In island life’s to-and-fro, sail beyond the routine

Seen from my favorite lunch stop: Skippers from the Anacortes Radio Control Sailors club line a dock during a recent regatta.

STRICT ROUTINES ARE PART OF MY ISLAND LIFE. Getting on and off my remote rock can require planning days or weeks ahead, including advance bookings on the mainland, elaborate shopping lists and careful attention to weather forecasts and water-taxi schedules.

Oversleep, miss a water-taxi pickup and I might have to reschedule a long-planned medical appointment. Get mired in Everett traffic on the way home and I could miss the day’s last boat and be looking for a hotel room. And if winter winds are too harsh, the boats might not be running at all.

Yes, routines and attention to detail add a little stress to the pleasures of my island life.

But I’ve built little joys into my routines, too. Since forays to the mainland often put me on the move around noontime, I usually pack a lunch. A turkey wrap slathered with mustard and relish, along with a baggie of sliced vegetables and apple, and maybe one of my homemade oatmeal-craisin-chocolate chip cookies, tends to be my standard. Once I’ve picked up my “mainland car” at Skyline Marina in Anacortes, I’ll make a quick stop for a good coffee-to-go, then find a front-row parking slot at my favorite lunch-munching spot, Seafarers’ Memorial Park on the Anacortes waterfront.

A fishing boat chugs toward the entry to Cap Sante Marina in Anacortes, as seen from Seafarers’ Memorial Park. Mount Baker and the North Cascades loom in the east.

The park includes a monument listing the town’s lost seafarers and fishing crews. Anacortes has a long history as a base for Alaska-bound fishing boats, and its sobering “lost at sea” list includes 127 names, starting with Harry Dunn in 1913. The most recent loss listed: 2020.

On a point overlooking Cap Sante Marina, a poignant bronze statue of a woman holds aloft a lantern as she looks out to sea, her other hand comforting a child who hugs his mother’s windblown dress.

From my parked car I look past the nearby oil refineries — every wonder has its warts — to a view of wooded islets, the snow-frosted Cascades, and a parade of working boats and pleasure craft coming and going from the marina’s narrow entrance.

That, and one of my favorite sights, the seemingly frequent regattas of the Anacortes Radio Control Sailors club, which sails in a protected saltwater lagoon fronting the park.

Model sailboats raced at Anacortes are about 3 feet long with masts reaching 5 feet. Realistic details extend to the bulb keel typical of full-size racing sloops.

The sleek model boats that race here are typically about 3 feet long with 5-foot masts. Competing in laps around buoys as their dockbound “skippers” guide them with handheld radio units that can control rudders and sails, they resemble boats that my daughter, Lillian, and I once rented and sailed on a pond in New York’s Central Park.

Other boredom-breaking parts of my routine might include driving an off-highway route across the Skagit Valley to view whatever crops are in season and flowers in bloom. (Daffodils should start to show color in the month ahead; tulips in April.) This time of year often includes fields full of migratory flocks of Snow Geese and Trumpeter Swans. If I need a special grocery item, I’ll detour to downtown Mount Vernon’s Skagit Valley Food Co-op, among the best hometown natural-foods markets in the Northwest. A summertime stop might be Pleasant Ridge Farm‘s well-stocked self-serve stand, including a Crayola-colorful cut-your-own zinnia patch, or Fir Island’s Snow Goose Produce, where you can get a pot of authentic Skagit Valley tulips or what they advertise as “immodest” ice cream cones (they’re huge). Be patient for your colossal cone, however; closed now, they reopen for the season March 1.

Just a few ways that I break up my travel routine. Even the most hectic days can be spiced with a little joy.

Daffodils brighten the Skagit Valley floor as seen from the Best Road in March 2023.

Of frozen pipes, boiling water, and small island pleasures

Wee Nooke is my 6 foot-by-6 foot writing hut on the rocky knoll behind Nuthatch Cabin.

HOORAY, I’M BACK IN THE NOOKE, with no more water to boil. That’s my good news for the day on Center Island in the San Juans. (More about boiling water in a minute.)

Sitting here eating my sack lunch in Wee Nooke, the tongue-in-cheeky P.G. Wodehouse-inspired name for my writing hut, is good news because I just love working here. Perched on the rocky knoll behind Nuthatch Cabin in a little meadow that dazzles with wildflowers each May, the Nooke is a 36-square-foot cedar hut. First erected as a playhouse for then-preteen daughter Lillian 20 years ago, it came on a couple of pallets as a potting-shed kit from British Columbia.

Handmade postcards from Stuart Island, a neighbor in the San Juan archipelago, festoon Wee Nooke’s walls between windows that can open to welcome breezes on warm days.

It did its duty as a daughterly retreat for several years, hosting at least one rather cramped sleepover with one of her middle-school girlfriends before Lillian handed off the keys — or the padlock combination, as the case may be — to her old man.

I installed a small writing desk with lamp, snaked an ethernet cable up the rocks and added an electric oil-filled radiator for January days like this. With a wall of mullioned windows looking out on craggy firs and the occasional grazing deer, it became the perfect place to write, even with the retained pre-teen decor of zebra-striped rug and beaded entry curtain.

Besides countless installments of the “Reef,” the Nooke and I have produced a handful of freelance travel stories, a recreation section of the Mountaineers-published “We are Puget Sound” book, and (with Barbara’s collaboration, in her day) more than one mystery novel.

Mailbox as art: Rescued from Lopez Island Dump, it perches on Wee Nooke’s front railing. The flag is always up.

My custom is to bring a lunch up with me, along with a Thermos of hot water. A tiny table holds a variety of teas and instant coffee. As I write, I usually listen to my favorite music-streaming channel. Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens, Bill Withers and other mellow rockers of the 1970s ring out from the nice Polk Audio computer speakers I got for free at the Lopez Island Dump’s Take It-or-Leave-It warehouse. When the weather doesn’t keep her curled up in the cabin, Galley Cat is a regular visitor as I work. I slide open the door whenever I hear her scratch, and she leaps up on to a bookshelf to be rewarded with cat treats. On a warm day, she’ll be in and out every five minutes. (She shirks duties as a mouser, however. I must set traps on occasion.)

Lillian made this sign for the writing hut.

Yes, I love the Nooke. With the portable radiator pulled under the desk this afternoon, I’m snug as a bug in a rug.

Oh, and that bit about boiling water. It’s just a reminder that this is still January in the winter-wild San Juans. When I returned Sunday from visiting my sweetheart in Thurston County, our island’s community water system was under a “boil water” order until further notice. In the hard freeze while I was gone, our water system froze up again. With the required rerouting to different pipes and another reservoir tank, once water was flowing again the purity couldn’t be trusted.

A jug of emergency water ensured that I could brush my teeth without worry.

But Monday morning our caretaker took a sample to the mainland for testing. By Tuesday we got the “all clear” signal to again drink our tap water without first bringing it to a roiling 212 degrees F.

So, yes, living on a remote island has its challenges, sometimes big. But it always has its wee delights.

With howling winds and picture-postcard snow, winter keeps us guessing

The rambunctious Chevy dog tugs owner Carol on a snow-frosted January morning in rural Thurston County. Winter weather wasn’t as benign in other parts of Western Washington, including my San Juan Islands.

WINTER THROWS ITS TANTRUMS whether I’m on my island or off. This most petulant of seasons stomped into the San Juans last night with puffed out cheeks and a decidedly icy demeanor.

I left Center Island Wednesday to spend 10 days or so with my sweetheart in rural Thurston County, where we’ve been enjoying a scenic Friday of light snow. Because the National Weather Service predicted frigid temperatures on the way to my island, before leaving I took measures to ensure that Nuthatch Cabin would weather the deep-freeze. Among other things, this involved clearing out the kitchen pantry’s bottom shelf, yanking up an access hatch in the floor and doing a couple of fancy limbo maneuvers to fold my lanky 6-feet-two past the upper shelves of spare olive oil and unopened pancake syrup and down into the dank and murky crawlspace that is the dominion of spiders, water pipes and the occasional hapless mouse.

I use the term “crawlspace” advisedly. With maybe two feet of clearance between the plastic-draped earthen floor and beams above me, I did more wriggling on my belly than actual crawling. The objective: placement of two low-wattage air-dryer units, leftovers from my sailboat-owning days, beneath water pipes that snaked from beam to beam. That done, I plugged the warming units in to a heavy-duty extension cord that I led back up through the pantry to an electrical outlet in the living room. Frozen pipes prevented, I’m hoping.

In addition, I plugged in a small oil-filled radiator next to the bathroom toilet (I’ve seen the tank’s water freeze solid once) and put another portable radiator next to the kitchen sink. As always before departing, I turned off the cabin’s water main and drained faucets.

Such prep seemed justified Thursday as I sat in Tenino reading an email from Center Island’s caretaker. He warned all island homeowners of a forecast for frigid northerly winds by the weekend.

Galley Cat looks out on my sweetheart’s snowy garden in Thurston County this morning.

“It is possible that we may not be able to provide water during the coldest part of this cold snap due to reservoir freezing. If you’re here on island, it’s a good idea to have some fresh water reserved for your household use,” he wrote.

It wouldn’t be the first time the island’s water system had seized up when the mercury took a skydive. I already had two five-gallon jugs of emergency drinking water stored on my back porch.

So I assumed all was well Friday morning when we awakened here in Tenino to an inch of sparkling snow on the ground, my first of the season, with temperatures in the low 20s Fahrenheit. The sky soon cleared to a perfect January blue, as pastel-soft as a baby boy’s blanket. My sweetie and I enjoyed walking Chevy, the high-energy dog, on an icy back road to a sun-dappled lake where armadas of winter waterfowl seemed bent on paddling fast enough to keep the water from freezing. It was a beautiful winter day.

On our return, however, a text from my conscientious island neighbor, the Mad Birder, gave me a big chill.

Fallen limbs litter the front steps at Nuthatch Cabin on Center Island this morning after a frigid windstorm. John Farnsworth photo.

He attached photos showing two very large fir branches — themselves almost the size of small trees — that had plummeted from far above on to my cabin around dawn after a night of banshee winds. M.B. described it as a “massive crash” that made him and his wife think fallen timbers had smacked their own roof.

I soon exhaled with relief as the missive suggested almost no damage to my cabin. A photo showed a large tangle of limbs and fir needles that had come to rest on my front steps.

A phone call to M.B. confirmed that the cabin’s metal roof appeared essentially unscathed, and the stairway’s railing suffered only scratches that could be sanded out.

Winds had diminished, but temperatures hadn’t risen. While we basked in the mid-20s in Tenino, Center Island’s high for the day was about 9 degrees, M.B. told me. I was glad for leaving heat on, and thankful for my generous neighbor who used his chainsaw to clear the mess.

Center Island wasn’t the only place feeling this first seasonal barrage, of course. Harboring hopes for some downhill adventures with my new honey, I’d recently signed up for the daily snow report from White Pass Ski Area, 69 miles from Tenino. A couple days ago the report showed mountain winds gusting in excess of 100 mph. Under “conditions” was just one word, all in caps: BLIZZARD.

I think of how native Northwest tribes ascribe wily ways to wildlife such as ravens. It seems to me that winter has its own wily ways, and I’m probably right in guessing there are more wiles on the way. Enjoy January’s beauty as you can. But let me just say “brrrrr.” Stay warm. Stay safe. And if you’re walking through woods on a blustery day, keep looking up.

Remember, 2024 is the year we can save democracy or lose it. Please join me and other Vote Forward volunteers in writing letters to encourage voting among marginalized citizens in swing states where our nation’s fate will be decided. It’s a strategy with proven results. Get details at votefwd.org.

Does absence makes the moss grow lusher? Island homecoming is sweet

Behind Nuthatch Cabin, Galley Cat explores the rocky knoll where spongy moss has grown thick with winter rains.

HOMECOMINGS OFTEN TOUCH THE HEART, and my Wednesday return to the Nuthatch was no exception.

Galley Cat and I had departed Center Island on the Island Express water taxi along with daughter Lillian and our friend Lux on the day after Christmas. My destination was the home of my new sweetheart, Carol, three hours south. The next day was her birthday, which we would spend in a beachfront rental looking out on stormy seas at Moclips on the Washington Coast.

I spent another week with Carol and her rambunctious dog, Chevy, at their home in rural Thurston County. Her home sits on five wooded acres a short walk from the pretty Deschutes River, the waterway that skirts the old Olympia Brewery at Tumwater and feeds into Capitol Lake in the shadow of our state’s capitol dome.

This time of year, her neck of the woods feels even moister than mine. In fact, much of her acreage is classified as wetland because of the marshy soil. Alders and cottonwoods are draped in lichen and fringed with moss. Fog frequently lurks among the trees this time of year. On a nearby lake, trumpeter swans paddle in the mist.

Wednesday, Carol was due to fly away to visit her daughter who lives in Washington, D.C., so I dropped her at the airport and came back to my island to rekindle the home fires.

While Carol’s marshy environs are beautiful in their own right, my rocky knoll seems much different. Rather than adorning trees, spongy, emerald-hued moss cushions the island rocks. After plenty of winter rains, the moss is inches thick and vibrantly green. In the mild season we’re experiencing, I still have fuchsias struggling to bloom in planters on my deck.

Galley seems glad to be home. At Carol’s, coyotes are a threat so Galley stays inside unless I take her out on a leash to stroll the garden. The only wildlife threat on Center Island is from foxes ill-advisedly (and illegally) imported by a neighbor. But there aren’t many, and Galley has proven herself adept at quickly climbing a tree if foxes are about.

In our haste to depart on Boxing Day, we left the Christmas tree up. Happily, it has lost few needles, so I’ve left it up for me and Galley to enjoy for a few more days. Tomorrow I start stowing ornaments back in my dad’s old Army trunk — the one that crossed the Atlantic with him aboard the Queen Mary.

Today, I look out the windows of my writing hut as Galley perches on the desk next to my keyboard and meows for kitty treats. Watching through the mullioned windows as trees dance in the wind, listening to Gordon Lightfoot and the Lovin’ Spoonful on my desktop speakers, we are content for a few days to be back at our home, sweet home.

Remember, 2024 is the year we can save democracy or lose it. Please join me this year in writing letters to encourage voting among marginalized citizens in swing states where our nation’s fate will be decided. It’s a strategy with proven results. Get details at votefwd.org.

Simple joys fuel hope for a new year

Clouds reflect on the ocean beach at Moclips as Chevy dog gallops the sand in the distance. Carol Zahorsky photo.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, and joy to the world.

Starting a year that is fraught with threats to democracy and the foundations of our nation as we’ve known it, some friends have helped remind me that there is, in fact, joy to be found every day if we remember to look.

As my new partner, Carol, and I celebrated her birthday at a beach rental on Washington’s Pacific Coast a few days after Christmas, we found joy in the simplest pleasure: watching her dog, Chevy, run like the wind across the wide beach sands on a cool winter day.

Chevy looks at the beach from the front window of our Moclips beach rental.

Chevy, whose pedigree is almost as diverse as the ingredients of Heinz 57 sauce, has both dachshund and black Labrador in his mix, the same as Skippy, the dog-of-small-stature-but-large-character who was a loyal canine friend to my family as I grew up. Chevy is almost the spitting, tongue-lolling image of Skippy, in both appearance and life-loving temperament.

When we took Skip on hikes into the Cascades in long-ago days when few people leashed their dogs in the backcountry, he would run up and back ahead of us on the trail, putting in twice the mileage on his short but well-muscled legs. And, bless his fearless canine heart, he would never pass up the chance to trot atop a fallen tree, even if it spanned a chasm with a rushing mountain stream 100 feet below. Many a time we held our breath until he got across. And then held it again as he crossed back.

Carol’s Chevy just loves to run. And when unleashed on a stretch of ocean beach blissfully absent of cars, you couldn’t miss the expression of delight on that dog’s face as he raced full-tilt across the sands. The joy was contagious, and we whooped and guffawed. “Faster than a speeding bullet!” I would holler as he rocketed past me with a little side-leap to send sand flying my way.

Another joyful moment came that evening when we looked out our beach house’s front window. At first, we remarked on how many crabbing boats were out to sea that night. Then we quickly remembered it was clamming season. The long row of lights we saw were from happy families of clam diggers far out on the beach harvesting razor clams during the winter night’s extreme low tide. There was just something joyful about the spectacle, knowing that here was a scene of simple adventure and fun played out far beyond the stage of war and politics.

Here’s hoping you experience joy in the coming year, wherever you may find it. And in this fateful year of 2024, let that joy fuel our fight for democracy. It benefits us all and relies on us all.

Happy new year.

A family tree, and the women I love

AS THE SUN SETS IN A BLUR OF GOLD OVER LOPEZ SOUND this Christmas Eve, I’m thankful for the wonderful women in my life.

Daughter Lillian is here, with our friend Lux, the new steward of our dear old Westsail 32 sailboat. Lillian is up in the loft wrapping gifts while we all listen to “Christmas Hits of the 1940s” on the stereo. My daughter always brings me joy. She’s such a happy, smart, thoughtful, optimistic and kind young woman.

The Nuthatch’s 2023 Christmas tree, reviving some treasured family traditions.

Tonight I’m also thinking of Barbara, whose last Christmas with us — in physical presence — was three years ago, before cancer took her in spring 2021.

My dear wife was my constant companion most of my life. She shaped me in important and unforgettable ways, from the time we were teenagers.

Christmas was a highlight of every year with Barbara. Our Christmas tree was always a work of — not just art, but passion. Every branch held an ornament. Many of them she or a sister sewed or knitted, such as the plush felt kangaroos reflective of the seven Burns girls’ Australian upbringing, or the “Seven Foolish Virgins,” a self-referencing tongue-in-cheek takeoff on a parable from the Book of Matthew.

For two Christmases after Barbara’s death, Lillian and I couldn’t bring ourselves to put up a tree with all the family ornaments. It was Barbara’s special thing, and her absence stung like tears on a hot cheek. The first year, snowed in on Center Island, we brought a potted fir sapling in from the deck and strung it with a few fairy lights, like a Charlie Brown tree. Last Christmas Lil and I spent at a rental cabin at Camano Island State Park, where we outlined windows with lights and fashioned a door swag from boughs fallen in a winter storm.

But the grief cycle continues to spin. Our recovery evolves. This year we are honoring Barbara’s memory with a modest but full-size Christmas tree at Nuthatch cabin. We’ve decorated it with lights and about half our traditional ornaments. It’s progress toward normalcy.

The Nuthatch Christmas crew, 2023, in yuletide headgear: Your loyal correspondent, left; daughter Lillian, right, and our friend Lux.

I’m thinking, too, tonight of my new sweetheart, Carol Z., who is spending Christmas with a daughter and young grandson in Thurston County. Her moral support is helping me take this important step with my daughter.

Carol has been touchingly sensitive about my need to remember and honor Barbara. Carol passionately expresses her understanding that Barbara’s love and my many years with her will always be an important part of me. For that I’m immensely grateful.

So Carol and Barbara are both with me tonight, if not physically in the room, at my little cabin in the San Juans. I’m a lucky man.

Warming up to an island winter

A cheery bonfire warms visitors to Sunnyfield Farm’s Little Winter Market on Lopez Island this weekend before Christmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE ROCK, where my holidays have been rocking and rolling, including today’s festive visit to Lopez Island’s Little Winter Market, held in the goat barn at Sunnyfield Farm on Fisherman Bay Road.

This month has been a whirlwind of holiday celebration and preparation, with more socializing than I often get in several months of lonely winter Sundays.

My new partner, Carol Z., and I have spent this week on our own at our respective homes for the first time in a while, which has just convinced me all the more that we belong together.

Admittedly, much of my most recent island socializing has been with the next-door neighbors, John (the jovial Mad Birder) and the baker extraordinaire who is also his wife, Carol F. (I now have four Carols in the contact list on my phone.)

Lillian and partner, Chris, in yuletide sweatermania.

But earlier in the month I headed south for the annual Burns Family holiday potluck at the home of sister- and brother-in-law Sarah and Danny. No Tater Tot Casseroles there; this potluck featured, among many other things, deliciously grilled venison (which, hmmm, might give Santa cause to count heads Sunday night) and included a Christmas sweater contest. A dash to Goodwill had me outfitted in a yule sweater of poor taste and tackiness, but I won no prize. Nor did honors go to daughter Lillian’s entry, with Santa riding a unicorn in outer space. (Can you believe she got skunked?) Nephew Patrick and his partner Heather, in sweaters with flashing lights sewn into them, walked home with the prize. Tech triumphs over tacky.

Carol Z. and I celebrated Hanukkah with our friends Daniel and Jean in Olympia, enjoying a splendid lunch of Daniel’s chanterelle omelets and homemade latkes and Jean’s Moroccan carrots, among other treats. With a stunning view of a wintry Mount Rainier, we all went for a delightful hike along waterfront and through woods with Carol’s dog, Chevy, who looks like a walking, woofing reincarnation of my family’s childhood pooch, Skippy.

Your faithful correspondent and Carol Z. with Chevy dog on the Olympia waterfront at Hanukkah.

The Mad Birder and Carol joined me for a progressive (two-cabin) Solstice Celebration this past Thursday, with winter fruits and complementary cheeses at the Nuthatch, where I read Robert Frost’s “An Old Man’s Winter Night” and we sipped apple jack and a hearty red wine. At their place, the poet was Mary Oliver, with Carol reading “White-Eyes” and M.B. giving a heartfelt rendition of “First Snow.” They also served salad, seedy sourdough bread, M.B.’s special Manhattan clam chowder (with a happy lip-tingling touch of cayenne) and Carol’s chocolate cake topped with cream cheese and shaved coconut. Good wine flowed. Christmas tunes played. Nobody suffered.

At the solstice, neighbor John, the Mad Birder, lights candles to honor lost loved ones.

Today, M.B. and Carol kindly gave me a lift in their runabout, Brazen, to Lopez Island, where they planned a winter hike while I tended to necessary business, disposing of trash and recycling at the headquarters of the Lopez Island Solid Waste Disposal District (motto: “Not Your Average Dump”).

Along the way, however, a roadside sandwich board alerted me to the Little Winter Market, happening this day at the goat farm. I’d been to it once before, a few years ago, and knew it for a treat. I had to pull over.

As before, the Entermann family, stewards of the farm and its batch of bearded bleaters, had transformed their little open-air barn into a festive winter bazaar. I phoned to alert Carol and John, who arranged to meet me there later.

Andre Entermann hawks his goat cheese at the Little Winter Market at his Lopez Island farm.

From the hayloft, a trio of musicians played carols. Under the open sky a blazing bonfire warmed island neighbors bundled in mufflers and parkas this chilly December day. From a scattering of stands, vendors offered hot coffee drinks, fresh Lopez oysters, canned salmon, and locally grown steaks and chops. I bought fresh garlic-and-chive goat cheese and some goat-milk soaps from the farmer, Andre Entermann, who shared secrets of how he makes goat-milk caramel. You could have cut the bonhomie with a cheese knife.

Chocolate mousse and shortbread stars await visitors to the Nuthatch.

Back at the Nuthatch, the gifts are wrapped. The tree is up. This afternoon I baked shortbread and whipped up a batch of chocolate mousse, which is chilling overnight in the fridge. (I only incinerated the chocolate in the microwave once before getting a second batch right.) Tomorrow, daughter Lillian and our friend, Lux, who recently bought and moved aboard our old sailboat, arrive to spend Christmas with me. On Boxing Day, the 26th, I head south to spend Carol Z’s birthday with her at a beach house on the coast.

Like I’ve said before, even if he lives on an isolated rock, no man is lonely with neighbors, family and loved ones like these. I hope you revel in such warmth this holiday.

A mountain of goats?: The herd at Sunnyfield Farm soaks up some Vitamin D from the rocky play structure outside their barn.

What’s that smell?

THAT WAS MY THOUGHT this afternoon as I sat down with my cup of Trader Joe’s Harvest Blend tea, my favorite autumn sip.

Cinnamon!

Yes, I was smelling it again. Oh, thank the olfactory gods. My sniffer was back on the job.

Just wanted to let loyal Reefers know: I will be smelling again for Christmas. (Yeah, yeah, let it go; you know what I mean.)

In the midst of my bout with COVID, I had lost my sense of smell (which accounts for something like 80 percent of your sense of taste). I had read that people who had lost their senses of smell and taste to COVID have regained the senses in a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months — or not at all. I chose not to ponder the latter. A life without the smell of fresh-ground coffee? Rain-washed forest? Roasting chicken? Bleak. For the near time, I was bemoaning the prospect of an aroma-free Yuletide.

My sincere sympathies go out to the multitudes who have suffered longtime disabilities from COVID, not to mention the countless families who have lost loved ones. I don’t make light of the incomprehensible tragedy.

But I do whisper a thank you into the stratosphere. In the coming month, I will count my blessings every time I smell a Christmas cookie pulled fresh from the oven. I am lucky and I know it.

Happy holidays, all. Be careful out there.

My COVID Thanksgiving

We had some beautiful weather and superb sunsets on Center Island for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately I was a little distracted.

THANKSGIVING CAME EARLY FOR ME this year. It was a good thing, as it turned out.

Two weeks ago, my island neighbor The Mad Birder and his lovely wife, Carol, extended a kind invitation for a turkey dinner. The invite included my brother Doug, who was visiting from New Mexico.

M.B. and Carol had bought a turkey breast to take with them on a Thanksgiving Week camper-van tour of Vancouver Island. They realized belatedly that they couldn’t cross the Canadian border with poultry. So they popped the turkey in the oven and said “Come on over.” There were peas. There was gravy. It was delicious.

My actual Thanksgiving Day could be the subject of a new movie titled “HOME ALONE: Brian Catches the Crud.”

A little context: What worried me most about my travels to Greece and Turkey last month was that, like virtually everyone I know who’s come back from vacationing in Europe in the past two years, I would likely get off the plane in Seattle with COVID.

Living alone on a remote island has helped me avoid catching the lousy illness that has plagued the world the past four years. That was important to me, since my diabetes and my 67 years put me at higher risk. I’ve had more booster shots than I can count. After carefully masking up on the long plane rides and in crowded museums across Greece, I was proud of myself for making it back to Center Island with no cough, no congestion, no sore throat. My senses of smell and taste were intact and ready for another round of ouzo, perhaps with a pumpkin-latte chaser.

It took me barely four weeks of being back home in Western Washington to finally come down with COVID. Damn.

Not really sure where I picked it up, though I traveled last weekend from Anacortes to a funeral in Vancouver, Washington, with stops around Lynnwood, Thurston County, Centralia and several points in between. Masked sometimes, but not always.

Last Monday, my throat was sore. A friend down south had told me she’d tested positive the previous day. I did the home test, swabbing a half-mile up my nostrils, adding droplets to the little device, and waiting 15 minutes for the answer.

I’d done this at least a dozen times before. Negative, always. This time two lines appeared, not just one. It was the “positive” reading.

Not one to accept fate without a fight, I rummaged through my bathroom drawers and came up with another home test, from a different manufacturer. Swabbed, dropped, waited. Swore.

I had The Crud.

First thing, I messaged daughter Lillian to cancel plans for her and partner Chris to spend Thanksgiving with me at the Nuthatch. That was my biggest disappointment. Galley Cat and I hunkered down for the duration. I’d just brought home lots of groceries. Considering I’d had the latest COVID booster shortly before leaving on my October trip, I assumed my illness would be mild.

Yes and no.

By Tuesday, the sore throat was gone, but head-cold symptoms set in, with mild headache. I made sure to drink plenty of fluids. Discovered that my home thermometer was inoperable. By nightfall, however, I was sure I had a fever. My forehead felt warm while the rest of me was shivering. I donned extra layers and climbed into bed.

Beyond just jettisoning those extra fluids, my kidneys seemed to go on overdrive all night long. I was up every hour on the hour to empty my bladder. When finally I fell deeply asleep before dawn, my body fought the fever until it broke and I awakened awash in my own sweat. I had to change the bedding.

Wednesday morning, the headache had eased but the sore throat returned with a vengeance. By dinnertime I could barely swallow. Both ears ached. I couldn’t speak. That night, I barely slept, groaning and wincing with every sip of water that I swallowed. Did I have strep throat on top of COVID? I resolved to get to an E.R. on the mainland the next day.

But, oh, yes, I live on a remote island. I’m reliant on a water taxi. I texted an inquiry. Yes, they could get me to Anacortes. But it was Thanksgiving and they were knocking off early; no boats in the afternoon. I’d be marooned on the mainland.

I chose to gut it out till Friday.

I don’t remember much about Thanksgiving Day. I napped a lot. Sipped ice water to soothe the flaming throat. Made a fishburger for dinner, with every swallow a pain. Watched “Miracle on 34th Street.” Wished for a miracle on Center Island. It was about that time, as I gulped down a little carton of my favorite piña colada yogurt, that I realized that the lively pineapple and coconut flavors I love were…missing in action. The yogurt was white. It was creamy. It was flavorless. I had lost my senses of smell and taste. Aaargh. Another stupid COVID curse coming true.

Friday, securely masked and as isolated on the boat as I could get, I made my way to an Anacortes walk-in clinic. After checking in I had to wait outside in my car because, oh yeah, I had COVID.

Because of my painful throat, I didn’t think I’d be able to speak clearly, so I had typed up and printed a report of my symptoms and concerns. But by the time I saw a doctor, I could talk almost normally. She examined my ears and throat, saw no bacterial infection, and talked me out of a request for Paxlovid, the antiviral med given to many COVID victims.

“The thing is, you’re getting better!” the doc told me with a relieved sense of seeing something she hadn’t seen often enough.

She was right. It’s Sunday. I’m home now, almost through with the sore throat, the congestion. The Snot Factory is shutting down.

All is on the mend, and reports say most people get their senses back.

If not, and I go through Christmas without smelling a fairy-lighted fir, without sniffing a gingerbread man, without the aroma of chestnuts or an open fire — well, that would really stink.

But at least I lived to tell about it. Damned COVID.

Gifts of gold and friendship

My writing hut looks out on a rocky knoll agleam with golden maples.

NOVEMBER CAN BE LONELY on my island in the San Juans.

It’s rarely quieter. I’ve gone days without seeing another human being. Galley Cat and I have kept each other company as the rains have made it a time for quiet indoor days of writing, reading and a good quotient of pleasant napping. For me, a new friendship is blossoming as we correspond by email. So not so lonely.

Perceptions sharpen among the peace and quiet. Stepping up the back path on a walk with Galley this morning, I noticed with a start, as if a breeze had snatched my hat: The maples have changed.

Just yesterday I noticed that maples around my place were still mostly green with leaf, unusual this far into the season.

But overnight that changed, adding splashes of soul-gladdening color among the evergreens. It’s a short period every autumn, but memorable for how the maples enliven the landscape with this painterly contrast of gold peeking from the green.

My heart swelled at the sight, and I ran for my camera.

Like a dash of sriracha in a stir-fry, a fallen maple leaf nestles among a swordfern on my hillside.

Another happy note: The Mad Birder and his lovely wife, Carol the Wonderful Watercolorist, have arrived next door for a few days’ visit, and I’m invited to dinner. I baked cookies to take for dessert. Maybe Carol will daub a painting of the maples while she’s here. Perhaps an overflight of southward honking geese will catch M.B.’s ear.

As November arrived, the island was cold and wet. Tonight it’s feeling warmer. I’m enjoying a visit with friends, and a gift from Mother Nature.