Island winter – Cantwell's Reef

A Golden-Crowned Kinglet pecks for mites among the mud and gravel of a Center Island road.

THE ONLY OTHER LIVING BEINGS I saw today were Galley Cat and four Golden-Crowned Kinglets. Oh, and two squirming earthworms driven by heavy rains to the surface of my dirt road, much to the delight of the resident feline who found them almost as fun to play with as garter snakes.

Those were the only signs of sentient life on my corner of Center Island this January day. After a busy and well-visited holiday season, I was kind of OK with that.

Kinglets, regular winter visitors here, are tiny birds barely bigger than my thumb. Their nearly inaudible call, like the tinkling of a wind chime made of icicles, is an entrancing winter soundtrack when all else on my island is still and quiet.

A Kinglet shows off its distinctive head decor.

I spied today’s first Kinglet as I tramped in my duck boots across our mushy, wet airfield to the mail shack late this afternoon. Kinglets are ground feeders, and this one was hopping among the wet grass finding something of culinary interest.

They are pretty little things with grayish-yellow bodies and a distinctive hairdo that is sort of a combination of black and white skunk stripes centered on a bright yellow Mohawk.

I came across a few more as I tramped homeward through the woods to my place. Kinglets are so small — about the weight of two pennies — and their call so elusive that I halted with a start when I suddenly realized several were pecking at the path just in front of me. They must be finding mites of some kind, my Mad Birder neighbor once suggested.

In a Robert Frosty moment I paused stock still in the dark and deep woods as I listened to the birds’ tinkling, what you might imagine from a parade of magical fairies. The Kinglets’ brilliantly striped heads were the only clear marker of their hops among the shadowy forest duff. I was enchanted.

It remains the gloom of winter on this remote little island nobody’s heard of. I live alone with my dopey orange cat, but even on the quietest days I don’t lack for good company.

P.S. Friends, the date on this post can’t go without comment. If you’ve not already ruminated on the fifth anniversary of the most shameful day in our nation’s history, let former Labor Secretary Robert Reich remind you in this salient essay. Thanks for reading.

A gray squirrel pauses after raiding the Nuthatch’s bird feeder on a snowy February morning.

LAST NIGHT AS I WATCHED NETFLIX between frequent refueling of my cabin’s woodstove on a frozen February eve, outside the Nuthatch’s dark windows new snow came unbeknownst to me. It arrived secretly and silently, as if on little cat feet.

OK, apologies to Carl Sandburg. But I did get a poetic surprise when I peered out of the sliding door at bedtime and discovered the pristine new blanket of white seamlessly spread like a puffy down comforter across my deck.

FOG

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg

No flakes were falling then. They had come while I wasn’t looking, anointing my island with a fresh and lovely purity.

This is the peaceful time of a San Juan Islands winter. No raging winds, no worries of losing lights and firing up generators.

This morning I relished the view from my loft. Having trundled back to bed with a gripping Michael Connelly novel, fragrantly fresh-ground coffee, and toast satisfyingly smeared with avocado, I watched through my front wall of windows as sunshine first lit the tall firs’ white-frosted branches.

Ahhhh.

I have a certain license to be lazy, and it’s kind of nice. On a phone consult yesterday, my Seattle hematologist told me it could be six months before my hemoglobin levels return to normal after a bleeding ulcer sapped my energies at Christmas. It means I’m anemic. So I’m giving myself permission to take it kind of easy. To devote myself to eating and sleeping well. Gradually building up my exercise routine.

I’m dedicated to all that once again after a drastic diversion last week. My dear Aunt Jeanne McLean, my mother’s youngest sibling and the last survivor of that family’s five children, died at age 96. I made the pilgrimage to South Dakota for her funeral.

I debated whether I was strong enough to travel, but my family had always been close to my aunt and her family. As a teen I had invested paper-route money in a Greyhound ticket from Seattle to visit the Dakota relatives on my own. I wanted to go now. I needed to go.

My brother Doug, who would also attend the funeral, made it easy for me. His partner, Lori, whose career tasks included travel arrangements for a globe-trotting employer, suggested I hop a direct flight on Alaska Airlines from Seattle to Denver. Doug would drive from their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to meet me and we would have a brotherly 400-mile road trip from Denver to Rapid City in his new Outback, sharing hotel rooms along the way.

Your scribe with cousin Tami McLean Bishop of Rozet, Wyo.

Smiling weather gods gave us a week of sunshine, the funeral service was nicely done, and reconnecting with cousins from across the West was soul-nourishing.

I moved more slowly through airports than is my norm, but I managed fine. And my brother and I saw a whole lot of scenery, from the snow-frosted Colorado Rockies, to the wide, wide wilds of Wyoming, to South Dakota’s beautiful Black Hills.

At 80 mph on U.S. 85, my brother Doug and I traversed hundreds of miles of snow-frosted, wide-open Wyoming.

I returned to the Nuthatch last Saturday just ahead of the snow, and I’m happy to hunker down here again. I’ve returned to what amounts to a Center Island COVID epidemic, affecting at least eight of my neighbors, some 50 percent of our winter population. So I’m being more of a hermit than usual.

That’s OK, Galley Cat is keeping me company. I hope my fellow islanders feel better soon. I plan on staying warm. I plan on staying well. Wishing the same for you.