Just messing about in boats is hard to beat

Lopezian friends David Foutch and Lynn Thompson with WeLike at Fossil Bay on Sucia Island.

MY LOPEZ ISLAND FRIENDS Lynn and David recently posed one of those “can’t hardly say no” questions:

“Would you take us in your boat to see Sucia Island if we pay for the gas and bring a picnic?”

Does a kid say no to chocolate cake with ice cream and Cool Whip?

For years my friends had heard me speak glowingly of Sucia, my favorite island of the San Juan Archipelago. My family and I had taken our sailboat there every summer for about 20 years running. Lynn and David, who live most of the year in Seattle but spend plenty of time at a lovely getaway home near Iceberg Point on Lopez, had never been to Sucia, a popular marine state park that is humanly populated full-time only by a ranger or two (along with herons, eagles, kingfishers, otters, seals and other wild creatures). It is in the far-flung northeastern-most part of our island chain.

WeLike was built by Skagit Boat Co. of La Conner in 1957.

Lynn, now retired, was a colleague and chum of mine at The Seattle Times. Her husband, David, is a semi-retired Boeing engineer who still works for the Lazy B three days a week, even when they spend weeks on Lopez. He is part of a group studying how to make air travel carbon-neutral, a worthy goal if ever there was one.

Honestly, I’d have jumped at the chance to show them Sucia even without the promise of gas money. But David is still collecting a regular paycheck, so I didn’t feel too guilty. Besides, when we pulled up to the Blakely Island fuel dock on a pristine morning last Wednesday, I pumped in only 5-1/2 gallons rather than fill my voluminous tanks. That was an act of mercy; the ethanol-free gas my Evinrude 90 prefers was selling for $7.52 a gallon. Ouch.

David and Lynn wanted to walk up the dock to the Blakely Island Store, which I had never visited on previous stops for fuel. It was a pleasant diversion, with fresh-baked doughnuts, at a beautiful spot with waterfront views of Orcas and Obstruction islands. An old-school attraction outside the store: a telephone booth with an actual functioning pay phone, among the last in the islands.

By 11 a.m. we arrived at Sucia’s Fossil Bay, with hopes of finding space at one of the two docks. A challenge this day: At 12:30 Sucia would experience one of its lowest ebb tides of the year, at minus 3.1 feet. That meant that even 20-foot WeLike, which needs less than two feet of water to stay afloat, might be sitting on the bottom at near-shore parts of the docks.

But as we entered the bay a big motoryacht was exiting. A correspondingly large space was open at one of the docks, well away from shore. We nabbed 20 feet of moorage.

We chatted with other friendly boaters (“Let the Fun BE GIN” quipped one skipper’s T-shirt) while the vintage WeLike collected her share of admiring comments from passersby old enough to remember 1957 Chevys of a similar color and design.

We then enjoyed a couple hours of hiking on the island, with a picnic stop at the memorial bench dedicated to my late wife, Barbara. The bench, financed by a GoFundMe effort Lynn had donated to, commands one of Sucia’s best viewpoints. From a shoreside bluff it takes in a splendid panorama of Patos, Waldron and Orcas islands in the San Juans and looks across Boundary Passage to Saturna and Pender in Canada’s Gulf Islands. Kayakers paddled by just beneath us and a bald eagle zoomed just above our heads as we munched tasty cold chicken grilled by David, apple-berry cole slaw that I contributed, and Lynn’s delectable chocolate espresso cookie bars. Tim’s-brand potato chips from the Blakely store ensured our salt levels didn’t plunge.

Your loyal correspondent at Barbara’s bench on Sucia Island. Lynn Thompson photo.

As we departed around 2, the tide was flooding in like kids to a schoolroom at recess’s end. Light winds made for a relatively easy passage back to the public dock at Lopez where I dropped Lynn and David.

A successful day trip on a good old boat. Hard to wish for better.

All play and no work in the islands? Not quite.

Spraying fresh paint on a favorite Adirondack chair constituted one of the checkmarks on my summer to-do list so far.

ISLAND SUMMERS HAVE THEIR JOYS, for sure. Bare-chested lunches on my warm deck. Watching Galley Cat roll luxuriously in the sunshine. Watering my new aspen as its leaves quake in a breeze. But sweet doesn’t come without sweat. It’s the season of cabin maintenance and outdoor projects.

One of the magnets on the Nuthatch’s venerable Kenmore fridge holds up my Summer 2026 to-do list that fills most of an 8-1/2 by 11 page. I won’t likely check off every item, but I’ll do my best to knock the hell out of it before fall rains set in.

The past couple days I’ve worked to exhaustion, accomplishing two big projects.

Yesterday, I finally pulled off the sprawling tarp that had protected my 20-foot cuddy-cabin cruiser, WeLike, from dirt, dust and weather as it sat on its trailer near the island clubhouse since last October. Usually the boat’s in the water by March, but I had a busy spring helping my friend get his novel published — reviewing multiple edits, responding to queries, generally acting as the umpire between author and publisher. My retirement days have been packed as of late.

A chrome nameplate identifies the La Conner-based builder of *WeLike.*

The tarp covered most of the boat, but a six-foot section of each side deck was exposed. And those patches were filthy and crusted with months’ worth of fallen fir needles. I spent hours with brushes, scrub pads and soapy water to bring the old girl back to respectability before hitching trailer to tractor and launching WeLike into Read’s Bay, our little nook of the Salish Sea. Tied to the dock, she looks shipshape and Bristol fashion.

The previous day I accomplished a, um, stinky project that had topped my procrastination list for several years. You might not be surprised to hear it had to do with my sewer system.

Nuthatch cabin was built at the end of the 1990s. The septic system shortly pre-dated a code change that now requires inspection ports in the drainfield.

An unavoidable part of rural life, especially on a remote island like mine, is being chief custodian of your own sewage system. “It’s a shitty job but somebody has to do it,” you might say. But I’m classier than that, you know?

As said custodian, several years back I ventured to the county seat in Friday Harbor to take a class designed to teach homeowners how to maintain their own septic systems. “This is the most expensive appliance you will ever own!” the dour instructor informed us. Screw it up and the replacement cost might be $40,000, he said with an expression to rival The Wizard of Oz‘s Miss Gulch as she recited Toto’s misdeeds.

Positioning a final inspection port on my septic drainfield required bushwhacking through waist-high salal and swordferns.

In the class, I also learned about the required inspection ports. Without them I would not be able to sell my property when the time comes. I think I saw a self-satisfied twinkle in the instructor’s eye when he imparted this fact.

The ports are just what they sound like. First I had to locate the drainfield and dig down a foot to find the thick plastic domed shell that creates a tunnel for the effluent that has been digested by microbes in the septic tank before flowing onward — if everything is working as it should.

An inspection port four-inches in diameter is required within a few feet of each end of the drainfield. For me, that meant using a four-inch hole saw to create an opening in the dome for permanent insertion of a length of PVC pipe topped by a removable cap. The objective: to enable the eager homeowner to peer down and see what’s there. Oh, yum.

To shorten a long story: Installing the port nearest the septic tank was relatively easy, once I used a garden trowel to dig down and follow the pipe exiting my tank. The big challenge was at the far end: locating it amid a tangle of salal and swordferns that had grown up over the drainfield in the past 27 years.

A new bamboo fountain burbles on my front deck. Birds drink from it in the dry days of summer.

Construction drawings for my place, bestowed upon me by my earnest friend with San Juan County, showed a single 50-foot drain line reaching across the open space in front of my home. The only way I could locate the far end was to use two-by-fours placed end to end to create a straight line, stopping to dig every six or seven feet to ensure I was on the right course.

Thursday, I located part of the domed structure one foot below the salal and approximately 47 feet from the start of the field. Eureka! I drilled my inspection hole, installed the port and called it done.

Good news: Peering into the new port, all I saw below was dry, bare soil. That means every bit of stinky brown water is soaking into the ground as intended. I won’t have to remortgage my place to buy a new “appliance.”

Other little projects of recent weeks: restitching WeLike’s canvas top and rewiring two defunct bilge pumps; painting a favorite Adirondack chair whose original stain had given up to winter rains and summer sun; and replacing the worn-out bamboo fountain on my deck, which is a favorite hot-weather watering hole for island songbirds.

Rebuilding my back porch before summer’s end is the 800-pound gorilla on my to-do list. I’ve started bringing home more cedar deck planks from the Lopez Island lumber yard, and I’ve set aside the week after next to get a start on it.

The best part of all this? It feels really good to check something off the list. Now I’m gonna go put my feet up. The Adirondack chair beckons…

Summer comes to the San Juans

Fittingly, children powered the Earth float in Saturday’s Solstice Parade on Orcas Island. Photo by Thomas Willard.

HAPPY SOLSTICE! It’s almost 10 p.m. and there’s still a good bit of light in my Center Island sky this evening. It’s the longest day of the year.

I marked summer’s debut yesterday with a visit to neighboring Orcas Island, where my friend Tom hosted me at the annual Solstice Parade through the village of Eastsound. It was a celebration of island whimsy and gentle spirit, with human-powered floats, wacky costumes, a winged woman on stilts, a baton-twirling drill squad and much more.

Here are a few of my favorite images from the parade.

Islanders of every age paraded elaborate costumes and exhibited high spirits.

We welcomed the summer sun’s return to the San Juans.

Nothing says summer like a flamingo-headed wild woman in a lacy pink skirt. Photo by Thomas Willard

Happy summer, all.

Surf’s up in the San Juans

Oceanspray blossoms fill the forest understory on Center Island.

If you’re viewing this post from an email alert, click on the headline to see the full graphic design of “Cantwell’s Reef.”

IT’S MID-JUNE ON CENTER ISLAND. My meadow’s wildflowers came and went in May, and the wild roses with their pink blush and nose-tickling scent are almost a memory.

But we can always depend on a sudden wild splash of creamy, sun-catching florabundance just before the summer solstice when the oceanspray blooms. Bearing large tassels comprising scores of starry florets, oceanspray virtually floods our forest with waves of white.

This woody shrub (Holodiscus discolor) is native from Southern British Columbia to Southern California, with variations reaching into South America. It typically ranges from three to 10 feet in height, and spreads like crazy in open forest floor like the front of my island plot.

It’s also known as ironwood, for the hardness of its woody stalk. According to the website Native Plants PNW, native tribes used the wood for many tools and utensils. Rendered even harder by heating it over a fire and polishing it with horsetail stems, the wood was used for salmon-roasting tongs because it won’t burn, for digging sticks, fishing hooks, needles, canoe paddles, bows, and spear, harpoon, and arrow shafts. Oceanspray pegs were even used in construction when nails were not available.

Every June, the blooms are a welcome sight that welcomes summer to the San Juans.

Speaking of which: The 2026 summer solstice occurs on Sunday, June 21, at 1:24 a.m. PDT. This exact astronomical moment marks the official start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and brings the longest day — with 15 hours and 59 minutes of daylight in our islands — and shortest night of the year.

I’m marking the event by participating with a friend in Orcas Island’s homespun Solstice Parade through downtown Eastsound. What are your plans?

My island life happens every day

An American Goldfinch, our Washington State bird, peers back at me from my birdfeeder.

**If you’re reading from an email alert, click on this post’s headline to see the full graphic design of Cantwell’s Reef.**

I FLEW AWAY FOR TWO WEEKS and everything changed at home.

The foxglove bloomed! The goldfinches fledged! The kale is ready to harvest!

My trip to France was a refresher, a challenge, a kick in the pants. But as an old hermit who lives on a 176-acre island, I’ve come to realize these little daily changes that tick along with the clock on my kitchen wall now seem to matter to me most.

Summer is coming. Keep an eye peeled.

Stalks of lilac-hued foxglove flowered on Center Island while I was off gallivanting in France.

Dinner tonight will include a salad from Nuthatch Cabin’s rail-mounted planter. In my two-week absence, the kale grew like I did the summer I was 14 and consuming a quart of milk and half a box of Cheerios every day.
The marigold seedlings are coming along nicely, too.

Life goes on, it happens ev’ry day. So appreciate what you got, before it’s taken away. — Ray Davies, The Kinks

Up a scenic river with no paddles on a sweltering, memorable adventure in the south of France

Crew member Jean Farber looks ahead from the bow of our boat to the village of Laroque-des-Arcs as we begin our voyage up France’s Lot River.

SOMETIMES A DREAM TRIP turns into, well, more of an adventure than a dream.

Adventure ensues when things don’t go quite as planned.

Map of France: Pushpin points to Cahors, our boat’s base on the Lot River

I just returned to Center Island from a major adventure in France. I’m glad I went, but boy, am I glad to be home.

Don’t get me wrong. Adventures can be good. This one was good, in the big picture. Good, sometimes great. With lots of difficulties along the way.

At the core of it was seven days on a chartered 38-foot motor vessel that I skippered with family and friends on the incredibly scenic River Lot — rhymes with “boat” — in Southwest France. Five of us aboard navigated the rocky canyons of the meandering rural waterway that included frequent locks that bypassed cascading weirs first created in the Middle Ages to divert water to grain-grinding mills. In the early 19th century more weirs were added to deepen the river for coal-carrying barges until railways rendered barges obsolete.

All but one of the nine locks we transited up the river and back were do-it-yourself, meaning two of our crew went ashore to work wheels and cranks that opened and closed sluiceways and big iron gates.

Our river boat, the Cubry Les Soing, was named for the town where it was first launched.

That was a fun novelty until an unseasonable heat wave pushed temperatures into the 90s every day. With the intense sun — our base of Cahors was just over 100 miles from Mediterranean shores — the heat was debilitating. Across France, May heat records shattered like an ice cube bouncing off a kitchen floor.

Our dream trip became a week of coping.

There were various complications. Two of our crew arrived with miserable May colds, which kept getting worse. Another discovered his severe intolerance for such heat. Neither a Catholic nor a Christian, he nonetheless spent much of his onshore time cooling off in shady churches lit by stained glass depictions of the Holy Mother. To escape the heat more than once, crew members booked hotel rooms when we arrived in charming villages. Air conditioning was a special lure the boat didn’t offer. Coming and going, our crew dealt with canceled flights and canceled train runs, even a derailment (of someone else’s train) that caused a long delay. (I hope passengers on that train were OK.) “Jinxed” was a term that came to mind more than once on our dream trip.

So it was a tough dozen days. But, hey, as one of my island neighbors noted upon my return: At least it was France!

Daniel and Jean Farber walk a former towpath blasted from a limestone wall along the Lot. A lock can be seen in the background.

Oui. That meant wonderful food everywhere we went, affordably priced compared to the Trumpian U.S.A. On arrival in France, I found that even a run-of-the-mill Monoprix supermarket in Paris offered deli salads worthy of Seattle’s better restaurants. Paul Hollywood would have drooled over the pastries. In the little river town of Vers, where daughter Lillian gifted me a night in a gorgeously modern air-conditioned hotel room in a renovated 14th-century tower, we dined well at an outdoor table near the pool. I enjoyed a dinner of asparagus soup, housemade pâté de foie gras, pan-fried trout, ratatouille and a tasty cheese platter, with a nice local rosé wine. The tab: less than $50.

My friends Daniel and Jean and I enjoyed a 4 1/2-mile roundtrip riverside walk from one of our moorages to the marvelous medieval village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, perched 1,200 feet up a rocky promontory above the Lot. We set out at 7:30 to enjoy the cool of the morning. The down side: We arrived too early to enjoy a good French espresso at a sidewalk cafe. Opening time in French villages is around 10.

Crew member Lux, right, offers crew member Daniel a tip on operating a do-it-yourself lock on the Lot River.

Another day we escaped the heat by hiring a taxi to take us to the famous Pech Merle Cave to see cave paintings that carbon dating has confirmed to be 29,000 years old. In a cool and damp setting far underground, the most memorable images were iconic drawings of two leopard-spotted horses rendered by ancient humans using charcoal powder and red ochre. It was stunning to ponder the remarkable images surrounded by the artist’s own handprints among the limestone cave’s stalactites and stalagmites. Three local teenagers discovered the images while exploring the cave in 1922.

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie’s hillside-perching church overlooks a splendid panorama of the Lot River Valley.

The boat voyage was, indeed, an adventure. If typical May temperatures in the 70s had prevailed, it might have been the dream trip we’d envisioned.

Human skulls and femurs are stacked in the Paris Catacombs.

On our return to Paris, before catching a flight home, Lillian and her partner, Lux, accompanied me on another underground tour where we took refuge from the heat. In the Paris Catacombs, far beneath the city’s streets, millions of human skeletons reside. Parisians of every walk of life ended up for centuries in underground limestone mines, starting in the 1600s when the city’s cemeteries filled up. Today it is a sobering tourist attraction. The bones and skulls have been artistically arranged and stacked, in part to help structurally support the city above them. I came away with one clear thought: Pursuant to the foundational national motto of France, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” dating back to the French Revolution, the Catacombs clearly demonstrate how Parisians of past centuries were treated equally in death.

On a lighter note: My final morning in Paris I struck out early to explore the neighborhood around my 13th Arrondissement rental apartment. Wandering at random near Place d’Italie, I discovered and photographed a delightful variety of wall paintings — too sophisticated and elaborate to be called graffiti. I’ll end here with a sampling. It just might inspire me to make some new art on the walls of Nuthatch Cabin. Watch out, Center Island.

Coffeehouse art goes outside on the Street of Five Diamonds.

A gecko rides a parrot on the Street of Quail Hill.

On a back street, Napoleon rides a horse.

What apartment facade isn’t improved by a magic tree you can climb while a ring-tailed lemur looks on?

Some people say cheetahs never prosper. But these two have a sidewalk to themselves.

Gather ye wildflowers while ye may (they’ll probably be gone by May)

A delicate Fawn Lily (*Erythronium oregonum*) blooms at the edge of a path leading to my writing hut. It is a lowland relative of the Glacier Lily commonly seen in the Cascade Mountains.

WILDFLOWER SEASON, usually around the first of May, has come early to Center Island. It’s my favorite time of year on the rock.

The rocky knoll behind my cabin has a little meadow where wildflowers get the filtered sunshine they like, and they prosper and spread. Here are a few images of my favorites.

The mottled petals of the Chocolate Lily (*Fritillaria affinis*) make it a camouflaged beauty of the forest.

The bloom of the tiny Calypso Orchid (*Calypso bulbosa*), aptly nicknamed Fairy Slipper, is no bigger than the tip of my thumb.

I thought these little beauties edging Lopez Sound, three minutes from my front door, were violets, but my neighbor the Mad Birder (who knows his wildflowers as well as his avian buddies) told me they are *Collinsia parviflora*, commonly bearing the delightful moniker “Blue-eyed Mary.”

This spring on Center Island, a full night’s sleep is but a flickering dream

A female Northern Flicker clings to a fir outside Nuthatch Cabin. Male and female Flickers share similar markings except for the male’s dark “moustache” stripe from beak to cheek.

IT MUST BE SPRING. The jackhammers are waking me and Galley Cat in the morning.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I haven’t abandoned Nuthatch Cabin for a one-bedroom walk-up above a shawarma joint in Queens. No, this soundtrack of heavy construction is from my friend the Flicker.

Not “My Friend Flicka,” the 1950s TV series about a Wyoming kid and his horse. No, this disturber of my island peace is a Flicker. A Northern Flicker, to be precise. A type of woodpecker.

I’ve always admired these handsome birds with the gently curving beak. The speckled gray breast and darkly striped back suggests the look of a plump British earl in a satin vest and charcoal morning coat, off to see the horseraces. Possibly at the invitation of a duke.

But my admiration has come under strain on recent mornings.

It started about two weeks ago. About 7 a.m. I was jolted from a dreamy sleep. Galley, who usually snoozes on my feet, was up on all fours with wild eyes. A noise that seriously resembled a pneumatic jackhammer was reverberating throughout the cabin.

“A friggin’ woodpecker!” I quickly realized.

I bolted out of bed to run downstairs and out the front door, barefoot and in my nightwear, to look angrily roofward and shout the first forceful, manly exclamation I could articulate: “SHOO!”

The Nuthatch and its resident nut: The peaked metal roof is a favorite of Flickers.

A Flicker nonchalantly fluttered away to a tree next door.

Since then it has recurred every few days. Once, I spotted another Flicker (if not the Flicker) at the tiptop of my steeply peaked metal roof. The timing is always the same. I’ve been repeatedly rousted from my bed. This morning I tried to ignore it, but it didn’t stop. And the effect of the hammering on metal truly is like trying to relax inside a bass drum during a rousing Sousa march.

Interestingly, my friend Hilary on Bainbridge Island just recently told of a Flicker attacking her home’s metal gutters. And my island neighbor, the Mad Birder, said a big Hairy Woodpecker was after his metal roof a couple days ago. The odd thing is: In 23 years at the Nuthatch, this is the first time I remember this happening.

It’s a mating-season thing, the M.B. assured me. I figured it was a testosterone phenomenon, with boys trying to impress the girlies with that jackhammering on metal. But with woodpeckers, both genders drum to attract dates, M.B. pronounced. And just to cement his Mad Birder cred, he informed me that he could distinguish between different woodpeckers, sight unseen, simply by the cadence of their drumming. (I bow to genius. As long as he keeps sharing his Laphroaig when I visit.)

Anyway, happy springtime! You’ll understand if you spy me dashing out of my cabin in Dawn’s Early Light shaking a fist at the roof.

Just help me out by shouting “SHOO!”

THIS SATURDAY, MARCH 28: Friends, join me and millions of other Americans for the third nationwide No Kings Rally, likely to draw the largest turnout of any protest in history. Everybody and every body counts. Sign up and get details about a rally near you: Find the map and plug in your ZIP code at www.nokings.org.

Immunize against woes by sharing your joys

A wild currant blossom presages the arrival of spring on Center Island.

DO YOU FIND JOY TOUGHER TO GRASP THESE DAYS? If so, you’re not alone, and that’s important to acknowledge.

On a rainy day walk through the lush Gazzam Lake Nature Preserve on her home turf of Bainbridge Island last week, my friend Hilary commiserated when I told her I was finding it tougher to write regular posts on “Cantwell’s Reef.”

“I like to write about the joys I’ve found living on my island,” I told her as I squished along a muddy trail flanked by arsenals of sword ferns and tall maples thickly upholstered in chartreuse moss. But with the people in charge taking a wrecking ball to the world all around us, joy can be thin on the ground. Just today my brother sent me an apt meme that declared, “This entire presidency is like being tied to a chair and watching a toddler play with a loaded pistol.”

Emily Freidenrich, our new partner at Seattle’s Lake Union Publishing, and my author friend, Neil Johannsen, by sculptor Thomas Dambo’s “Pia the Peacekeeper” troll in a Bainbridge Island park.

Maybe I should share that feeling with all you Reef readers, who are living through the same experience, Hilary suggested. I mulled that and quickly saw the wisdom. Perhaps there’s a “misery loves company” element to it, but it’s more: Friends and loved ones need to support one another through these times of upheaval and uncertainty. Minnesotans bravely modeled how to resist hate and brutality, but there’s a flip side to resisting. We also need to grab joy and celebrate it when we find it.

My joy last week was lunching with Hilary and her husband, Neil, at a cozy Bainbridge pub with Emily, an acquisitions editor at Seattle’s Lake Union Publishing. I had just helped Neil land a book contract for a historical novel on which he had labored for 50 years. This was my first (and likely only) experience as a literary agent. It’s been an interesting bag of new tricks for this old dog to learn. Challenging but, well, joyful in the end.

The joy back home on my little island comes in observing the signs of spring’s pending arrival, such as the watermelon-pink blooms of wild currant outside my cabin’s front door. Or in planting a new quaking aspen tree next to Wee Nooke, my writing hut named after a cottage that Edwin the Boy Scout burned to the ground in a P.G. Wodehouse novel (after he tried to clean the chimney with gunpowder). That book’s, title, coincidentally: “Joy in the Morning.”

This might be the first such aspen (Populus tremuloides) on Center Island, but there are many bordering Shallow Bay on Sucia Island, 18 miles north of here, so it’s almost a native species. I figure the climate difference isn’t much. I’m hoping my new tree will offer both the splendid music of wind-ruffled leaves as well as the joyful autumn glow for which its species is famous.

I’ve said it before and the news headlines just keep hammering home the importance: Take joy where you find it. Share it with everyone around you.

I never expected to be quoting Bad Bunny, but it’s pretty darn true: The only thing more powerful than hate is love. Add joy to that and you’ve really got something.

Five years after Barbara

Lillian, left, and her mother, Barbara, work together in the Nuthatch Cabin kitchen at Christmastime 2019.

REMEMBERING BARBARA TODAY on what would have been her 71st birthday.

My dear wife was 66 when breast cancer took her life five years ago this spring, right here on Center Island. This was where she wished to be, not in a hospital or hospice. It was difficult, but daughter Lillian and I made it work for her, along with help from a handful of extraordinarily kind island neighbors and a final visit by three loving sisters.

Five years seems a tough milestone for me. My friend seemingly forever, my wife of 41 years, Barbara was the love of my life. But I still feel her presence every day: her lovely smile, her quick wit, her boundless love. She taps my shoulder as I’m fixing dinner and cautions me not to burn my chop. I light a candle for her every night and bid her good night as I blow it out and head for bed. My greatest blessing: I have the joy of seeing her in Lillian, who is one of the kindest and cleverest humans I know, and the best gift Barbara gave the world.

A view from my walk circling Center Island this noontime.

Lillian, her partner Lux, and I got together in Olympia over the weekend with our friends Daniel and Jean Farber to plan for our upcoming canal-boat voyage on France’s Lot River, a celebration of my 70th birthday. We took the opportunity on Saturday to share a birthday cake with candles and sing an early “Happy Birthday” to Barbara. It was sweet.

I started this day by writing a birthday email to Barbara’s seven siblings, all of whom are still around, spread between Puget Sound and Australia. I took a long walk around my island in the February sunshine. I took Galley Cat for a stroll to the end of our road and fed her more cat treats than was probably healthy. I ate lunch in my writing hut, and I wrote this post. A quiet and contemplative day on my rock.

Happy birthday, dear heart. Miss you.