Paddling with friends and bringing back the seastars

Maple leaves are dropping as autumn arrives on the rocky knoll behind Nuthatch cabin on Center Island.

HAPPY AUTUMN AND JOYOUS BIRTHDAYWEEN, dear Reefers.

I’ve just returned from guiding my final Road Scholar outing of the season, a week of kayaking on perfect, sunny September days over calm, often-mirrorlike waters of the beautiful San Juans.

Not long after I returned to the Nuthatch last evening, rain poured down all night, happily reviving all the thirsty ferns and mosses, but I was barely done with breakfast when the sun broke through again this morning. Now I sit in Wee Nooke, my recently restained and spiffed-up cedar writing hut, basking in the warming sun shining in my windows as I munch a tasty sack lunch, feed kitty treats to the frequently visiting Galley Cat, and tap happily at my keyboard. Honestly, it’s kind of like Cantwell’s Camelot.

As for that greeting up top: The official time of the autumn equinox is 11:19 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Monday, September 22. Still some hours away, but what’s a few more fallen leaves among friends?

Birthdayween, you ask? That’s an invention of the delightful daughter, Lillian. Their birthday is next Saturday, September 27. Combining their birth month with their favorite holiday, Halloween, they long ago pronounced the entire months of September and October as the festive season of Birthdayween. It might explain why Halloween candy displays appear in stores in August; one must be ready to celebrate. Keep an eye peeled for Birthdayween greeting cards. I’m sure Hallmark will pick up on it soon.

Once again, Road Scholar has proven a good fit for me. More socialization is one of the aching needs of an old widower living with his cat on a remote island nobody’s heard of, and a week of intense togetherness with interesting (and interested) people from across the continent is like balm for my soul. Happily, these are typically well-educated folks not far from my age who are highly curious to learn about this beautiful archipelago where I live, and love to hear me tell about life on my little rock. I’m a storyteller in search of an audience. It’s a good symbiosis.

Gilda and Dom from California lead the way as Road Scholar paddlers depart Roche Harbor.

Every trip, I make new friends. This time it was Sue from a little island off the coast of Maine (a lot in common there); Nona, from Evanston, Illinois, where I went to grad school, who finished reading “Murdermobile” on her Kindle before our trip’s end; brave first-time paddler Lyn, from Wenatchee; Cheryl, a retired art teacher from Philly, and too many others to name here. All good folks. All new friends.

Together, we circumnavigated Burrows Island, near Anacortes; twice paddled out of Roche Harbor, including a peek at English Camp on Garrison Bay, and said hello to a crowd of basking harbor seals on rocks near Turn Island.

Sunflower seastars fill a tank at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs. Lyn Plunkett photo.

Among our land-based field trips was a fascinating tour of the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs, where researchers just announced a breakthrough in finding the key to the wasting disease that wiped out most of the West Coast’s seastar population. The cause: a bacterium similar to that which causes cholera, we learned from Jason Hodin, a senior research scientist at the labs. Understanding the cause opens the door to new strategies for prevention and management of the disease.

The loss of seastars has involved far more than the aesthetic loss of the orange and purple stars that my family enjoyed spying in marina shallows when we lived on our sailboat on Puget Sound, I learned. Seastars feed on sea urchins, which feed on kelp. With the loss of seastars, unchecked urchins have decimated West Coast kelp forests, which provide crucial habitat for countless marine species. Hodin calls kelp forests “the rain forests of the ocean.” Their loss has been an ecological disaster. Thanks in part to work going on in the San Juan Islands, maybe there’s a chance to reverse that.

Meanwhile, friends, enjoy this colorful new season, and kick up your heels for Birthdayween. I know I’m going to party.

Good company helps fill gap in remote island life

Our Road Scholar contingent by one of our tour boats at dock in Friday Harbor. Your loyal correspondent is the tall drink of water in the back row below and left of the first “S” in Salish Sea. Tour-goers came from as far away as New York and Florida. Kelley Balcomb-Bartok photo.

I’M JUST BACK FROM ROAD SCHOLAR trip Number One, and I think I’ve found my tribe.

This week-long outing was dubbed “The San Juan Islands by Land and Sea: Hidden Anchorages.” It was my first outing as a guide trainee for Road Scholar, the globe-trotting tour leader that is celebrating its 50th year as an education-oriented not-for-profit organization. Locally, it operates in conjunction with the Friday Harbor outpost of Mount Vernon-based Skagit Valley College.

With 30 travelers from across the United States, we skipped across the San Juans by charter boat for three days, plus two days on land exploring our base around Friday Harbor. Our at-sea days included a day trip to remote Sucia, my favorite of the archipelago and home now to my late wife Barbara’s memorial bench. Stops included the historical town of La Conner, where my neighbor the Mad Birder lives when he’s not on my little rock, and where Barbara was once town librarian. We transited three of my favorite scenic-keyhole water passages: Hole in the Wall on Swinomish Channel; the famed swirling waters of Deception Pass; and squeaky-narrow Pole Pass between Orcas and Crane islands. These were places my family and I had navigated again and again over the years on our own sailboat. Virtually everywhere this tour went, I had a story to share with our visitors. With a sizable contingent of retired teachers and librarians, they were eager listeners.

It was gratifying at trip’s end when one of our group kindly proclaimed, “You’re a great storyteller!”

Our tour vessel, Salish Express, transits Hole in the Wall on Swinomish Channel south of La Conner.

Road Scholar specializes in travel for people 50 and older, but the typical age is early 70s. Our group ranged from early 60s up to one participant who was a fit-as-a-fiddle 86. They came from as far away as Florida and New York, along with Midwest contingents from Minnesota, Kansas, Illinois, etc., plus Californians aplenty. Some were on their first Road Scholar trip. One had been on more than 50.

This group traveled under a lucky star. On our first day on the water, between Bellingham and Friday Harbor, we encountered a sizable group of transient killer whales feeding off the northern tip of Cypress Island. For more than a half hour our 100-foot vessel idled as we watched the whales breach, tail slap and generally cavort to the “oohs” and “ahhs” of our visitors, most of whom were first-timers in these islands. In all my years poking around the Salish Sea, this was one of my best orca sightings.

In a trademark red Road Scholar vest, your correspondent takes to the mike aboard a tour vessel. Cathy Holley photo.

The second day we meandered past Whale Rocks at the southern entry to Cattle Pass to get an eyeful of dozens of Steller sea lions, the largest of sea lions. This band included a handful of mammoth males, which can grow to 11 feet long and weigh almost 2,500 pounds. As we paused, one of the incredible hulks scooted to the top of his rocky islet and reared high in what was clearly an “I’m King of the World” pose atop Pride Rock. (Sea lions don’t know better than to mix their Hollywood metaphors.)

At Sucia, we got an eyeful of eagles, as bald eagles circled and swooped a half-mile into the sky above us at Shallow Bay. All in all, this was a wildlife-blessed journey.

Clearly, Road Scholar is a good fit for me. I needed more human interaction than I get on my little rock. This is a good way to fill that need. And I even get paid.

Meanwhile, I’m remembering lost loved ones this Memorial Day and sending warm thoughts to friends and family. I feel I’ve found new friends to help fill the gaps in my life. Best wishes to any of you seeking the same.

Sharing smiles where I find them

The Prince of Whales whale-watching boat zips past my lunchtime viewpoint on Upright Head, Lopez Island.

IT’S BEEN TOUGH keeping up with the blog in these troubled times. We all have plenty of worries as the Trump Regime does its best to bully the world, trash our constitution and cripple the economy. Almost every one of us has seen our life’s savings swirling down the toilet.

But I resolved to help support my community in the face of the onslaught, so I’m here to tell about the good things in my island life.

Tiny calypso orchids are blooming with gusto on Center Island this spring. This flower is about 3 inches high.

Spring weather has finally arrived and we have a bumper crop of calypso orchids, aka fairy slippers. Buttercups are in bloom and ferns are uncurling new fronds like the gentle beckoning of an octopus tentacle. When I tap away at the keyboard in Wee Nooke, the cedar writing hut on the rocky knoll behind my cabin, I might still crank up the heater at first, but by afternoon I’ve opened a window to admit soft and salty breezes.

My big news is that I’ve landed a gig with Road Scholar, the not-for-profit tour operator that offers educational trips catering to travelers 50 and older worldwide. My Friday Harbor friend Barbara Marrett, retired from a career as communications director for the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau, went to work with Road Scholar a year ago. She convinced me it would be a good fit for me, and kindly recommended me to the local leadership affiliated with Mount Vernon-based Skagit Valley College, which has a branch in Friday Harbor. I will be involved as a paid trainee with three of their week-long tours in my San Juan Islands starting in mid-May. Next year, I will likely be a group leader.

It’s a bright spot on my personal horizon. Living with just a fuzzy feline companion on my remote island, I need more human interaction. And some 20 years of exploring these islands with my family aboard our sailboat, writing about the San Juans as a travel journalist, and making a home on this little island nobody’s heard of seems to uniquely qualify me to help newcomers learn about the San Juans, too.

So far, the Road Scholar leadership has been tremendously accommodating and good to work with. When I told them I had been reserving the summer for overdue cabin projects that got a bit neglected last summer, they responded by assigning me to trips in May, September and October. Perfect! Itineraries will include boat trips to Sucia and other outer islands, a kayak tour and a three-island sampler.

I’ve already attended three training sessions in Friday Harbor, including a first-aid and CPR refresher course, a general leadership orientation, and training in how to safely drive their fleet of 11-passenger vans. That’s kept me busy in recent weeks traveling back and forth to Friday Harbor, a significant endeavor when I don’t yet have my restored 1957 cruiser, WeLike, commissioned for the season. (We’ve not had the weather for it until now.)

So I booked passage on the water taxi from Center Island to Hunter Bay Public Dock on Lopez Island ($76 round-trip), where I keep my good old pickup truck, Ranger Rick. I drove the pickup 25 minutes to the ferry terminal on the north end of Lopez and either parked it there and walked on the state ferry (for no charge to Friday Harbor) or drove aboard ($28 round-trip) when I wanted wheels at the other end. On one trip, I took advantage of the opportunity to drive Ranger Rick to the Friday Harbor car wash where I gave him a much-needed bath. There are no car washes on Lopez. He had gotten positively mossy.

These outings have made me thankful that I don’t often rely on Washington State Ferries, plagued by staffing shortages that commonly cause last-minute cancellations of scheduled runs. When one of my Friday Harbor boats was canceled and the next wasn’t for two hours, I “made lemonade” and took my sack lunch on a pleasant hike to a viewpoint in the San Juan County Land Bank’s Upright Head Preserve, adjacent to the ferry terminal. Couldn’t have been better if I planned it, I thought, as I watched whale-watching boats and big cabin cruisers plow through the water below the mossy bluff where I munched my tuna wrap.

Lumberjack Brian: A newly cleared building lot meant felled trees were available for firewood.

The arrival of spring weather already has me busy with outdoor projects around the cabin. When a nearby lot got cleared for construction of a new cabin the cut trees were available for firewood. Time to fire up my chainsaw and start replenishing my wood stack for next winter. (I had to watch a YouTube to figure out why the saw wouldn’t start after hanging in my shed for the winter, but soon had it roaring and spewing sawdust. When you live on a remote island, you learn to fix stuff yourself.)

My other adventure has been digging on hands and knees with a hand trowel to locate my septic drainfield so I can install capped, upright 4-inch PVC pipes that function as inspection ports, now required by the county if I ever wish to sell my place. One port is installed, one more to go. The joys of home ownership. Nothing that a clothespin to the nose can’t make more pleasant.

Amid all this, daughter Lillian visited to help me celebrate my 69th birthday and neighbors John “The Mad Birder” and Carol showed up with recently dug razor clams they were generously willing to fry up for friends. (Yum.) Lillian showed off her new skills as a patisserie baker by making me the world’s best sugar-free chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting. (Ditto yum.)

That’s the April report from Center Island, friends. Find joy where you can. Remember to support your friends, family and other good guys. We all need it now more than ever.