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.
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.
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.
My favorite autumn tea is heavy on the cinnamon, along with ginger, apple, orange peel and other aromatic sensations — which I missed for a few days.
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.
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.
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.
Your correspondent, left, as Captain Ahab, with daughter Lillian Cantwell, a baker by profession (and perhaps a future master of puppetry?), as the White Whale of “Moby Dick.”
LOYAL REEFERS KNOW that Halloween has long been a highlight of the year in my late wife’s family, which for more than 40 years now has been my family, too.
You long-timers make a cup of coffee or work a crossword for a moment while I fill in the newcomers.
Some 40 years ago, my sister-in-law Kathleen and brother-in-law Roly started the tradition of an annual Halloween party for friends and family, including a costume contest. Early on, Kathleen visited Goodwill and found an old bowling trophy that had been awarded to a woman named Mildred. Kathleen removed the chrome-plated bowler and, with a bit of glue and gumption, substituted a wax figure of a witch on a broomstick, like what you might find at a crafts store. Thus was born The Mildred Award for Best Costume, and the competition began. For decades, the Mildred has passed from winner to winner.
Maybe 20 years ago, sister- and brother-in-law Margaret and Tom took over hosting, at their comfortable Shoreline home. Elaborate ghoulish decorations are involved, plus a poignant Day of the Dead altar dedicated to missed loved ones (such as my Barbara and Kathleen’s Roly). This year, the party was this past Saturday.
For years, Barbara and I strove to come up with “theme costumes” featuring the two of us, often with a spooky literary theme. Some old favorites: Edgar Allan Poe and the Raven, and Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. Lots of papier-mâché and chicken wire were key components of the bird and the horse. Many other party-goers have shown equal enterprise. One year, Margaret’s daughter Sarah spent the party scooting around in a creditable replica of a Mars exploratory rover.
This year, daughter Lillian and I decided on another literary theme: the white whale and the crazily obsessed Captain Ahab from “Moby Dick.” There are plenty of spooky aspects to the story.
Lillian, whose partner, Chris, would be traveling with a band tour for a few weeks, had some time on her hands and volunteered to tackle the whale.
She outdid herself. Chicken wire, papier-mâché, clay teeth, poster paint and all.
Moby chats with Mustafa, another party-goer, at the Halloween shindig in Shoreline. Lillian somehow managed to sip a beer from a straw.
I arrived at the party before Lillian. Clad in my foul-weather jacket, faded old captain’s hat and peg leg, with a pipe, a spyglass and other accoutrements, I gruffly quizzed other party-goers whether they’d seen the dad-blasted white whale. I had fun with it. (“I got this deckhand whose name, I’m pretty sure, is Harry, but he keeps telling people to call him ‘Ishmael,’ for some danged reason. And you know my first-mate, Starbuck? That feller can’t even make a decent cup o’ coffee.”)
But it was Lillian’s arrival, not my corny conversation, that wowed the crowd. The big, white sperm whale strapped on to her shoulders, with her face peering out over the large pink tongue inside its gaping mouth full of sharp white teeth. She’d fashioned a base of curling ocean waves and wore a gray cloak to match the color of the sea on a stormy day.
There were other great costumes, as always: An immaculately suited NASA astronaut accompanied by a ray-gun toting Martian girlfriend. A “Barbie” clad in lush pink robes à la ancient Rome (worn by sister-in-law Sarah, the Latin teacher). Docter Quinn, Medicine Woman (aka Julia Burns, R.N.), came toting a blow-up horse. My nephew who is a hard-working writer came as author Dean Koontz, a 78-year-old suspense novelist with a Justin Bieber haircut, as seen on the back of one of his novels.
But Moby Dick made a whale of an impression. We humbly took home the Mildred.
I’m back on my little island. With dinner, I plan my annual screening of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” If Galley Cat and I get any trick-or-treaters, we’ll report back. We might invite them in for a party. Happy Halloween!
Silhouette shots are the way to go when a swimsuit model is 67 years old. Your correspondent gets moist in the Med — in October.
I SWAM IN THE LUSCIOUSLY REFRESHING MEDITERRANEAN just a week ago. It was warm and sunny in the Peloponnese region of Greece.
And when I returned to Center Island on Sunday, the weather forecast for the week included the “S” word. I’m not talking about sunshine.
Yes, they were threatening me with snow by midweek. Just a few flakes mixed with rain, probably. But still. It’s not yet Halloween.
To rescue the moment, I built a roaring fire in my woodstove. That would show the Weather Gods, such as they are around here.
In Greece, they really had Weather Gods. Zeus threw lightning bolts.
My head is still there, though my body shivers as a cold rain falls here in the San Juan Islands. Such is the magic of modern travel. Last Thursday, I was on another island — the sunny isle of Rhodes, the largest of Greece’s Dodecanese Islands. Instead of edging the Salish Sea and looking across at Lopez Island, I was in the Aegean Sea, looking 11 miles across to Türkiye, as it now spells itself.
After an idyllic five days on the other side of Greece with my friends Jackie and Joel in the Mani district of the Peloponnese — Jackie is now known to me as “Mani Mama” — I caught a plane out of Athens for the hour flight to Rhodes.
Just getting to the airport was an adventure. Rather than make the three-hour return to the capital on the comfortable intercity bus, which would deposit me at a bus station many miles from the airport, with Jackie’s determined assistance I got a ride with a local guy who regularly made a few extra bucks by ferrying folks to Athens in his Ford minivan.
My Rhodes lodging’s door, left, and the narrow alley I had to navigate in the dark, at right. The steps led to a rooftop terrace with a view of the walled city.
He charged almost four times the bus fare, but he got me directly to the airport for my evening flight, saving me considerable trouble at the Athens end.
The thing was, the driver (I’ll call him Spiro, not his real name) didn’t let on that he would have a fully crammed van, with five passengers going to several different destinations. Or that he would rocket at 80 mph once we hit the tollway. Or that, as we arrived at the airport, he would cagily ask for payment before we got to the departures curb, so police wouldn’t see. (I suspected Spiro wasn’t a licensed taxi driver.) It felt like we were refugees fleeing Syria.
Rhodes was a challenge and a delight. Having booked an Airbnb inside the medieval walled city where narrow cobbled passages limit traffic to pedestrians and motorbikes, I doubled my challenge by arriving after dark. Finding my lodgings was like navigating a corn maze by moonlight. But bless the resourcefulness of my Greek hosts, who emailed photos of the appropriate entry gate, a tiny door to a souvenir shop across from my domicile’s side alley, and another photo of my arched brown door with two gray steps. I was glad I’d brought my mountaineering headlamp.
Selfie at a gate to Old Town Rhodes.
My hosts also suggested a place for dinner: Kostas’ Taverna (which is like saying “Joe’s Diner” in the U.S.A.). It was a five-minute walk through dim stone passages with only the feral cats to keep me company, but when I got there it was brightly lit and comfortably full of happy diners. A stooped little man with an obsequious grin — Kostas himself? — brought me a generous glass of good Greek wine, followed by platters of roasted eggplant with feta, onion and parsley, and a splendid salad generously garnished with manouri cheese and aglow with crimson tomatoes. It was my favorite meal outside the Mani.
The Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, dating to the 7th century, dominates the Old Town’s skyline.
My next day was filled with wandering the Old Town and marveling at its varied history. Walled or not, the place had a virtual revolving door for invaders, with occupations by European Catholic knights, Ottoman conquerors, Persians and Saracens. A highlight was the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, which could easily have starred in a Monty Python movie with a taunting Frenchman atop a turret.
Elaborate mosaic floors fill the Rhodes palace. My favorite featured Medusa. Just don’t step on the snakes.
Back to Athens for a quick overnight in a Muppet-sized rental flat mid-city, then up hours before dawn to catch a train back to the airport. Thus began one of my longest and most challenging travel days ever.
On the trip out of Seattle on Turkish Airlines 12 days earlier, I mysteriously lucked into having a row of three seats to myself in the Economy section of a nicely appointed, otherwise full 787. For the 10-hour overnight nonstop to Istanbul, I was blessedly able to stretch across the seat and get some real sleep.
The flight home, almost 12 hours of bucking headwinds, was karmic payback. (Sometimes life really is fair, I guess.)
Instead of three seats for Brian, I shared my row with a little man who was almost as wide as he was tall, sitting in the middle seat and taking up a quarter of my space as well, with his wife huddled in the window seat. Added to the long hours of being squeezed warmly against him, every time we encountered turbulence (worst I’ve ever experienced, and frequent) I watched his wife go into a ritual of moaning, chanting and raising her arms to heaven, all in Russian except for the word “Jesus” frequently intermingled, loud enough for all the plane to hear. (It really did not help the stress level.) At one point I put on my headphones and tried to find soothing music on the sound system, only to get stuck on some very unsoothing jazz with the volume at full blast, and for the life of me I couldn’t find the volume control. Unintentionally, but only partly to my chagrin, she heard it and stopped her chest-beating. Of course, that was only supplanted by the shrieking of an emotionally overtaxed toddler two rows away whose lung capacity and endurance will someday make her a champion pearl diver.
By the time I was staggering through Passport Control at Sea-Tac, I’d been on the go for 22 hours since Athens, with only about an hour of dozing on the plane.
Oh, well. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, is my take on it. But I don’t know that I will tackle long-distance travel on my own-some again anytime soon.
The flip side of ranting about my seatmates: Once I came round to chatting them up like human beings (yes, they spoke English, while I could say only “Da!” and “Nyet!” in their language), I found them to be kind and interesting folks. Born in Kazakhstan during the Soviet era, he was retired from a 30-year career as an airline pilot for Aeroflot. His wife had “won a lottery” to get a green card and they now lived in Tacoma, with family in Snohomish. On parting he gave me a heartwarming handshake and sincere wishes for my good health (after likely noticing that I kept getting served “diabetic meals”). Another example of how travel brings people together in good ways if they open their hearts.
I recovered with a couple nights of intense sleep at sister-in-law Julie’s north of Seattle. On the drive home Sunday, at a Skagit Valley farmstand I bought a cinnamon-orange pumpkin for my step. This week I’m busy planning a Halloween costume for the annual family party.
Glad I went. Glad to be home. That’s how journeys should go, don’t you think?
Editor’s note: I later learned that “Spiro” was, in fact, licensed to transport passengers, and that he asked for payment before reaching the curb in response to new rules designed to expedite traffic at the air terminal.
Cats are everywhere in Greece, including the cobbled passageways of Old Town Rhodes. These naughty twins almost came home in my knapsack.
Your correspondent again feigns consciousness as the rising sun peeks through the Parthenon’s columns during a dawn tour of the Acropolis. Go early to see this monument to antiquity in golden light with smaller crowds.
MY GRECIAN DAYS ARE PASSING LIKE A SCIROCCO from the North African deserts.
Happily, those dust storms aren’t happening during my visit to the cradle of civilization. I’ve had day after day of warm and sunny October skies.
I’ve kept moving and kept busy, from a pre-dawn wander through the rabbit-warren streets of Athens to find the meeting point for my fabulous sunrise tour of the Acropolis; to my challenging cross-country bus ride to Kalamata (the language isn’t easy for me); to calming and restorative days in the scenic little villages of the Peloponnese where my hosts of the last few days, American expats Jackie and Joel Smith, have made their full-time home for six years. (Kirkland, Washington, was their last port of call.)
Jackie, a longtime friend and a colleague in the newspaper business, from Yakima to Seattle, has agreed that our lives, mine on isolated Center Island, and theirs in a fairly remote corner of what’s known as The Continent, bear similarities. We both have little challenges in shopping and dealing with the modern “supply chain,” in staying in touch with family and old friends, in making home repairs when needed, and so on.
But we both have the tradeoff of living in our own little slices of paradise, and nurturing friendships made there.
Jackie and Joel Smith and the view from their front door. Nearest village: Agios Dimitrios, an hour’s drive south of Kalamata.
Since arriving at their charming Stone House on the Hill, looking downhill to the blue Mediterranean and across to high, rolling hills, I’ve enjoyed a rich sampling of the spectacular scenery, the warm village social life, the great food, more of the great food, and, oh, have I mentioned the great food?
My first day, we ended with a sunset dinner on their village waterfront, dining on Fava beans, spinach with black-eyed peas, fried zucchini balls and fresh calamari that was delicately imbued with the best flavors of the sea. Went to sleep with windows open, listening to the distant howling of jackals on the hillside. (There are jackals!)
On a driving tour, we lunched in Gerolimenas, with this view, including a traditional-style, double-ender Greek fishing boat. Sad trivia: The European Union is paying fishermen to destroy such vessels, to help preserve the fishery.
Since then, we’ve taken day trips on winding, narrow roads to see more of their beautiful Mani district, poking our noses into little roadside Byzantine-style chapels. I’ve taken a brisk morning hike with one of their American expat neighbors, a new friend named Chuck. Gone swimming with Chuck and his sweetheart, a firecracker of an Englishwoman named Boris (that’s her last name, and preferred moniker; first name: Caroline). And we’ve dined at different little waterfront cafes night after night, sometimes joined by passing friends, always doted on by familiar restaurateurs whom Jackie and Joel greet with a jovial “Kalispéra!” (“Good evening!”).
My new hiking friend, Chuck Bartlett, on an old donkey path we followed. This was the former “highway” between villages of the Peloponnese. Olive groves are seen below.
Jackie and Joel have carved out a comfortable and engaging expat life here, and I’ve felt privileged to share a few days of it. (Follow Jackie’s blog about their life and travels.)
On tomorrow to the isle of Rhodes for this wandering one’s last taste of Greek civilization (for this trip, anyway). On my own again, trying to remember how travel works (you get rusty!); savoring the good things, and trying to let headaches pass like a breeze off the sea.
Taggers spare no surface in Athens’ gritty Exarchia district, where a wag with his spray paint declared that “You are original as a tourist in an Airbnb in Exarchia!!” But besides hosting the National Archaeological Museum, the district abounds with second-hand bookstores, comic-book shops and cafes with character.
ATHENS IS ALL ABOUT ANTIQUITIES, and most tourists flock to the Acropolis Museum. It’s a good museum, full of artifacts from the city’s most famous archaeological site.
But Greece’s lesser known, less-crowded, somewhat off-the-beaten-track National Archaeological Museum lured me to the gritty and counterculturist Exarchia district, thanks to a tip from my brother, Doug, along with the author of a Moon guidebook I’ve been using.
I could write a lot about what I saw in my two hours at the museum, and it might sound quite academic and informative — and set you snoring.
Instead, I’ve put together this lively video snippet. I find that a travel outing is often a montage of memories, of quick impressions. Sort of like this:
Istanbul’s glitzy new airport is truly a crossroads of the world, and a monument to capitalism. In the background is the colorful video wall of the airport’s duty-free Louis Vuitton store.
SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO GET OFF YOUR ROCK. Really off.
I’m sure not in Kansas, or Center Island, or anywhere near it, anymore. And if I were wearing ruby slippers, I expect I’d get blisters from all the walking I’m doing.
Your jet-lagged correspondent feigning consciousness on a morning walk at the famed Hagia Sophia in old Istanbul.
For a few days, your Cantwell’s Reef scribe is veering away from the San Juans. I’m on my first big overseas adventure since COVID, and since losing Barbara. It’s a very different world.
I’m awakening this morning for the first time in Greece, and tapping out a few lines before I set off on a day of wandering Athens.
I flew out of Sea-Tac on Sunday on a beautifully appointed Turkish Airlines 787 — they call it the Dreamliner for good reason — and had a quick one-night layover in Istanbul.
Long a crossroads for the world, Istanbul now has Europe’s busiest airport, newly opened in 2019.
It is a sprawling, huge facility, a monument to capitalism, with shopping glitz to rival New York’s Times Square. It is the hub for the ambitious, world-circling Turkish Airlines. On my departure day yesterday, they were barely managing the chaos and crowds. Finding gates for departing flights was a slow and apparently challenging task, despite the overwhelming size of the facility. Many flights were delayed, including my Athens flight, which left more than an hour late.
My mantra for this trip is to take things in stride.
Istanbul Airport’s gate board, with alphabets of every ilk.
Jet-lag has been a challenge. On my arrival in Athens late yesterday afternoon, I kept falling asleep on my feet in the crowded train from the airport. I am awake and typing this at 6 a.m. the next morning because my circadian rhythms are still off by several beats, like the orchestra’s percussionist who keeps missing his cue with the cymbals.
With all those modern-day challenges, today I dive into antiquity, with a visit to Greece’s National Archaeological Museum. I’m saving the Acropolis for tomorrow, when I’ve gathered my wits (one can only hope).
Now, time for a hot shower and to venture out to find a good Greek coffee shop in the bohemian Exarchia district surrounding the museum. Wish me luck, I’m going in.
Cantwell's Reef 