A serene Halloween

A sailboat ghosted its way in light air toward Shaw Island as cyclists and hikers converged on Lopez Island’s Fisherman Bay Spit on this mild and sunny Halloween Saturday. In the distance: Orcas Island’s Turtleback Mountain.

THE WORLD IS SCARY ENOUGH LATELY, with the resurging pandemic, and Election Day less than 72 hours away, so Barbara and I didn’t mind a day of sunshine and serenity this Halloween.

We journeyed to Lopez Island for one of our favorite obligations: recycling and trash disposal. That might sound odd, but it’s an every-fortnight necessity that gets us off our little rock and into a pleasant world of people who wave when you drive by. (We wave on Center Island, too. But Lopez has a lot more folks to do the waving. It’s the Bright Lights.)

That done, we had a picnic lunch at our favorite bench overlooking the Fisherman Bay spit. Sweaters were in order, but the day was mild for the end of October. The pink Nootka roses I’ve enjoyed there in June were now ruby-colored rose hips on twigs brittled and browned by recent brisk nights.

A squirrel already ate part of the eye from my jack o’lantern. That makes it even spookier, don’t you think?

Yesterday I carved a jack o’lantern and tonight we’ve lit a candle in it on the deck outside our window. A cheery fire crackles in the woodstove and Barbara is puttering in the kitchen, preparing colcannon, a traditional Irish dish for Halloween. In place of potatoes for me, she’s using mashed rutabaga in deference to my recently diagnosed diabetes. (I exercise, I eat a mostly vegan diet, I’m skinnier than I’ve been in years, and still it happened.) Upon our return from Lopez this afternoon, we stopped at the mail shack and found a Halloween gift package from daughter Lillian, with a homemade card and several packets of sugar-free candies. A thoughtful girl.

With dinner, we’ll enjoy our annual screening of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Later, we’ll look outside for the full moon (a blue moon, in fact) while keeping a wary eye out for werewolves, of course.

Years ago, I drove a sporty red two-seater and we spent our time in the fast lane. These days I drive a 15-year-old pickup and a hand-decorated golf cart called Mr. Toad. Life in the slow lane? I’m OK with that.

Happy Halloween. If you haven’t already, be sure to vote. (Not for the werewolf.)

The flying boat of Center Island

Center Islander Chris Maas carves a turn aboard his custom-built hydrofoil catamaran.

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’LL SEE from a little island nobody’s heard of, in a quiet month when few are around.

I was walking up our dock the other day and looked around and there was Chris Maas flying by on his hydrofoil.

Chris, co-owner with spouse Monique of Center Island’s only farm, is our resident Mr. Science. Or Mr. Greenjeans. Or both. He’s an inventor and a farmer and a sailor who can build or fix just about anything.

But quiet, and unassuming. Which is why I didn’t know he had converted a catamaran sailboat to an electrically powered hydrofoil until, well, I saw him buzzing by. Quietly.

Among other things, Chris was the world champion in canoe sailing, in the “Development Canoes” event (did you know there was a world championship in canoe sailing?), in competition held in Australia in 2008, for which he has a Wikipedia entry. Last year he launched a gorgeous wooden sailboat he built in his workshop. I happened to visit the day he was varnishing the gleaming tiller he’d fabricated out of a stave salvaged from an ancient cistern on his farm.

The hydrofoil is something he crafted in his workshop just for fun. It’s powered by an outboard motor that he adapted to run on electricity. Lifted by underwater wings similar to an aircraft’s wings, the spidery craft skims the waters of Reads Bay, off Center Island, making barely a hum.

His latest outing was to test a modification that would help the boat smoothly navigate the wakes of other passing boats.

The modification was a flop, Chris told me. So Center Island’s world champion has more tinkering to do, keeping busy in his workshop as the days get colder and quieter, on an island nobody’s heard of, where none of us really mind.

The outboard motor powering the hydrofoil is modified to run on battery power. It is lifted by underwater wings like an airplane’s.

October in my viewfinder

A Great Blue Heron takes wing from a raft of bull kelp off Shark Reef Sanctuary on Lopez Island. This was my view from shore as I sat on a rock munching my lunch over the weekend.

IT’S ONE OF MY FAVORITE MONTHS in the San Juans, often sun-dappled, when it’s not all rain-washed and fresh. Mornings are often still dry enough for my aerobic bike ride, three dashing laps around the Center Island airfield. Or, when the shores and straits are misty, drippy and fog-horned, I might pull on my rain parka and the Pendleton hat that Indiana Jones would have coveted and I circle the island on foot, often toting my camera. On “dump days,” I might take a hike on neighboring Lopez Island.

I’m often surprised by my finds. Here are a few images from this past weekend. It’s a season to savor.

I saw more pumpkins than people on a recent rainy-morning walk around Center Island.

Center Islanders come up with novel ways to mark their property. Here’s a vessel that would fit right in at Shark Reef.

A windswept cemetery is good fodder for an October photo shoot. This graveyard is on Lopez Island, adjacent to pretty Center Church, built in 1887. The cemetery holds some of the island’s earliest settlers.

Nothing says October like a farmer trying to sell pumcchini

Our friend Monique Maas hawks her crossbred gourds on Center Island.

BETWEEN WIND-TUNNEL GALES and rains enough to quench a mighty forest’s thirst, we had a lovely cool October day this week, and as I strolled in the lemony sunshine I met our resident farmer, Monique, with a basket of interesting gourds she was adding to her farmstand.

They were a sort of noncommittal, Creamsicle orange. They weren’t round like pumpkins. They were sort of stretched out like zucchini. They were pumcchini.

Yes, when you grow pumpkins and zucchini in the same garden, bees visit both and the occasional mixed-up offspring results. The gourds aren’t really good for eating, Monique said. And if you carved one as a Jack-o-lantern, it would quickly fall on its face.

But they’re decorative in a basket on your kitchen table, Monique said. She put $1 pricetags on each. That’s a bargain for produce that is Center Island Grown.