December 2022 – Cantwell's Reef

This was the view from the Nuthatch cabin’s front window the morning of December 20. The railing was snow-free only because ravenous birds mobbing the feeder had knocked it clear.

ALEXANDER, THE GRUMPY BOY from a well-known 1972 children’s book, would likely agree:

This has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad December in the San Juan Islands.

A week ago Monday night, it snowed and snowed, then snowed some more. Enough to snowshoe on. Skis would have been great. Tromping around the island, as my boots sank deep, I got twice the normal exercise.

Then it froze and froze, then froze harder. The snow never melted. My firewood pile sank quickly.

Daughter Lillian, who lives in Seattle, and I had long ago planned Christmas at a little camping-cabin at Camano Island State Park, a pretty spot halfway between us, reachable by a bridge from the mainland. The trip required only an hour of driving for each of us.

Happily — even Alexander would have been optimistic — the National Weather Service assured us that a warming trend would arrive two days before Christmas. Presumably, rain would wash away the snow and ease any travel worries. Our plans were golden. I’d catch a water taxi on the late morning of Christmas Eve and Lil and I would meet up in time for the 4 p.m. check-in time, ready to whirl our way around the little cabin, trimming it with lights, baubles and bows.

Though snowy and cold, the week was going well. I’d hosted a pleasant happy hour for neighbors on the solstice. Then, Thursday at 1:09 p.m., my water-taxi service texted to tell me that they expected to cancel every trip on Christmas Eve. The forecast called for winds exceeding 50 mph, rendering the voyage unsafe. Even Santa might get blown off course.

Rebook your trip for Friday, the Paraclete Charters folks urged.

Panic ensued. Staging a portable Christmas with many of the favorite family decorations and dishes — the Santa-and-reindeer light string, the Christmas Spode, etc. — entailed hours of careful packing. I’d been counting on a full day of prep on Friday.

I would also now need a place to stay Friday night on the mainland.

Shamelessly, I phoned my next-door neighbor, the Mad Birder, and “invited myself ” to crash with my sleeping bag on his sofa at the La Conner home he shares with his wife, Carol. They had boated over to Center Island the previous week, to stay through Christmas at their cabin.

The Mad Birder, generous by nature, put up little resistance. He also agreed to look in on Galley Cat, who would be home alone for a couple nights. (Someone else had nabbed the one Camano cabin that allowed pets.) By late afternoon, it seemed that I (with help from the M.B.) had risen to the challenges the islands were throwing at me this Yuletide. I would get the Paraclete’s final Friday sailing, by which time the snow would have mostly melted away. So the plan went.

Then, at 4:45 p.m. Thursday, just as I was thinking about dinner prep, the lights went out.

My meal that night was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Your correspondent with Christmas dinner in the works: stovetop Shepherd’s Pie, with Brussels sprouts, spiced with fresh air.

Usually these outages are localized and fairly quickly resolved. But a call to our power cooperative informed me that the outage was countywide, caused by a system failure on the mainland. Uh-oh. That meant fixing it was up to Puget Sound Energy and Bonneville Power Administration, rather than our quick-responding, owner-operated Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO). Our islands don’t always top the priority list for Puget Sound Energy, owned primarily by Canadian investors.

A recorded message said the power might be out at least four hours. Outside temperatures were in the low 20s. It would be a very cold night. After I’d risen every hour on the hour to stoke a fire in the woodstove, my lights came back on 13 hours later, at 6 a.m. Friday. I could cook again, but I was bleary eyed at the start of a very long day.

Friday didn’t warm up nearly as much as forecast. By the time I needed to head for the dock with my food, gifts, decorations, camping gear and warm clothing, eight inches of snow remained on the ground. The gravel roads were still coated in compact snow and ice. No traction for my golf cart or a community pickup truck, so I loaded baggage into my pushcart and trudged slowly across the island, 3/4 of a mile through freezing rain and light snow. Two trips, the last one in the dark. I really didn’t want to cancel Christmas with my daughter.

Happily, roads in Anacortes and the Skagit Valley had almost completely thawed. I made it to La Conner with barely a hitch. The only place I got stuck was trying to pull into my friends’ driveway, still a solid mass of snow. Luckily, I’d brought a shovel.

Our Christmas dinner table at the Camano cabin included prize-packed crackers, a fixture inspired by my late wife Barbara’s Australian upbringing.

At 8 p.m., I sat down to the sack dinner I’d brought. In a phone call to let the Mad Birder know I’d made it, he insisted I raid his liquor cupboard for a tot of Glenfiddich. This time, it was I who put up little resistance. If there’s a heaven, that man is going there.

The next day, Christmas Eve, Lillian and I made our rendezvous at the Camano cabin. It was basic, but cozy, with lights, heat, a fridge, a microwave oven and comfy beds. I set up my propane camp stove on a picnic table under the covered porch. Bathrooms and hot showers were 100 feet away.

We made the place festive, gathering fallen fir boughs for a window-sill vase and a swag on the door. Lights went up in a window and over the door. If there had been a hall, we’d have decked it. Heirloom treasures made for a holiday dinner table fancier than that place had ever seen, I’ll wager. I was glad to have trundled the Cantwell holiday trappings through the snow.

Meanwhile, I discovered that the San Juans had lost power again that morning. My kind neighbors were again sitting in the dark. Happily, power came back on just in time for their Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Day, my daughter and I breakfasted on almond-flour blueberry pancakes. We hiked through rain-washed woods to wander the beautiful cobbled beach, returning to the Christmas cabin to lunch on Stilton and Cotswold Double Gloucester cheeses on crackers while piecing together a new jigsaw puzzle. We played new board games before and after a savory dinner of camp-stove shepherd’s pie, which Lillian totally aced.

Your correspondent, left, and daughter in their Christmas crowns.

My dessert, Bûche de Noël, baked at home just before the power failed, was, um, a mixed success. The sponge was basically a failure — chewy and tough rather than airy and light. But if you smothered mocha-flavored whipped cream on cardboard, it would still be heavenly.

So, after all, in the end, the terrible December got better. The horrible weather didn’t defeat us. Christmas turned out more good than no good. And even my very bad dessert was tasty.

Is there a moral to the story? I guess it’s this: Let’s nurture resilience and hope. Let’s meet the challenges. Let’s trundle through the storms, no matter what 2023 throws our way. Happy new year, friends. And remember to bring your shovel.

Winter winds had wreaked havoc in the woods at Camano Island. The fang-like splinters inspired Lillian to dub this the dragon tree.

The aisles are empty for our early arrival at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Daughter Lillian gathers her energy for a busy morning of holiday shopping.

I WON’T ASK FOR TOO MUCH SYMPATHY. Living on a small island in the San Juans isn’t too painful, I admit.

But this remote life with no stores, no garbage pickup, and no bridges to the mainland has its challenges. Anytime I leave Nuthatch Cabin for an overnight outing requires days of planning and preparation. And once I’m walking among the landlubbers, I’m a multi-tasking fiend. Especially as winter sets in.

Friends have expressed curiosity about my shopping and travel routines, so here’s an example from a recent four-day visit to the Outside (as bush-living Alaskans call the rest of the world).

Getting there

SEVERAL WEEKS in advance, I trade emails with friends or family to see if a guest room is available for me and possibly Galley Cat.
FIVE DAYS in advance: I text Paraclete Charters, my preference of the two local water-taxi services (because their boat has a cargo area protected from the elements). I request a booking for passage back and forth to their base at Skyline Marina in Anacortes. It’s a 35-minute boat ride from my Center Island dock, though that can be considerably longer when they stop at other islands. Rather than take my vintage runabout to Anacortes, I rely on the water taxi for the 5-mile crossing of Rosario Strait, which can kick up nasty any time of year. My Paraclete friends and I trade notes about preferred travel times; they make two or three round-trips to the islands each day. Once we’ve settled on an itinerary, they confirm my reservations.
A FEW DAYS AHEAD, I figure out how many cargo totes I’ll need. I pack one with bagged trash, to deposit in a mainland dumpster. Another carries snacks, cat supplies and a few food items; I usually try to contribute to a meal at my host’s home. I have a lot of grocery-shopping needs this time. I seem to have run out of everything at once, and winter is coming. I feel like a worried squirrel whose store of nuts is low. I bring a large hard-sided ice chest to transport frozen foods and an empty 18-gallon plastic tote to hold other groceries on my return trip. While nearby Lopez Island has a sizable supermarket and a well-stocked natural foods store, inflated island prices encourage me to do the bulk of my grocery shopping on the mainland. A small soft-sided suitcase takes my clothes, plus a soft-sided cat carrier for Galley Cat.
TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE. I hate to come home to a messy cabin. Out comes the vacuum, the broom, the duster and the spray cleaner. Galley, not a fan of roaring machines and spritzing spray bottles, flees outside for an hour.
PACKING clothes and supplies takes up the day before my departure. When Galley is to accompany me on a trip, I do packing the day before leaving. She is generally a good traveler on road trips, but by far prefers that we stay home by the fire. When the suitcase comes out and I start cleaning like a fiend, she knows she’s about to be scooped into her travel carrier, so she hides under a bed. Prying her out can be like wrestling a grumpy Tasmanian Devil from its den. So, on departure morning, 30 minutes before it’s time to load my baggage on to my golf cart for the trip to the dock, I pop her into the bathroom and close the door so as not to be chasing her frantically around the cabin when it’s time to catch the boat.
ON THE BOAT RIDE, when not looking out the window at Stellar sea lions that hang out on Bird Rocks, I write a check for the $38 fare (one-way) and text my Farmers Insurance agent letting her know I’ll be using the car for a few days. She takes my Honda Civic off the “storage” rate and I pay an extra $3 a day for insurance while I use it.
ROOM AT THE INN: After I drive south for a couple hours, sister- and brother-in-law Margaret and Tom Hartley host me and Galley at their comfortable home in Shoreline, just north of Seattle. I enjoy good company, a delicious home-cooked dinner and a DVD viewing of “Love Actually.” Galley stays in the guest room to avoid conflicts with my hosts’ tabby.

A multi-tasking whirl

SATURDAY, daughter Lillian and I wade out into the rain on our annual day of Christmas shopping at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, reached by a light-rail ride from Northgate. We start with Eggs Benedict for breakfast at the Athenian Restaurant, from which we gaze out the window to watch scuttling ferries on Elliott Bay. Favorite shopping stops include Perennial Tea Room, with loose-leaf teas galore, and Golden Age Collectables, which claims to be the world’s oldest comic-book store. We watch fish getting tossed, we have tea and crumpets for “elevenses,” and give a Christmas-sized tip to the busking piano man. By the time we head back to the rail station, our giant plastic shopping bag bulges with gift purchases.
SUNDAY, I spend the forenoon piling carts high with groceries at Trader Joe’s, Fred Meyer and Costco (the total tab: $435.90; I really was out of everything). At the car, playing something akin to Grocery Tetris, I meticulously wedge my purchases into totes for homeward transport. Next stop: Shoreline’s Holyrood Cemetery, where I place Christmas wreaths on the graves of my parents and in-laws and sing them a lonely carol. (The couples are buried about 100 yards from each other.) The day concludes with the annual Burns Family Christmas potluck at the Kenmore home of my sister- and brother-in-law, Sarah and Danny Mansour. The gathering is a highlight of the year for my late wife’s family, sharing good food, good drink and lots of socializing.
BUT IT’S NOT OVER YET: Monday morning at 7:45 I check in for an annual dental check-up and cleaning at Willamette Dental in Mountlake Terrace. Multi-tasking, remember? With a clean bill of dental health (and sparkling teeth), three hours later I’m the carpool driver for a couple of old friends, Kristin Jackson and Steve Miletich, on our way to a lunch gathering in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District with other former Seattle Times colleagues, Terry Tazioli and Lynn Thompson. The dim-sum carts don’t stop rolling at Joyale Seafood Restaurant. Eventually, we waddle back to the parking garage, and I buzz back to Shoreline to fetch my kitty cat and hit the highway back to Anacortes for a 4 p.m. sailing to Center Island. Among my many other purchases I’ve filled a 5-gallon jug with gasoline to add to the tank of my pickup truck next time I voyage to Lopez Island, where gas costs twice as much.

By 5 p.m., I’ve trundled all my groceries back to the Nuthatch, filled the fridge and freezer, lit a fire and poured a glass of wine. Time to rest up for the next trip to the mainland.

Meanwhile, happy holidays! May you all feast from a larder as full as mine. As a Christmas bonus, here are more colorful images from the Pike Place Market.