The social whirlwinds of October

I’VE RARELY HAD such a sociable October on my little rock in the San Juans. It’s been a happy whirlwind of visitors.

My buddy Tom from Orcas Island came over on the state ferry for a couple of days the first week of the month. A few days later longtime friend Patti, of another sailing family, visited from Walla Walla and stayed three nights. And I bid farewell yesterday to Hilary and Neil, birder friends from Bainbridge Island. Galley Cat and I feel like quite the social butterflies.

It’s been a good month for stocking up on visitors. Just as I’ve been busily cutting and splitting firewood in preparation for winter, I’m stockpiling social occasions that will by necessity dwindle as winter squalls set in for the long haul till March.

The October weather has been a mixed bag, but every visitor got at least one dreamy day. Tom and I ate a sack lunch on the sunny beach at Fisherman Bay Spit on Lopez. I hiked with Patti through a canyon of salal to the rocky shoreline at Shark Reef County Park on a pristine autumn day. While Hilary and Neil experienced buffeting winds and horizontal rain, observed mostly from in front of my woodstove’s blazing fire, blue skies opened up the next day in time for an enjoyable walk circling Center Island. Our big-leaf maples are turning honey gold, an eye-candy complement to the darkly brooding evergreens.

But the visitor season is drawing to a close. In anticipation of Sunday’s storm I hauled WeLike, my aqua-glorious 1957 cuddy-cabin cruiser, out of the water and tarped her on her trailer — probably until January tempests pass.

For the long, quiet months ahead, I’ve filed away some good memories: Teaching a new board game to Patti. (She won. Twice!) Watching a whimsical Jim Jarmusch film with Tom. (His favorite director, my newly acquired taste.) Smacking lips over my second helping of Hilary’s tasty enchilada casserole. (Gotta love visitors who bring dinner!) Witnessing confirmed feline-friend Neil’s jovial adoration of Galley Cat. (Even though she hissed at him in a moment of forgotten manners.)

As with these memories, I’ve also stocked up on winter firewood. Our community association recently hired a woodcutter to take down dead or dying trees along our island roads. He cut 60 trees in one day. The supply of firewood has never been so profuse. Thanks to my handy new Husqvarna, my wood rack overflows with new rounds of Doug fir awaiting room in the woodshed.

Unfortunately, the tree cutting has also resulted in an Everest-like mound of trimmed branches awaiting burning at the end of our grass airfield. When the island caretakers torch that sucker it will likely be seen from outer space. Another unfortunate side-effect: Last week a San Juan Airlines single-prop plane delivering UPS packages to our island landed amidst a tailwind capable of lifting a Kansas farmhouse to Oz. Unable to stop at the field’s far end, the plane nosed into the brush pile, just enough to require a complete replacement of propeller and engine. (Anytime a plane’s prop hits something, the engine must be rebuilt or replaced for fear that delicate inner workings might have been thrown off-kilter.) For four days a repair crew brought replacement parts by air and sea. I lent a hand on our dock the day a boat arrived with one of the biggest, oddest-shaped cardboard boxes I’d ever seen. On it, large letters declared: “Contents: airplane propeller.”

So, rarely a dull moment on my remote little island of which few have heard. Not this October.