Ivory flowers of Oceanspray brighten the June woods on Center Island in the San Juans.
HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE on this glorious island day with a perfect 72-degrees Fahrenheit, klieg-lit skies of royal blue and not a single pesky cloud between here and Hurricane Ridge. I hope you’re sharing such dreamy weather.
If the weather gods haven’t convinced you already, the meteorologists will tell you that summer officially began this afternoon at 1:50 p.m. PDT.
Mr. Fix-It. The deck progresses.
The past week on this remote little island nobody’s heard of has been a welcome and peaceful lull between the holiday crowds of Memorial Day and July Fourth, and a welcome diversion from the weird and weirder news of the world. (If you’re a praying person, pray for democracy.) It’s also been a time for me to relax into my summer chores. I’ve planted my deck garden, whacked the weeds on my rocky knoll and replaced more planks in my years-long deck-replacement project. (It’s a bit like painting the Golden Gate Bridge; once done at one end, I’ll start over at the other.)
The wildflowers that gauge the advance of our springtime have mostly come and gone. But June is the season for Oceanspray, the shrub bearing thousands of tiny ivory flowers that in combination give the plant its name, adding a dreamy, creamy sort of surf effect to our sea of evergreens and maples.
George and me at Kapalua Bay, Maui.
For me, the beautiful week on my island is a double dessert in this month’s feast of life. I just returned from a week on Maui with my travel buddy, George, who lives in Seattle. From a comfortable condo in Kihei, we had adventures in snorkeling, beachcombing, trekking ancient lava flows at wild La Perouse Bay, food-truck dining, and luxuriantly lolling around a palm-shaded swimming pool that featured its own cool little waterfall. Even got a tan. It’s good to have a new companion who enjoys travel and adventure as much as I do.
Meanwhile, Galley Cat enjoyed a week’s vacation hosted by Auntie Julie and dog Nigel in their comfortable home in the garden spot known as Brier. Galley and I honor them.
This season makes up a lot for those January days of whistling 50-mph winds and freezing pipes in the San Juans, let me just say. My best wishes to you for good companionship, memorable family fun, idyllic outdoor dining, silly yard games, lazy beach bumming, energetic boat rowing and more this fine summer.
Barbecue smoke wafts lusciously through a Schafer State Park picnic shelter during a recent celebration staged by park lovers.
FEELS LIKE I’VE BEEN off my island as much as on it lately. And so busy, feeling a little bit off my rocker.
Daughter Lillian and I are in the final throes of selling our dear old sailboat, Sogni d’Oro, and it’s kept me hustling with last-minute fixes and general spiffing up so I can feel as good as I can about the whole process. It’s a bittersweet occasion, giving up the Westsail 32, Hull No. 777, built in 1977 (good karma, right?). The boat was my family’s home for the better part of 30 years, enabled us to explore almost every nook (and most crannies) of the San Juan Islands, and took us on one of our biggest life adventures, a 1990s sailing trip to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez.
But it’s time for a new skipper to love her, and we’ve found a buyer with the right enthusiasm, energy and dreams — a close friend of Lillian’s, who over the past two months has become my friend, too.
Daughter Lillian makes Sogni d’Oro beautiful during a boatyard haulout last September. The boat’s name is the Italian version of “Sweet Dreams.”
Galley Cat and I spent a week early this month staying aboard the boat as I worked to resolve an electrical glitch in the engine room. The week reminded me of how at home I feel in marinas: Sipping the day’s first coffee in the sailboat’s teak-floored cockpit on a flat calm morning when the sun is just starting to glint off the other hulls. Watching a well-laden boat head northward on the first morning of a summer cruise. Ahh, we enjoyed many of those 7 a.m. departures.
More recently, I was on the mainland for a week of visiting with friends in Seattle and Olympia. Drinking good wine and eating delicious food during a sunset dinner on the deck of the lovely old Magnolia Bluff home of Carol Pucci and Tom Auciello (the “Puciellos,” we call them), all with an entertaining vista of passing ships and shuttling ferries. Two nights followed with Olympia friends Daniel and Jean Farber, where entertainment from the front window included an eyepopping view of Mount Rainier turning pink and purple with every sundown, and sailing dinghies scooting like water bugs across Budd Inlet.
My Olympia visit included two unique celebrations of Americana. Saturday, it was a gathering of Washington State Parks retirees, supporters and friends at Schafer State Park, a sweet little park on the Satsop River. The park hides out along a narrow and winding road between Montesano and Shelton in the most rural reaches of decidedly non-urban Mason County. This park rivals those previously-undiscovered-until-2021 Amazon Basin natives for being off the beaten path.
The Schafer gathering was sponsored by FOSLS (Friends of Schafer and Lake Sylvia), a group of local folks who successfully battled plans to close “their” parks during one of Olympia’s budget crises of recent decades. On a perfect summer day, this soiree featured free hot dogs and hamburgers fresh off the grill, along with groaningly well-laden potluck tables of toothsome salads (I love that one with broccoli, raisins and bacon) and desserts (from hunks of crimson watermelon to squares of sweet apfelkuchen).
Upcoming FOSLS events that might be worth a visit
Lake Sylvia Fall Festival
September 10
10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Schafer Park Salmon Bake
October 7
1 p.m.
Schafer Park Yule Log Celebration
December 3
1 p.m.
After a tour of the park’s astonishingly well-groomed new campground, we tapped toes to the music of the Grays Harbor Banjo Band, complete with a washtub bass, like they had detoured through Mayberry on their way from Hoquiam and signed up Ernest T. Bass. The band’s emcee possessed the self-effacing humor to tell banjo jokes. (My personal favorite, which I wish I’d stood up and shared: “A banjo player bemoaned the crime wave gripping his city. He told how he had parked on a city street and locked his car with his banjo on the back seat. When he came back to the car, a window was broken and someone had thrown in another banjo.”)
Topping the day, I won the big door prize: a state parks Discover Pass.
Back in Olympia on Sunday, Daniel sang in his synagogue’s choir during a street festival celebrating the 150th anniversary of organized Judaism in Washington State. Daniel’s place of worship, Temple Beth Hatfiloh, is the present-day offspring of the state’s first Jewish fellowship, established in 1873. Sunday, the temple was also marking the 50th birthday of their rabbi, and his 20th year of service in Olympia. This time, the hot dogs were kosher.
My friend Daniel Farber, right, pitches in with his temple’s choir. Oy, this number was easy to sing along with.
Back in Seattle, I spent another day working on the boat’s electrical problem. No joy; I ordered a new alternator. More satisfying was the next day, when Lillian and I scrubbed and polished Sogni d’Oro together. Almost ready for the hand-off day.
As much as getting away and visiting friends is good for me, it was with fondness and relief that I returned to the Nuthatch cabin yesterday. I reunited with Galley Cat, who had spent the week at the cabin with cat-sitters in the personages of niece and nephew Sarah and David and their two young boys. “They were fine, but I missed ya’, Pops!” Galley told me. Have I mentioned how she calls me “Pops”?
Likewise, I said. As I missed afternoons such as this, sitting in my writing hut with sun streaming in and a luscious light breeze cooling me through the open door as I peck away at my laptop and listen to Carole King, Bill Withers and the occasional Spotted Towhee. Galley sprawls in the sun on the front stoop. She doesn’t care who’s on the stereo.
Ahhh. It’s good to be home on my island. Back in the rocker, so to speak.
Cantwell's Reef 