slocum and highlight the passages he'd like annotations for. Chris said he would figure out how we could use Google docs, online, to collaborate on the project. Howard said he knew someone who might be interested in doing research and writing. The goal: to publish early in the year. Rather than list us individually as annotators (with Slocum, of course, as the author), Brian suggested "annotations by the Greybeards," our way of identifying our Wednesday morning group of retired guys who like to get together and have stimulating conversations. OK!

Ten: Dues and Fees

Almost all Crane Island Association members had responded to the invoices I sent out in late August with September 30th due dates. I was now the association Treasurer, having succeeded Mike Shimasaki, our occasional neighbor two lots down. I had returned bills and checks from all but three of the members; I had corresponded with two and was confident they would pay soon.

Only one hadn't responded, and I heard from her son-in-law that she was underwater with her construction loan. She had built two years ago – actually, not built, but brought in a manufactured house by barge that was lifted onto the foundation by crane. The house was complete, and she used it from time to time but was unable to secure a permanent mortgage and had been paying 8% on the construction loan. The 2008 crash had dried up all the credit sources she had expected to use. With real estate down 10% to 15% from fall 2008 prices, she was now upside down with her loan; it was higher than the current market value of the house. She couldn't make payments on the high-interest construction loan, and she couldn't work out alternative financing. She would probably walk away from the property – and her down payment. Dreams disappointed. Would she be able to pay her Crane dues and fees? Should the association put a lien on the property?

Crane has a community water system with six wells and a 35,000-gallon concrete water tank, a community dock and parking lot on nearby Orcas Island, a community dock and parking area on Crane, a concrete barge ramp, a grass landing strip, a community building, a pumper fire truck, an emergency rescue vehicle, and about three miles of single-lane roads that provide access to each lot. Every bit of this infrastructure requires regular maintenance at varying intervals, and all is likely to require major repair or replacement at some point. Because the entire island is private, the county is not required, expected, nor invited to play any role in our infrastructure other than regulate it, in the case of water quality, for instance.

Members are billed in two categories: dues and fees for use. Each member is assessed $700 per lot per year (some members have more than one lot) and those with water access (and water meters) $100 each year for the water connection. Dues are billed in advance, for the coming fiscal year (August through July), and usage fees in arrears (that is, after the usage has taken place and been reported). Fees for water, dock moorage, ramp use, vehicle use, and various kinds of storage are all due after the end of the year in which they occurred. Our bill totaled $3135.47, no small amount.

Last year the collection process dragged on until January. I didn't want that, so I got the bills out early, creating a billing list in Excel and using it as a source to merge into a billing form created with Word. I mailed paper copies to all members and sent an email with a PDF copy of their billing form attached for those who hadn't paid by the due date. I had made only one reminder call. The process had worked pretty well.

The annual bills contain amounts for annual dues, water connection, and gallons used. Members are expected to fill in the other amounts, for instance, the fees they owe for having moored their boats at a Crane Community dock. They're expected to report accurately and honestly, and that presents an opportunity for Board-level philosophical differences to arise. One school holds that member self-reports should be challenged when suspected of being inaccurate. Members should follow the rules; the rules should be enforced, and the association should get all the revenue due it. Another school believes that members will report honestly, and to challenge them on the chance that they might have underreported could cause ill-feeling and actually encourage more underreporting.

Last year a Board member who thought he had evidence of underreporting succeeded in getting the treasurer to challenge a number of members on their reporting. The effort turned out badly. They had reported accurately, at least they had good reasons for how they reported, and they grumbled a bit at having been challenged. I didn't want to go down that road, so this year my challenges were limited to arithmetic errors on the bills – bills that literally didn't add up – where the check sent didn't represent the sum of the detail the member had written on the bill. There were a few, and once I politely pointed out the error to the member, they were a bit embarrassed but paid the difference promptly.

Many homeowner associations across the country have fewer responsibilities – are not responsible for their water and roads. We are our own local government in a sense, and all the issues relating to government show up in our microcosm. What fee structure is fair? How much should we spend on the water system? What improvements should we make? How much money do we need to hold in reserve for major improvements or repairs (like docks – which can cost $200 a lineal foot)? How strictly should we try to enforce policy and association covenants? How can we develop a culture of cooperation – since we depend on lots of volunteer effort, and life on the island is nicer when people have a good feeling about the association and one another? What about free riders - people who take advantage of the benefits of the community without contributing any effort? What about people who have lots of money and are happy to spend it to use a disproportionate share of island resources, like water? What kind of life do we want on the island – larger and larger houses with private docks and big boats – or a low-key, smaller footprint environment? Are we a community at all really or just a group of property owners who want to serve their self-interest even if that's at the expense of others? The association is supposed to operate as something like a representative democracy, with an elected Board of nine, with three-year terms, an annual meeting of all members to approve the budget by majority vote. Is a formal majority vote the point, or should the Board seek consensus at Board meetings and with the association as a whole? These questions aren't theoretical about someone else or a government that we can't have much influence on. They're very real and practical. We can't blame anyone else if things don't work right. It's not about someone else. It's us. Bracing, exciting, challenging.

Eleven: The Pleasures of a Splitting Maul

Last week, with our pickup temporarily on Crane and after cutting a number of fallen trees into 16" sections, I brought home four loads of firewood and moved them to the front yard, outside Yvonne's deer fence, ready for splitting. I already had two stacks I'd split during the summer and some leftover from last year covered on top with tarps but open on the side so that the wood would dry out. The larger stack smelled of mink scat, and when retrieving wood to burn, I found the remains of what appeared to be mink dinners. They often crossed our yard, and last summer when I was working on stairs to our beach, a mink ran right by me up the stairs without much worrying that I might be a danger.

We don't expect to heat our house with wood but to make it cozy, raise the temperature above the 68-degree programmed thermostat setting from time to time without spending more money on our primary, baseboard, electric heating system. And since it was likely our electrical service would fail from time to time over the winter – after snow or wind or some other reason – it makes sense to have a backup heating source. But how much wood did we need? Best to prepare while we had a truck on the island to carry it.

Some types of wood burn faster than others. Douglas fir burns slowly and contains lots of heat; alder burns much more quickly and produces less heat. So how much we needed would depend on what kind we had as well as how much heat we needed to generate each day. Too hard to figure how. What I did know was that in October, in the 40s and 50s, we were using about 14 cubic feet of split wood each week. Assuming we wanted a fire in our wood stove mornings at least through May, and given some time away traveling, we'd need about 30 weeks’ worth or 420 cubic feet. A cord is 8' long by 4' high by 4' deep or 128 cubic feet. We'd need 3 ½ cords. We had a bit less than two cords split and stacked, and it looked like at least a cord ready for splitting. It wouldn't hurt to have some more.

It took about two hours to split a week's wood and a month's kindling and to stack it on the porch. My guess is that I spent about 8 hours locating, cutting, and transporting a cord. Since a cord will last about 9 weeks, we'll use 476 cubic feet, I'll spend 68 hours splitting and stacking, and 30 hours finding, cutting, and fetching; that's about 100 hours per season. We save about $600 on our heating bill, which means I'm saving about $6/hour, or maybe $8/hour gross considering the withholding and taxes it would cost to net $6/hour. On Orcas, a cord costs about $200, so it would cost about the same to heat with wood as electricity. I do get exercise, and I enjoy the process. That's a plus. And we do have two sources of heat, and that's important living in the islands.

Eighteen months ago I brought a good-sized fir, in sections, from Chris Thomerson's house. It had died, it was down and cut up, and he wanted to get rid of it, so I carried it to Crane in a number of loads by pickup load, dock cart to boat, and unloading the boat, dock card to our front yard. The lower sections of the tree were close to two feet across and weighed more than I could lift, but I did it anyway, and hauling the second to the last second out of our boat I did something to my back that took a week to recover. But in saving the stump section I had a large, heavy splitting platform.

Last Christmas my Secret Santa (in the family, we have an arrangement so that we each give only one present – to whomever we're assigned by a friend of James' who's served in this capacity for the last five years) gave me a True-Temper fiberglass handled splitting maul to replace the wood model that was cracked and had become unsafe and nearly useless. An axe head expands to 1 ½ inches at the back; a splitting maul to 3 inches halfway back. A sharp axe can be used to chop horizontally across the trunk of a tree, creating a triangular cut across the grain, but it does poorly chopping vertically into a trunk section, with the grain because it gets stuck easily. A splitting maul, on the other hand, does well coming down on the top of a section, and the further it penetrates the wood, the further it forces the wood apart, splitting up to at least an 8" section in one blow.

Cedar splits easily and starts well, so I use it to make kindling – 12" sticks mostly less than an inch on a side. Fir and alder split well too but not as easily. Other island trees, maple, madrona, and willow are much harder to split and so aren't desirable firewood.

Given section cuts that are reasonably perpendicular to the trunk, they are easy to set on a copy block. Generally, I aim the first blow at the middle of the section. I may then split the results again – until I've got something 4" or less at its thickest point. But that first stroke doesn't always split the section. If the wood is too soft as was some of the wood I scavenged last week, the stroke buries the head but doesn't split the section. In that case, I bury the head further by hitting the back of it with a ten-pound sledgehammer until it splits. Sometimes it doesn't, and then I have to back the splitting maul out of the section by tapping the handle with the sledgehammer until it starts to exit the section. Sections that supported branches can also be difficult to split.

There is a pleasure in choosing a place to strike, sometimes based on characteristics of the specific section, raising the maul, and bringing it down hard on the wood – with the section splitting with a satisfying crack. When split, Douglas fir sometimes has a recognizable fragrance but cedar almost always does. Setting a splitting strategy on a log section and choosing where to strike, raising and then hitting the wood and the sound of splitting, the fragrance of the wood, and during today's splitting session the occasional sound of waves lapping on Orcas' beach about 100' feet away, the cry of seagulls, characteristic raven vocalization, the deep rumbling of a ferry passing through Wasp Passage, and the piercing but rich sound of a whistle from an Orcas steam-powered boat.

Twelve: Yvonne Visits Seattle

Signs on Circle Road indicated that Gary had finished installing a new septic tank and water line at Fisher's and had taken his power shovel off the island. Pink clouds adorned a light blue sky over a misty Crane Island airstrip bordered by firs, black in the pre-dawn light, save for a golden maple pushing through the barrier. Too dark to see its level from a distance, I walked up the hill to the water tank: 9 ½ feet. Down from yesterday or only a more accurate reading? I'll have to pay attention. At home, the sun rises right through Bell Island, half a mile east-southeast from the house, a prickly half-dome rising out of Wasp Passage and the site of frequent groundings on a well-marked reef and a non-fatal small helicopter crash with a couple from Shaw Island earlier this year. A welcome sun pours in, revealing toast crumbs on the kitchen counter.

Yesterday morning at 7:30, I took Yvonne across to Orcas so she could catch the 8:55 ferry to Anacortes and head to Seattle. She had her new Verizon pre-paid cell phone with her. It had arrived Thursday, left in the UPS/FedEx locked delivery cabinet on the north wall of the storage shed above the Crane Island community dock on Orcas, and she would stop at a Verizon store on the way to have her current cell phone number "migrated" to the new phone (with a new plan). That didn't work, and more attempts on Saturday came to naught. Told on the telephone by Verizon service that it could be done, live people in their store said it couldn't.

First, Yvonne visited her brother Ron, newly moved into his Capitol Hill studio apartment, one of Seattle's lively neighborhoods. They walked around Volunteer Park, its reservoir, old water tower, conservatory, and Asian Art Museum. In less than two weeks, Ron would start his acupuncture practice after years of schooling, exams, and preparation. He was excited and nervous. Next, to daughter Jen's who was just home from a long day working in a Swedish Hospital operating room. Bonus daughter Corrina was crashed at Jen's and would be until she left for three months in India to see a possible love interest, Arjun. In the interim, Corrina was applying to MFA/art administration programs around the country, heartened by her grandma Dotty's encouragement and offer to pay part of the cost. Dave showed up later, another Pennsylvania emigrant making his way in a new city.

Benoit was hosting a pumpkin carving session at a studio art space he and his girlfriend Audrey, both French and both in the design business, rented parts of to a specialty bicycle store, and creative, non-traditional artists and craftspeople. Yvonne was very impressed with these young people – who were polite and patient with the 60-year-old grandma who enjoyed their company but really had no idea what their lives were about.

Saturday morning coffee in a nearby Tully's, waiting for Jen and Corrina to get up and out. Rainy off and on but off they went to Seattle's own Rally to Restore Sanity. Several thousand attended, sympathetic to the Stewart/Colbert rally in Washington DC but unable to attend the big event. At Westlake Park, a large screen showed the DC scene, and speakers around the venue broadcast the speeches. Local speakers overrode the intermittent musical performances in DC to address the local crowd.

Dave Ross, talk show host, encouraged the group to whisper rather than shout “Turn it down,” and “Sanity, civility, discourse," adding "we should be able to debate each other without destroying each other" echoing the theme playing across the country.

Kelly and Tim had walked down from Capitol Hill and stood with Yvonne, Jen, and Corrina in the crowd struggling to see the speakers. They had news but really weren't telling anyone yet – well maybe just a few people. Kelly was nine weeks pregnant. Married in early July at the Orcas Hotel, with John as the wedding officiant and Yvonne as ceremony traffic director, the next step happened before Tim could digest the previous, but Kelly is ready. To Perth over Christmas for a second ceremony there and eventually maybe to Zurich or Paris, with a baby, where Tim can be temporarily assigned by Google.

A little shopping on the way north, Yvonne reported that she returned more than she bought. That's good, I guess. Coming home with Marmoleum floor for the guest bathroom where I'll install it and a new toilet in the coming months. Spaghetti, movie, hot tub, reading. Happy Yvonne is home again.

Thirteen: Ascending Turtle Knob

Halloween and Sunday. What to do? With only three houses occupied on Crane this season, with an average age of 69, we didn't expect trick-or-treaters, so we didn't have to stay home, and if we did, we knew all we would do was work. I suggested a walk around Mountain Lake, in Moran State Park on Orcas, a four-mile reasonably flat track partway up 2400' Mt. Constitution, the highest point in the San Juans, and the same relative height as Green Mountain rising over Boulder, our last home base. Yvonne suggested Turtle Knob, a mile north of Deer Harbor so we'd spend less time driving – 7 minutes versus 35. So off we went.

Turtle Knob or Turtle Head is a mostly bare dome that joins Turtleback Mountain on the west side of Orcas Island. Viewed from the southwest, say from San Juan Island, the formation looks a lot like a turtle, with its head to the left. Five years ago the Orcas community bought Turtleback Mountain and made it a preserve. The 1578 acres had been owned by the Medina Foundation, and they wanted to turn the asset into cash to fund their good works. The Orcas community feared the mountain would be turned into a subdivision, cut by roads, speckled with mansions, and a Christmas tree at night. It's said that Norton Clapp, Medina Foundation benefactor, had bought up Turtleback in the first place so he wouldn't have to look at lights on it from his house in Deer Harbor.

The Trust for Public Land and the San Juan County Land Bank provided the $17 million needed to buy the mountain. A late summer party we attended in a sheep pasture on Orcas Road drew half the island population and raised another $1 million to go towards maintenance. It had been a beautiful day with Turtleback looming just to the west. We wrote a check we couldn't afford but couldn't resist.

Turtle Knob had been a nature preserve for some years before Turtleback became one, but unlike the adjoining body, there was no public road access to the trailhead. Practically speaking the only way in was to cross Jack Helsell’s property. I had visited him five years before and bought some firewood and he said he had no objection provided we stayed on his road going in and then on the trail going up the knob. His sister had owned the Knob.

We parked in an open area below Hellsel’s sawmill and walked up the road along the west side of his horse pasture, two sod roof farmhouses visible across the way. Turtle Knob was visible above the trees straight ahead. On the north side of the pasture, we stopped to admire the six horses not far from the fence. Through a patch of woods and then a meadow with a seasonal pond through so more trees to the Turtle Knob trailhead, an old logging road. The forest here was thick with big Western Red Cedars and almost no firs. Here and there a four or five-foot rotting cedar stump dwarfed the newer two and three-foot trees. Discarded brown sprays littered the black soil and gray gravel trail. The trees caught all the direct sunlight so the forest floor was clear, though deep in cedar sprays with an occasional small fern struggling for purchase.

Farther up the track steepened, a moss-covered rock outcropping let in light. Higher still the track got steeper still and the cedars gave way to the ubiquitous Douglas fir. Then the old logging road dead-ended to a narrow trail that broke through the trees into the meadow near the top of the knob. Not so steep now, the trail led across the knob, gaining altitude and then entering the rocky area just below the summit.

The Turtle Knob summit, at 750', has clear views to the southwest, south, and southeast. The view to the north and east is blocked by trees and Turtleback Mountain. Waldron, a mile away at this point, and home to a few dozen reclusive souls who value being off the grid peeked through the firs to the west. The edge of the incoming tide was clearly visible on President Channel, almost as deep, below the cliff to the west, as Turtle Knob is high. Stuart Island with its wonderful trail from Reid Harbor to the Turn Point Lighthouse lay to the west, flanked on the left by Speiden Island, for a while a big game preserve. Vancouver Island and Sidney lay twenty miles to the west. The Deer Harbor Marina was visible to the south and San Juan Channel behind it silver in the afternoon light. We could see the western end of Crane Island, most of it hidden by Orcas, and Shaw Island behind Crane. Cattle Pass between San Juan Island on the west and Lopez Island on the east stood between San Juan Channel and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, passage to the Pacific and the rest of the world.

A carved marble plaque, set into the summit, and cracked into three pieces, commemorates a World War I veteran, whose name is now indecipherable. An eight-foot circle of stones with a peace symbol inside lays below the plaque, the north side of the circle now almost invisible. Vole holes dot the summit and their tracks crisscross it. Moss and grass coexist and cover the soil among the rocks. Flecks of red, leaves of something like a dandelion, stick up tentatively here and there. A few small yellow daisy-shaped flowers hang on. The world on view. Right below us, then down the mountain to Deer Harbor and our community on Crane. Then San Juan Island and another country, Canada, on the horizon, and a clear shot to Japan, China, and Russia on the other side of the Pacific Rim.

Fourteen: Otter Tracks

Something caught my eye as I struggled with a particularly vexing problem in the ebook editing software I'd been wrestling with all afternoon. I looked up, out of my office window at the back deck and stairs to the lower studio deck. An otter, about 15 feet away – a smooth, nondescript brownish-gray coat, large eyes, two feet long with another foot or so of tail – a river otter - hop/walking left to right, pausing before taking the three-step flight to the lower deck.

Where was my camera? Where was Yvonne? "Yvonne, Yvonne, an otter on the back porch." No response – but the otter turned and looked my direction, stared, and made a decision. Deliberately but not hastily it headed down the stairs and made a u-turn under the deck and disappeared. By the time Yvonne was back in the picture. "What, what otter?" I explained and we walked out onto the deck from the dining room door. Looking right, otter tracks led the length of the deck to the stairs and down. Coming back, Yvonne went down the south stairs and looked under the deck. No sign. We then traced the footprints around to the front of the house. The otter had come up the short stairs at the north end of the front deck, crossed right in front of the low living room windows, and gone around to the south, side deck to the west stairs to the lower deck where I'd seen him. Not very shy.

Yvonne had been in the bathroom at the moment the otter walked by a few feet from where she had been knitting that afternoon. She had turned her wicker chair toward the window for better light, away from the center of the room and other seating. She would have been looking right at the deck where the otter passed. Two wraps of knitting tool, yarn, an open knitting magazine, photocopied instructions, a coil-bound knitter's diary/journal, a plastic bag of circle knitting needles, pairs joined with cables, her back to hold it all and a Costco "Think Green" sack – all laid out on the floor. Her iPad tucked into the chair, against the armrest where she stored it after consulting a YouTube knitting video. I never imagined! And most importantly, what she had come into my office to show me earlier in the afternoon – a pair of knitted socks, muted fall colors, stripes – because the yarn now comes that way – an achievement!

"Who are they for?" "I don't know." "They're very nice. How about for me? They'd keep my feet warm." "Well, the problem is you wear your heavy sock around all the time and you wear out the heels." "Hmm."

We see otters often, though not every day and not every week. Last summer Yvonne watched five otters glide around the point that sticks out from Margaret's property next door, across our cove toward the Ochs' beach and Pole Pass. They were in a playful, social mood, like teenagers using their surroundings as a stage for their ongoing psychodrama.

Every so often we'd see an otter or two hopping along the path that comes from Margaret's or down our shared driveway from Eagle Lane above, crossing our lot, heading for the Ochs meadow and beach or maybe a bit farther to the community dock and beach, where they could get into the water and head along the north side of Crane without having to struggle through Pole Pass against the tide.

Three summers ago a baby otter had come up on the deck from the north just as this one had today (maybe it was the same one), and Yvonne had gone out to look. It was making a mewling noise (lost? Motherless?), didn't back away and was clearly looking for something – love? Food? Yvonne finally used a broom gently to encourage it off the deck and down the stairs to the world to which it belonged.

We have a Costco 10' x 20' storage tent under the trees at the back of our property, behind our sailboat on its trailer, parked for the winter. Two years ago, after we moved it more out of the way than it had been, minks got in and left their scat. Before I could do anything about it, otters asserted their rights and buried the mink scat with their own. That stunk up the tent, so James (home for the summer after graduating from college and before going south to UCLA for graduate school) and I put a wire fence with a gate around the tent, and we haven't had problems since.

But we've been lucky, I guess. Howard Block, on Crane, had otters living in his crawl space, and it was the devil to get them out. They tear the insulation down from under the floors to make cozy beds and have a habit of defecating where they dine. Mussel, oyster, and crab shells littered the crawl space, co-mingled with scat. Others on Crane have had the same problem and Orcas as well.

Otters like to get into closed spaces in boats to have their fun as well, and Howard's canvas-covered runabout was "ottered" several times, each occasion requiring extensive cleanup. They especially like to use coiled rope as a toilet, so sometimes coming back to our boat, we'd find a mooring rope buried in scat.

A few years back while working on our pocket trawler, Gumption, and Camano Troll. I noticed an otter sunning himself on the dock about twenty feet away. I crept out of the boat quietly and moved slowly toward the supine otter. Whenever he would put his head up and look, I'd freeze, not moving a muscle until he put his head down again to nap. After 15 minutes of inching forward in intervals and by inches, he finally realized something was going on, stared at me for a full minute working out what it was looking at (very short-sighted?), stood up, hobbled to the edge of the dock, and slid into the water. I went back to work.

Christmas 2007 was snowy. We'd had about 18 inches, and I went out for a walk, with my camera, to take pictures around the island I could post on the Web for absent homeowners – who likely hadn't even seen their house in the snow. Walking up our driveway, I saw a semicircular track through the snow, coming from Eagle Lane above. I followed the track all the way to Rupert Harvey's front deck. That's where it started. Was Rupert at his house? (I hadn't seen him) Had he dragged a propane bottle through the snow on its side, creating the concave track? But where were his footsteps? I continued around the island and when I crossed Och's meadow from the north, I could see that the concave track turned from our trail down to Och's beach. Aha! It was an otter slide. The next day James, home for Christmas, saw otters come down the slide but instead of crossing our lot they turned and slid down into our cove and into the water for some food and fun. They play. We work.

Fifteen: Island Democracy - Firing up the citizenry

After enough petition signatures were gathered this fall from an inflamed public, one of the burning questions on the San Juan County November 2, 2010 ballot was whether County Council Ordinance 28-2008, “Banning All Fireworks without a Permit,” should be overturned.

At its June 2, 2008 meeting, the Council had taken testimony from the Prosecuting Attorney who explained what the change would mean legally, the San Juan Island Fire Chief, who favored the ban, as did another speaker who said it would benefit domestic animals and wildlife. However, it was opposed by one citizen who said the Council should delay and have an evening meeting so it could take testimony from families, another who said fireworks would be fine if their use was confined to New Year's Eve, and another who said that fireworks were an important tradition and symbol of America. The Council closed testimony, discussed the measure, and passed it unanimously. The fuse was lit.

In October, the Orcas newspaper, Islands Sounder, featured letters from concerned citizens opposed to the fireworks ban, rallying public opinion against it, and encouraging a no vote on Referendum 2008-2 to reject the Council's ordinance. “Fireworks ban would be an injustice,” “Proposed fireworks ban goes too far,” “Vote no on fireworks ban” (that is, overthrow it), and “Please reject the ban on safe and sane fireworks.”

Voters approved the ban, agreeing with the Council, 3580 to 3051. My guess is that the issue will smolder like an underground peat fire until the next election when its flames will again become visible.

The Crane Island Association has banned fireworks within its boundaries for many years: the worry is the possibility of starting a wildfire. The Pacific Northwest is considered a soggy place by everyone who doesn’t live here. It is often wet, mid-October through May, but the summer can be very dry. On Crane, we may have virtually no rain from mid-June through mid-September. Since 95% of the island is forested and the forest floor covered deep in needles, shed branches, and fallen trees laid out under the green canopy, the right spark could burn the island end to end no matter what our efforts.

We have a fire engine, a pumper with a 250-gallon tank capacity, and 50 standpipes around the island the pumper could connect to. We have gasoline-powered floating pumps that could supply seawater. We have a foam system attached to the front of our fire and rescue vehicle. We cooperate with the Orcas Island Fire Department on exercises and could count on their help should the need arise provided they could get over to our island. Many of us have been trained on the fire truck and rescue vehicle. Our friends on Orcas watch for inappropriate smoke and report it to the County 911 system or call us directly. Many of us have first responder 911 pagers that would alert us to fire signs. All of this would help us respond to a fire on Crane, but in the summer and with wind, we might end up helpless.

In September, when Yvonne and I visited old friends in Boulder, we drove up Sunshine Canyon to observe the effects of the recent Four Mile Canyon Fire, started by blowing sparks from a campfire a resident thought he had thoroughly extinguished. An area where we had picnicked, hiked, and run was now black and brown. Chimneys left standing here and there. A sad sight.

On Crane, in the summer, fire is the devil. In the winter, in the rainy season, we often have burn piles, registered with the county and carefully watched, with a water supply near at hand.

But fireworks have a tendency to go in unintended directions, even when professionally managed, as we saw in Deer Harbor, seven years ago when a rocket from the fireworks show planted safely on a barge hundreds of yards from the shore went awry and started a fire on the palisade that marks the west side of the harbor.

Sixteen: Our Parents, Ourselves, Our Children - Aging and Island Living

Crossing to Orcas, sunrise imminent, scattered peach strokes on a blue canvas in the east, pink-topped drop biscuits above and to the west, a raven paddling north to check the dumpsters at the Orcas transfer station.

At Howard's, mugs of strong tea warming our hands, our host brings us up to date on Bob Harris, now more than a year absent from our gatherings but in our minds. Howard, David, Brian, and me. Chris is in Tucson with Lynn tending to her failing parents. Her father, at times confused but unwilling to give up control to his children, wants his wife, Lynn's mother, suffering from Alzheimer's, home, but it isn't possible. It wouldn't be good for either one. Lynn's four siblings in Tucson, paired into two competing teams who won't speak to one another, have insisted that Lynn leave Orcas, fly to Tucson, and straighten everything out.

Bob has been to Island Hospital in Anacortes again, more than an hour's ferry trip away since there is no hospital care in the San Juan Islands. Blood in his urine, a procedure, now consigned permanently to a catheter, and back at the convalescent center in Friday Harbor, another ferry trip away but in the other direction. The previous procedure restored his mind to a large extent by improving the flow of spinal fluid, and daily therapy sessions have him moving about with a sophisticated walker. But he's bored, Howard reports. He wants to go home in the worst way. But Megan, Bob's wife, tells him he needs to stay and recuperate. In her mid-80s, she can't care for a husband that can't walk. Two years ago, they had moved from their ridge-top home to Eastsound and a new, small house, a five-minute walk to the Medical Center and a 20-minute walk to the library, market, post office, and other amenities of Orcas's main village.

Howard floats the idea to the group of setting up Bob to do an annotated version of Kipling's Kim, like what Chris and Howard are working on with Slocum's sailing story. Bob has read Kim "ten times" and has his notebook computer with him. Good idea. I ask Howard to check further with Bob and volunteer to provide Bob with the software, a Kim database, and training on how to use the annotation software. No telling what will happen, but it could benefit everyone involved.

David brings us up to date on an uncompleted topic from last Wednesday's session: if someone dies on Orcas on a weekend will anyone pick them up? The topic arose because one of our Unitarian friends had died a few months back on a Friday night, and the report we heard was that his widow had to wait until Monday to have him taken away. I had heard another such report about a Deer Harbor death two years before. Not so, Chris said. His widow wanted him home for three days so she could do rituals to help his soul leave his body. After doing some research, David reports that either funeral homes in Anacortes will pick up on weekends or a service they use will. He wasn't sure which. We're all happy to get the news.

Chris and Lynn are dealing with parents who can't or won't concede to reality. Megan is dealing with a husband, our friend, who won't concede to reality. Another Deer Harbor couple comes up. He in his late 80s; she younger. They skied and boated until recently, and it's a matter of principle to them not to acknowledge that they've become old and increasingly infirm. When he drives to the Post Office to pick up their mail, everyone nearby keeps an eye on the car until he's parked and then on him as he shuffles up the stairs to the door.

What about us, I ask? Will we know when it's time to make a change, to allow others to help us, even decide for us? Where will we live? Even though Lou Falb, an old man, who is losing his strength, continues to live on Crane, that wouldn't make sense for or appeal to Yvonne and me. We think a condo in Seattle or Portland might make sense. Brian and Howard have no plans to ever leave Orcas. Tom Temple, who occupies the third full-time residence on Crane, and has for the last 20 years, has studied the matter and reports that every Cranian over 75 has fallen in the water at least once.

David says he and Maxine built their house with the thought of being able to accommodate live-in help, and Orcas isn't a bad place to find some. Earned income in the San Juan Islands is among the lowest in the state; unearned income among the highest. Seventy percent of the children in the Orcas school qualify for aid. There isn't enough work, and people will work for less to get it. Yvonne told me that 80 families showed up at the Orcas Island Food Bank, where she is Board Treasurer, a new record. With twice-weekly meals and food handouts, the Food Bank serves about 5% of the Orcas population.

What about our kids? How will they cope with us as we become infirm? Will we make it easier or harder for them? Will they have to clean out our houses and cart off all our junk? Will they know or care about what we value and think they should too? Is it fair to live in an out-of-the-way place and expect remote children to be highly inconvenienced to help us? Not much response to that question, except David, who has been thinking about it. It's wonderful to live on an island, and our children love to visit us, but they don't live here, and at some point, to be fair to them, we'll have to acknowledge that

Seventeen: Mud Bay Barge

Light showed about 7:00, just a hint on the eastern horizon. The phone rang at 8:15 a.m. It was Wilma telling me that she and Gary would be bringing their barge to the concrete ramp at the end of Reef Lane, at the foot of the airstrip, rather than their preferred location at the beach at the Crane community dock, close to our house. Jansen had a big front loader he wanted back on Orcas and it was too heavy to load from the beach. She thought they'd arrive about 9:45. It wouldn't be high tide, but there would be enough water under the barge at the ramp – even with a heavy load.

Our pickup truck had been on Crane since September when we brought it over on the barge to use to haul out our daysailer and collect firewood from around the island. I also brought over a trailer Margaret, our next-door neighbor, had bought off Craigslist and towed to the Crane lot on Orcas, for transfer to Crane. Once on Crane, towed her old trailer to Harvey’s other neighbor, who was happy to get a trailer, on Crane, for free, even if it was old and rusty. I put Margaret’s new trailer in her driveway. She’d be leaving her boat in the water until at least January when she’d be back to the island for a while. I then backed our trailer into the water at the community beach and Margaret helped me float our sailboat aboard, pull it out of the water, lower the mast and store it on top of the boat. Though I’d had incredible problems backing up with a trailer in the past I finally got the hang of it this time and threaded the trees and made the sharp turn needed to put the boat out of the way under the willows.

Yvonne had been coveting the gravel on the Browne’s beach at the other end of the island, very consistent quarter-inch gray/black stones with white broken shells the same size. Caroline had told her to pick some up any time. She had done that more than a year ago, taking the dock cart and two five-gallon buckets, and accompanied by her four-legged companion had, after much effort, dragged the cart back to our yard. This time we would use the truck - before we took it off the island. So Friday we put eight buckets of various sizes, two shovels, and the dock cart (to carry the loaded buckets from beach to truck) into the bed of the truck and stopped to check the tank level (10 feet - steady). We parked in the Browne’s yard, tail-in, unloaded and took everything down to their beach. A cool day but surprisingly warm on the sunny beach, only about six feet deep at near high tide. A beautiful day, small waves lapping, lapping. My guess is that we loaded about a quarter ton of gravel and got it home with modest effort and a few grunts. The buckets now stand on six inches of wood chips, a soft carpet protected by the translucent roof of the 12’ x 12’ rain shelter where in the summer we raise a tent for overflow quests and in winter store a wheeled chipper, picnic table and benches, and wrought iron table and chairs. What is the gravel for, I asked Yvonne. I’m not sure yet, she replied, but I’ll put it to good use.

The converted World War II landing craft became visible as it came around Caldwell Point, a half mile to the east, out of West Sound. It would come through Pole Pass in about five minutes and head for the ramp, halfway down the north side of Crane, giving reefs and rocks a wide berth. Ilze Jones walked off and her helper drove the tractor they would use to help the regrading required for their renovation project. Then the front loader backed on and I drove up the landing ramp and then down into the barge, sitting low in the water at the stern because of the load aboard.

It was obvious to me there wouldn’t be enough room but Wilma instructed me that I need only get the rear wheels on the barge and off the metal ramp. The rear end of the truck wouldn’t matter. Really? I did and Wilma raised the ramp that also serves as the door that keeps the water out of the barge. She couldn’t raise it all the way up because the rear bumper and bed of my truck were in the way. Then off we went. It didn’t matter that the ramp wasn’t pulled all the way up because the bow rode high and the stern low today and with little wind the water on our way was calm.

Gary is our licensed Water System Manager and he and Wilma provide all kinds of services to grateful Crane homeowners. We first met them when they brought our U-Hau truck over from Orcas when we moved the Crane almost four years ago, when they lived on Sucia Island, a mile off Orcas’ North Beach, with their two daughters and where Gary served as water manager for the state park on the Island. Wilma had home-schooled the girls during the eleven years they’d lived on Sucia - most of the time as the only residents but with Edie in high school and Ruby soon to be, it came time to move to Orcas. Though not far away, in a wind and with an opposing tide, the reefs and shallow water that lie between Sucia and Orcas raise impressive waves, some days making passage in a small boat a white-knuckled challenge to Davy Jones. Edie had graduated from Orcas High in 2009 and was taking some time before starting college to travel in China and then teach English, living in Saigon.

Gary took the Mud Puppy through Pole Pass, with the community dock and beach to starboard and the red, hazard light to port, the light that years ago, Cal McLoughlin’s grandfather tended as a kerosene lantern. Past the Crane dock on Orcas, around the corner to West Sound, heading for the ramp at White Beach, close to the West Sound Marina. Wilma came down from the bridge to thank me for sending them the DVD I’d made to commemorate the the 50th year of the creation of the Crane Island community. Then we talked about writing about what we know; island life, and the possibility of each making a record of our days for unknown people of the future. About an hour from ramp to ramp. The F-150 was happy to be back in a place where it could travel farther, if only back and forth the 10 miles to Eastsound rather than the 1.5 mile circle on Crane. Sure was good to have it on the little island for a while though.

Eighteen: Let’s See What Comes Up

Mist, everything wet, droplets hanging in the air and on all surfaces. Still water, still air, quiet, soft - a muted world. Indistinct boundaries, like strokes in a watercolor that seep into one another. Not - many things, each separate from the others, but one - thing, a unity, now apparent, now visible; the universe sends a metaphor about the way it is rather than the illusion our minds project on it. A feeling of being gently held, safe, wrapped in a blanket. No rush, no problems, no time, just - now. A not uncommon Crane day, more common in the autumn but possible anytime. One of the gifts of being here day on day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the first American philosopher, an influence, if unseen, on everything later, everything today.

“All I know is reception; I am and I have, but do not get, and when I fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did not.” Acceptance rather than acquisition of knowledge (Stanley Cavell). Rather than grasping things by concept, we find “this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers when we clutch the hardest.”

Reception as a form of thankfulness. “I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything from the universe and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods....If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures.” (from NYR, October 28, 2010; Robert Pogue Harrison on the Library of America’s two-volume edition of Emerson’s Journals).

“Emerson, especially after the death of Waldo his five-year-old son, found in the sequence of days the place where life, in its intrinsic generosity, offers itself to our reception. Everything is given in and by the day...Our perceptions, thoughts, moods, and convictions unfold with the days, which in turn unfold in the hours, so ‘let us husband them.’” (Harrison on Emerson.)

“To fill the hour — that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for repentance or an approval.”

“Where do we find ourselves?” “In a series of which we do not know the extremes and believe that it has none.” (Emerson.) Because the series has no endpoint, we must find ourselves in each of its successive moments...Each day is an end in itself.” (Harrison.)

“To finish the moment, — that is happiness; to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.” (Emerson.)

His days and hours gave Emerson the vast array of perceptions, experiences, triumphs, and losses that fill his journals” and his “thoughts, which dominate most of their entries. The world of thought is not the world of lived experience” and Emerson became “fully aware of that discrepancy.” (Harrison.)

“I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepancy. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.” (Emerson.)

“To know that the two worlds are different is enough on which to base a philosophy. And to ‘observe’ that difference is enough on which to base an ethic - not an ethic of renunciation but of the ‘husbanding of hours.’” (Harrison.)

Emerson trusted that “the universe is friendly to our innermost selves...Knowledge follows upon such trust; it does not provide a basis for it. If we are patient enough....that which we always know to be true, but for which experience does not necessarily provide empirical evidence, will gradually find its realization in the world we converse with in the city and on the farm.” (Harrison.)

I held a skein of turquoise yarn while Yvonne wound it into a ball.

A 90-minute productive telephone call with Jens Kruze about the Metamorphosis project after waking up at 3:30, doing programming and documentation, and sending it to him so that he would have it before our meeting. An extensive agenda the day before to make the call focused and successful.

Splitting and stacking wood - 90 minutes. Had used about 75% of the wood split and stacked from a week before, so didn’t burn as much as projected. Quality picking up after getting through most of the marginal wood. How many more sessions with the pile I picked up with the truck? Five weeks?

Nineteen: A Pause

Friday morning I woke up a little after 3:00, and after thinking a bit about the day to come and taking 40 deep breaths in 30 minutes, I was at work at my desk before 4:00. I’d be visiting with Jens Kruse, in Wellesley, at 8:00 on his progress annotating Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and understanding and using the software I’d provided him in September when he and Susan returned to Massachusetts after the summer on Orcas. On Thursday, I had sent him an agenda of sorts, trying to collect and summarize the email correspondence we’d had over the ten days before as he began to work on Kafka in earnest after making some time in his schedule as a professor of German, with a full teaching load, at Hillary Clinton’s alma mater. Though he could do annotations, he wanted to begin creating pages that supplemented the novella rather than just annotating it, such as an introduction, biography, bibliography, and so on. I had added to routines The Annotator software but hadn’t been able to fix two bugs I’d found Thursday afternoon, thus the need for a work session before our telephone meeting so that he’d have and could try out the software with me on the other end of the phone during the second part of our meeting, after going through the agenda items.

A good meeting. I promised to provide him with the ability to see complete book drafts, text, annotations, supplementary sections, illustrations, whatever, including a way to sequence the sections of the book to his liking. Our continuing goal - a complete draft not long after the beginning of the year. An end-of-week feeling now, relief after working hard on the electronic publishing project.

Then some catching up on email - including a note from Elise, the Crane Island Association bookkeeper at our accountant’s in Friday Harbor. She pointed out that I had missed one member who hadn’t paid and hadn’t even responded to the late August billing and September 30th due date. And two members with calculation errors beyond the ones I had pointed out and already gotten supplementary checks. They needed to pay more. I reported back to her the arrangements with one member who had lost her job and asked to make installment payments until she could pay the full balance.

After a week’s draw on the firewood I had stacked on the front porch the Friday before, we’d only used about three-fourths of what I had split, so usage so far is a bit slower than expected. I split and stacked another two carts full, 14 cubic feet, and will review usage next Friday. We have three sources of firewood now: two stacks of split wood and one pile of trunk sections, most cut to 16 inches or so. The plan is to split and use the pile week by week before touching the stacked wood. How long will the pile last, I wonder, before having to draw down the stacks. Maybe five weeks, it looks like, until the winter solstice, when the daylight will begin to return. Only 90 minutes this session rather than the two hours I spent the previous Friday. Less wood used, less time to prepare it. A positive trend line - but we’ll see.

As I caught up on my reading, in my wicker chair by the fire, Yvonne knit a stylish neck scarf, in her wicker chair, asking me to help her with her yarn when she finished and wanted to start a new project. She needed me to hold the skein, an 18-inch loop of turquoise yarn, while she rolled it into a ball, appropriate for knitting. To work directly from the skein would invite disaster, with the yarn likely tangling and requiring hours, maybe, to straighten out. I held out my arms and held the yarn the best I could while she drew from the skein and wrapped a ball. How many times have I seen this picture?

That was Friday: work, relief, catching up, satisfying outdoor exercise with a useful purpose, relaxing by the wood stove, with Yvonne nearby engrossed in a satisfying project, a scarf for a friend.

Then came Saturday. I was determined not to work, to treat the next two days as the weekend and time off. So I read and wrote, bundled old magazines for recycling, cleaned up my office, especially around the communication technology area in my office where I was expecting to be able to replace one DSL modem and service with another. Yvonne wanted to use IKEA’s kitchen planning software in anticipation of a Monday trip to Seattle. Since it wouldn’t work on our Macs, I opened my Windows notebook computer I was determined not to use because it had become so frustratingly slow. But Windows was what Yvonne needed, and she was able to create a tentative kitchen plan and print it. Then I spent some time clearing out the Windows notebook, removing unneeded software and files, and limiting the programs that ran at start-up and in the background. In parallel with that process, I downloaded illustrations for Slocum’s “Sailing Alone Around the World”, the classic Chris and Howard were doing annotations for. That complete, I searched the Web for more Slocum pictures and then Kafka pictures.

My plan was to take time off and this was the way I was doing it. Lots of little housekeeping tasks but not relaxing and also not progressing with the bigger, more interesting projects. Sitting around; fiddling around. All the momentum I’d built up over the last two weeks drained away, a balloon with a slow leak. Saturday was becoming a day without purpose, a “what’s the point?” day. Gray, sad, low.

I’m not good at hanging out. Work with a purpose is a pleasure. Time off is fine when we’re traveling, visiting, entertaining, socializing. But otherwise, I get a bit lost without work. Yvonne and I have talked about being able to just be. I’m not quite sure what that means, but maybe I don’t do it very well. I love to look at the beautiful view outside our windows and as I walk the island or when driving on Orcas. The northwest light, the skies, if cloudy always complex, layered, and subtly hued, the movement and patterns of the water, the calls of the ravens, and on and on. Sometimes the beauty stops me in my tracks and I’m amazed. But I take only a sip, a glance. I don’t really want to stay in that timeless place; I want to keep moving, want to have the illusion perhaps that I’m going someplace for a reason.

Twenty: Dinner Guests

Ken and Kate would be coming to dinner, and that meant taking them back to Orcas after dark. Our SeaSport has a spotlight with a joystick, and that helps - except in rain, snow, or fog. But when the navigation lights are turned on, mandatory after sunset, the glow from the lighted dash instruments (red) and compass (white) is reflected in the windshield, interfering with a clear view of the water. I kept a towel handy to lay across the dash and compass, but the towel would slide down onto the steering wheel. Tonight and all winter, we’d often be making commuting trips in the dark, morning or evening, so I wanted a simple but more satisfactory way to prevent night instrument glare.

Yvonne had a piece of canvas available, left over from making a sling we used to raise and lower our dog Samantha onto our Nauticat sailboat to a dingy on the water when anchored and needing to take the dog to land for a walk. I folded the canvas around a 1/4” by 1” slat I found in a scraps box in my shed/shop and laid it above the lip formed by the raised edge of the dash. Pretty good. Then I put a fuel filter box over the compass, above the dash. That would work. And, in fact, returning our guests to Orcas late in the evening, my vision was much improved. I could lift the canvas whenever I wanted to view the instruments, and I could lift off, roll up, and stow the canvas dash cover when not needed.

Yvonne baked a fillet of Copper River salmon on a bed of roasted fennel, garlic, onions, and tomatoes, serving it with jasmine rice, a Greek salad, and sourdough bread, and homemade apple pie for dessert. Delicious!

Kate was our realtor when we bought our Deer Harbor house in 1997 and helped us sell it in 2006. Ken had provided design and carpentry services as we improved the house to make it more comfortable for year-round occupancy when it became clear we wanted to live on Orcas full-time and leave Boulder, heat, cold, and dryness behind. Thoughtful, deliberate, curious, engaged people, we enjoyed being with them to hear about what they saw in the world and what they were up to in response. Both love horses, and they have four, three wild horses they bought from the BLM and brought from Oregon over several years. Kate, a rider since childhood, had progressively become more insightful about horses and their psychology and now taught her special version of training, maybe “horse whispering.” She spent a year with their newest mustang, getting to know him and he her, before she ever attempted to saddle and ride him. They would go on walks together on the trails in the neighborhood, the mustang walking with her but independently, without a lead. He had no interest in running away. At the time, Kate had told me a bit about horse psychology, including how social and intelligent they are. They want to please, and her training was based on that insight.

Ken was now raising rabbits, a special breed that could cope with cool, wet weather, and would grow to twice the size of standard domestic rabbits. The rabbits were for eating and sale. He also bought a box of day-old chickens, shipped overnight from Minnesota. The flock, now mature, had the run of the property, and the horses enjoyed chasing them. The breed was tough and savvy and bunched together when an eagle or hawk appeared overhead. They would return to their coop several times during the day and then go back out, finally roosting after dark inside, protected from raccoons and mink. They were real chickens, not the sad substitutes raised by chicken manufacturers and sold in stores at prices Ken couldn’t compete with. Ken estimated it cost $25 for him to raise a chicken. Ken and Kate described the excellence of the eggs laid by the flock. The eggs were good eating, the chickens so far less so, since the meat was tougher than what they were used to.

Their main breakthrough was coming to understand how to age venison. The San Juan Islands are overrun (some say) with deer. They ruin gardens and are a major cause of automobile accidents. Ken, raised on an Idaho ranch, learned hunting and game dressing at an early age, and in more than 20 years on Orcas, they’d often had venison. But Kate, at least, wasn’t enthusiastic about the toughness of the meat. It required long, slow cooking but even then was a real chew. Wanting to be more serious about venison and acquiring a discarded refrigerator from a neighbor, Ken went about experimenting with aging the venison, hanging the four quarters at about 42 degrees, cutting small sections each day to cook and taste. At two weeks, the meat began to change significantly, becoming more tender by the day. Now at 24 days, they said the meat couldn’t be distinguished from high-quality steak, in color, texture, and taste. A discovery that the best chefs already know. They’ll cut the quarters into meal-sized portions and then freeze them, looking forward to venison on the menu whenever they want it for the next six months or so.