Keeping island wheels turning

Mr. Toad, my 29-year-old golf cart, sits on jackstands in Center Island’s community workshop. The new steering gear shows a silver gleam, with pesky tie rods below.

IT’S BEEN THE SEASON OF THE TOAD on Center Island. And boy am I glad to have it done with.

This isn’t a story about cute hoppy amphibians. This is about basic transportation and how to keep the wheels turning on my remote little island in the San Juans.

Mr. Toad is the name of my 29-year-old toad-green golf cart, named for the demon-at-the-wheel protagonist in author Kenneth Grahame’s classic “The Wind in the Willows.” Unless you want to walk, even when toting a month’s worth of groceries back from the mainland, electric golf carts are the primary means of getting around my island. Two reasons: (1) Our narrow gravel roads definitely aren’t suited to a giant RAM pickup truck, and (2) Forward-thinking community founders back in the 1960s or so chose to prohibit privately owned internal-combustion vehicles on our community roads. So most property owners have battery-powered golf carts. It makes for a quieter, more-peaceful island with fresher air.

A caveat or two: We do share three community-owned, gas-powered Ford Ranger pickups for times when you’re bringing a new sofa or a replacement refrigerator to the island. And with the world’s trend toward electric vehicles of every shape and size, our restriction on gas power has been broadened to include a size limit. “Small is beautiful” seems to be the watchword.

I bought Mr. Toad, a 1996, 36-volt E-Z-Go golf cart, from an island neighbor for $1,200 in the summer of 2020. Not content with average, I added a stained-cedar baggage platform with finned side panels and asked daughter Lillian to help gussy things up. She gathered swordferns and leaves of salal, Oregon grape, and maple, daubed them with paint and printed the cart with nature’s images.

Galley Cat visits the revitalized Mr. Toad.

Since then Mr. Toad has been a reliable helper for the most part. But as I’m learning every day, time marches on and every body needs upkeep. Including a motorized toad.

A few months back, that became clear when Mr. Toad got shy about turning left. If I drove sedately, all was fine. But the moment I emulated my golf cart’s reckless namesake and tried a quick left turn at anything like rambunctious speed, the steering wheel shuddered and clicked and Mr. Toad continued in a straight line. It could get exciting.

As with many challenges life throws at us, I learned to compensate. I rarely informed a friend hitching a ride of my conveyance’s guidance-system peculiarity. As long as I went slowly or circled the island clockwise, it was no problem. It went on the “got to fix this someday” list.

Before I had a chance at that, Mr. Toad threw me another challenge. On a day of endless and soaking rain in early April, I was returning from a long day’s outing to Friday Harbor. As dusk approached I was glad to be nearing home in Mr. Toad, peering through the rain-spattered plexiglas windshield that does not feature wipers. A half-mile from the cabin, I approached what we call Little Cardiac Hill (the full-size Cardiac Hill is on the far side of the island). Mr. Toad’s batteries had been showing signs of anemia lately (in sympathy with me, perhaps?). So, I switched on the voltmeter to see how my battery bank fared as I floored the accelerator and started up.

The voltage immediately sank like a skydiver with no chute. Toad got halfway up the hill and stalled out. Cursing blue-blazes hot enough to defrost the foggy windscreen, I let the cart roll back to the base of the hill to rest a minute before trying again.

The rain spattered in on me from the cart’s open sides. I didn’t want to sit for long. So I floored the pedal and again climbed a few feet up the hill. Pungent electrical smoke puffed from the battery compartment directly beneath me. If I kept trying I would literally be in a hot seat. This time I rolled backward into a neighbor’s front path, where Mr. Toad promptly got mired in mud.

I’d had a long day. I had groceries in plastic totes on the luggage carrier. I couldn’t walk home alone. I had to call a friend to come out in the incessant rain and give me a homeward lift .

So replacing Toad’s ailing batteries was the first order. The same friend who came out to rescue me in the rain suggested it was time to convert to lithium-battery power. The new style of battery was known to be powerful, fast to recharge, and long-lasting if well-monitored. And for Mr. Toad, one 63-pound sealed 36-volt battery (requiring no maintenance) would replace six 80-pound, 6-volt lead-acid batteries. Mr. Toad would have more power while hauling 420 fewer pounds of battery! Woo-hoo! Speed-demon time!

The clincher came when I looked on Amazon and found a suitable Chinese-made battery for $600 (pre-tariff), including a new charger. I’d pay double that to replace my lead-acid batteries.

But life in the islands is tricky. The new battery could be shipped at no cost, but not to my island. United Parcel Service, the shipper of choice for most Amazon goods, subcontracts Center Island deliveries to little San Juan Airlines. The small planes cannot carry anything classified as hazardous, which includes lithium batteries (as well as boat paint and a long list of other items). And I could find no nearby brick-and-mortar stores that sold similar batteries at a low price.

My creative solution: Ask a friend in Friday Harbor if I could have the battery shipped to her home. Shipments to the bigger islands of the San Juans arrive by truck on a state ferry.

I would be staying in my friend’s guest room three times in April for training sessions with Road Scholar. So when the battery arrived, I took my pickup truck on the ferry and brought the battery back to Lopez Island. On the final stretch to Center Island the big battery was strapped to a hand truck aboard the Island Express water taxi.

The lithium battery being installed in Mr. Toad: One battery replaced six.

Installing the new lithium battery meant modifying and rebuilding the battery platform under Mr. Toad’s seat, along with some new wiring and installation of a battery meter. That took a week of trial and error, considering that the few installation instructions were either in Chinese or barely intelligible English. (Yes, cheap goods come with tradeoffs.) In the end, I learned that my battery was Bluetooth-enabled and I could monitor its charge status using an app on my phone. Easy pie!

That accomplished, I gave myself a day off before moving Mr. Toad to the community workshop where I put him on stands and went to work replacing the steering gearbox. At $170, this was another Amazon acquisition, but this one came right to me. Here’s where I thanked the digital genies that provide YouTube instructional videos on how to do almost anything. A nice gentleman on the DIY Golfcart YouTube channel gave precise step-by-step instruction on how to replace the steering gear on my exact make, model and year of golf cart. I have some mechanical know-how, but I will just say this: Bless you, DIY Golfcart man.

The only catch: In his demonstration, all the nuts and bolts came off and went back in with ease. Not so in real life, on a cart like Mr. Toad that has never had anybody fiddle with some of those bolts. Not since Toad left the factory when Bill Clinton was president.

But I yanked and grunted, twisted and turned and managed to get the first round of old parts loose. When it came time to release the tie rods from the worn-out steering gear, I watched my video friend casually pop the rods loose with his little finger. Then I spent two unsuccessful hours with wrenches, hammers, WD-40 and a brief moment with a propane torch. I got the nuts off, but the tie-rod bolts wouldn’t budge from the steering bracket. Not for love, money or colorful language.

Gloom-ridden at the prospect of failure, I decided to call it a day and tackle it fresh in the morning. I went home and — why not? — Googled “how to get tie rods off a steering gear on a 1996 E-Z-Go golf cart.” The digital wizards chuckled merrily as they revealed Amazon’s listing for the Astro Pneumatic Ball Joint Separator, a specialized little tool made for precisely this purpose. Apparently I’m not the only mechanic to have rammed my head into this brick wall.

I hit the “order” button, pausing only briefly to grumble about the $28 price. Amazon informed me that this item was in a nearby warehouse and would arrive the following day. It was my turn to merrily chuckle. They didn’t know about my island and just how long it takes things to get here. One day? Ha!

But I could hope.

The next morning I was back at the workshop by 10. The caretaker who handles our mail stopped by with a box that had arrived from Amazon. It was a big box. My hopes momentarily soared, until I yanked the box open to find six rolls of Scott paper towels I had ordered days earlier.

For another 20 minutes I went back to poking and prodding at the reluctant bolts until the caretaker drove by again and handed me a small package from Amazon. It rattled as if it was something metallic. Could it be?

Sure enough, it was my ball-joint separator, which I have to say sounds vaguely like an instrument you’d find in an urologist’s office. It kind of looked like an alarming medical device, too. Metallic jaws flexed in the middle, driven tighter by a screw big enough to hold the fender on a giant RAM pickup truck.

It took a bit of hammering to get it into place, but once I’d figured it out a few turns of the screw head neatly popped the bolt out with a noise like a pickup fender falling off.

I won’t say it was all a cinch after that, but I followed my video friend’s instructions to the letter, sweated and cursed a bit more, and before 6 p.m. I was lowering Mr. Toad from the jackstands and sweeping out the workshop. The front wheels turned right and left on demand, behaving like a charm.

I loaded up my tools and headed home in triumph, zooming up Little Cardiac Hill.

Last night, I was still relishing two big jobs done well (with a little luck). Ready to head for bed a little after 10, I looked out the window at Mr. Toad, parked under the limbs of my 15-foot high sequoia tree. A yellow moon shone from high in the sky.

I wasn’t ready to sleep. I pulled on an insulated vest and my Elmer Fudd hat, stepped into the cool darkness and climbed into Mr. Toad’s driver seat. I turned the key, flicked on the headlight and zoomed up my back driveway for an invigorating 10-minute joy ride around the island.

As I’ve said before, take joy where you can find it. I turned left anytime I darned well felt like it.

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.

From my remote island, Monday is now ‘Call Congress’ day

You don’t need a plane ticket. If you have a phone or a computer, it’s easy to reach the U.S. Capitol.

ANYONE WHO WORKED REMOTELY during the pandemic knows you don’t need to be in the city to be part of what’s happening in the world. That applies equally to those of us who live on small islands nobody’s heard of, where it’s easy to feel isolated and powerless.

Connectivity is a good thing to keep in mind in these fraught times as vandals in the other Washington try to bulldoze our constitutional democracy. I have a phone on my island. I have email. While we may be far from the action, there’s nothing to stop islanders from putting in our two-cents’ worth in hopes of minimizing the harm to valued institutions.

The U.S. Capitol switchboard can be reached at 202-224-3121. The switchboard makes it a breeze to call your elected officials in Congress. If you don’t know who represents you, they’ll look it up and connect you.

We can also be as well-informed as the next guy. I have long subscribed to the online New York Times, and to the daily political reports of Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, one of the more astute observers and commentators on the scene today. Yesterday I got on the Substack app and subscribed to the postings of Robert Reich, Dan Rather and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D, Conn.).

Per the urging of Reich, a former labor secretary under President Clinton and currently a professor at UC Berkeley, this morning I phoned the U.S. Capitol switchboard, connected with my congressman’s office and contributed my ardent wish to purge Elon Musk from our government. If there’s a “nuclear option” Congress might employ that would blow this unelected fascist-loving billionaire out of the District of Columbia, now’s the time to push the button.

I also urged my congressman to find some way for his legislative body to flex its constitutional muscle and stop the illegal firings and shutdowns of agencies that Congress established through intricate and inclusive dances of legislation.

This morning I expected a tedious wait on the phone, listening to canned music, because of the high volume of calls. Amid Trump and Musk’s antics earlier this month, reports said the U.S. Senate phone system was receiving around 1,600 calls each minute, compared to the customary average of 40 per minute.

Much to my surprise, the phone call was quick and easy.

The phone number Reich provided in his post (202-224-3121) rang through immediately to an automated system asking me to name the member of congress I wanted to reach (or say “I’m not sure”). I was quickly put through to the office of Rep. Rick Larsen, of Washington State’s Second District. Within three rings, a live human answered my call. I was a little shocked.

The aide I spoke with listened to my concern and engaged in a brief conversation, basically agreeing wholeheartedly and obviously stating a bit of Larsen’s (and the Democratic caucus’s) talking points. But he wasn’t an automaton, and promised to pass along my concerns to the congressman.

On my second call, a live Capitol switchboard operator (perhaps the nicest sounding woman I’ve ever spoken to on the phone) directed my call to U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office. There, I got voicemail and left a recorded message. Not as satisfying, but even a voicemail should add to the tally of calls. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray also used voicemail, but at least she (unlike Maria Cantwell) recorded her own voicemail message.

I’ve decided that Monday is my new weekly “Call Congress” day. An effective use of my time and energy? Will it make any difference? Who knows. At least I’m helping to build the numbers of calls from outraged voters. More than one news story has cited that statistic in recent weeks.

What’s more, the calls were easy, they sure can’t hurt, and this is something I can do. It’s something all of us can do.

Yours in the struggle, from a small island somewhere in the San Juans.

Building a resistant community, one island friend at a time

A February squall brings surf in to Orcas Island’s Crescent Beach. A squall of political resistance might come to these islands as well.

IN THESE CHAOTIC POLITICAL TIMES, change is to be expected. It looks like the change for me on my little island means, ironically, no change. For now.

Following November’s presidential election, I announced that I would relocate to Olympia to become an activist in support of the United States Constitution in a power-center of Blue America.

That was then. Now, with the red-hatted D.C. wrecking crew carelessly trashing our federal government with shocking speed, and with their brazen talk about gutting Social Security, Medicare and other social programs upon which retirees like me depend, I can’t see my way to relocate.

I’m not inclined to move to low-rent Arkansas or Mississippi. And as long as I stay in the high-rent Pacific Northwest of my birth, any move would mean more costs. If the economy remained as robust as it was under Joe Biden, I might have made that work. But with the new guard on a bender to destroy the world’s faith in the United States, our promises and our dollar, I suspect they will trigger the second Great Depression before all is said and done. I’m putting my head down, sheltering in place and hoping to ride it out on my remote island.

I may be down, but I’m not out. My new mantra: Support my local community — my island and all of the San Juans — like never before. We all must stick together to weather the political storm of our lifetime.

I’ve started preaching that gospel. On a just-completed five-day visit with friends in Friday Harbor and on Orcas Island, I chatted it up with people I met along the way. Simply talking to strangers and newly minted friends about the national tensions we face together and the need to unite in our own towns formed an immediate bond. Such bonds can help build stronger communities, with citizens who can stand up to this attack on the traditional American values of equality, democracy and the rule of law. I’m sure of it.

As federal support vanishes, supporting local arts can be an important part of community bonding. I had a happy taste of that in Friday Harbor when I accompanied my chum Barbara Marrett and two of her friends to a performance of the play “Art” at San Juan Community Theatre. The San Juan Islands Museum of Art, the production’s co-sponsor, hosted an after-theater reception with wine and platters of fresh Westcott Bay oysters.

San Juan Island artist Aimee Dieterle’s acrylic painting of Mount Rainier is part of the current exhibition, concluding this weekend, at San Juan Islands Museum of Art.

The director and actors from the play were at the reception to answer questions, and those in attendance got a free viewing of the museum’s current exhibition of the works of more than 100 San Juan Islands artists. One of my favorites was a wall-mounted sculpture of an octopus, its suckers represented by the caps of real acorns, with outer skin constructed of thousands of tiny seed leaflets from Douglas fir cones. The unique media lent an unmatchable texture and natural color to an artwork representative of the rich vein of local talent.

At the art museum, as I made new island friends, I talked up the need for community unity. I felt like a socio-political Johnny Appleseed, sowing resistance one person at a time. The next day, about 75 islanders gathered outside the Friday Harbor Courthouse to join in the national “Not My Presidents Day” protest. I’d have joined in, but didn’t hear about it in time. Maybe we’ll all find each other eventually!

My new whim didn’t end there. On Orcas Island, my friend Tom Willard and I scrapped our Tuesday plans to lunch at a fancy restaurant in Eastsound. In the spirit of community-boosting, we instead went to the Orcas Island Community Foundation’s weekly free lunch, cooked and served by volunteers in the basement of Orcas Island Community Church.

The recently renovated and reopened Olga Store, a project of dedicated Orcas Island residents, is an example of what a strong community can accomplish.

Just revived after a COVID-related hiatus, the community lunch on Orcas has long been promoted as open to all, not just for senior citizens or the needy. A Facebook promo describes it as “an opportunity to build connections and nurture the feeling of community and belonging.” Perfect for these times. We ate hearty split-pea soup, salad and the best whole-grain crusty bread I’ve chewed in a long time. At a shared table, we made a lovely new friend, Sadie, who agreed that we all need to stick together. Simply lunching with other islanders of every ilk in a church hall felt like an act of resistance and unity. A year ago I’d have gone to that fancy restaurant. Maybe I can volunteer to cook and serve next time.

When the time comes for a Twenty-Million-Person March on Washington, D.C., I’ll get my plane ticket. Until then, I’m taking small steps, working on local connections.

Life, death, COVID and recovery among the wonders of winter

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.

My Aunt Jeanne McLean was buried at Black Hills National Cemetery, S.D., in the same plot occupied since 2006 by her late husband, Calvin McLean, a Korean War vet.

Relieved to be home on my rock after Brian’s Dreadful December

AT LEAST IT DIDN’T HAPPEN on my remote little island nobody’s heard of. No helicopter evacs were involved, thank God.

That’s the best thing I can say about my recent up-close-and-personal encounter with America’s emergency health-care system.

Your faithful scribe and cat, happy to be back at the Nuthatch.

Loyal readers, if you were wondering about my long absence from the Reef, it was because I was busy living Brian’s Dreadful December.

When last we shared screen time, I was in the midst of a six-week housesitting stint in the lovely bayview home of friends Daniel and Jean in Olympia. In fact, after the presidential election I had resolved to make Olympia my next home.

That housesitting assignment was to conclude December 15. My plan was to return to my island for a week before hotfooting it back down the highway to spend Christmas with Portland friends Ken and Kate. Their daughter had orchestrated a plan for Christmas Eve dinner at Portland’s posh Ritz-Carlton hotel, followed by a couple of nights for family and friends at her Oregon Coast holiday home.

For me, all those holiday plans began to unravel on Friday the 13th (just like a bad movie).

After three days of serious digestive dysfunction in Olympia, I was on the phone at 7 in the morning to an old college friend — Kathy Pruitt, to whom I’m forever indebted — begging a ride to the nearest Emergency Room.

I had managed to pick up a nasty intestinal bug that over the course of the week had dehydrated me such that my blood pressure registered just 60/30 when they cuffed me in the St. Peter Hospital E.R. Never had I seen so many medical professionals swoop around me so quickly with armloads of I.V. bags, tubes and needles.

I was in the hospital four days before I.V. hydration, a liquid diet and a course of serious antibiotics set me right.

The lost time canceled my December return to Center Island. After a couple days of convalescence with my now-returned Olympia hosts, I packed up Galley Cat and drove straight to my Portland friends’ floating home on the Portland shore of the Columbia River.

On a back channel of the Columbia in Portland, my friends’ floating home is moored behind their sailboat, outlined in lights.

We had a nice few days. Toured a collection of Paul McCartney’s photos at Portland’s art museum. Shopped a holiday bazaar. Had a lovely little solstice party.

Then my digestion went south again. At 7 in the morning on Christmas Eve, I asked my hosts to drive me to another E.R.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the bug I’d suffered had a common side-effect: ulcers of the bowel. Admitted to a hospital in Vancouver, Washington, I got transfusions of five units of blood, then underwent emergency surgery on Christmas Day to stop the bleeding from a duodenal ulcer. Four hours on the table with only a local anesthetic while a surgeon probed my arteries. Ack.

Five more days in a hospital. My holidays were a culinary blur of green Jell-O and steaming yellow broth rumored to have once met a chicken. A far (and gastronomically anguished) cry from the Ritz.

Throughout the ordeal, my chums in Olympia and Portland showed me what true friendship means. The day after Christmas, daughter Lillian flew out from her new home of Philadelphia. Three weeks of her unsparing help and support was a godsend as I convalesced, first at my friends’ homes down south and finally at the Seattle-area home of my ever-generous sister-in-law Julie. I struggled to overcome stamina-robbing anemia and low blood-counts. In a quick trip to Center Island last weekend Lillian helped me transport my belongings and a carload of groceries homeward before I had to return to Seattle for final medical exams.

Tuesday night I drove Lillian to catch a Philly-bound plane. Wednesday, already halfway into January, I finally returned on my own to Nuthatch Cabin for some long-anticipated nesting and recovery time with Galley Cat.

With temperatures stuck in the 40s here, last summer’s fuchsias are still blooming on my deck. Blazes in the wood stove cheer the cabin nightly. Awakening mornings in my loft, I look out to watch each day unveil itself, whether wrapped in mist or warmed by the sun’s first lemony fingers caressing the treetops.

I’m getting back into my fitness routine, including a daily half-hour on the stationary bike. So far, so good. (Thursday I included two naps in my day’s itinerary. So I’m not overdoing.)

I’m working to boost my hemoglobin count, including another in a lineup of steak dinners tonight. Red meat isn’t my dietary norm but it helps bolster my blood, along with iron supplements.

For now, Galley Cat and I are both just glad to be home on our island. She’s back hunting the mice that live under the woodshed. I’ve returned to pleasant afternoons tapping the keyboard in my writing hut. Day by day, I’m encountering the rock’s few winter neighbors and chatting them up after my long absence. Sunny skies and coppery sunsets are a healing balm.

For now, I want to pull up the drawbridge and never leave. I hope your January offers comforts as dear.

I’m thinking Oly for my future

Autumn color helps frame the Capitol dome in Olympia. At 287 feet high, it is the tallest self-supporting masonry dome in the United States. Dome trivia: Washington, D.C.’s U.S. Capitol dome, made of cast iron, is just one foot taller.

THIS DECISION WAS MADE FOR ME, by millions of unbelievably misguided American voters.

Until November 6, I was uncertain where my next move would be after more than six years of living full-time on delightful Center Island.

The morning the presidential election result became evident, I knew Olympia would be my new address. It was as clear to me as the town’s famous artesian water.

While I hate to leave the lovely San Juan Islands and my friends there, I was already considering this. I need more social interaction and community involvement than I get on an island with only 15 winter residents. Even the “big town” of Friday Harbor feels too removed from the action now.

I’m currently housesitting for friends for six weeks at their comfortable Olympia home overlooking Budd Inlet and downtown. It’s not my first time here, and I’ve always liked the town. I got my B.A. here at The Evergreen State College in the 1970s, and I still have college friends in town. My late parents chose this as a retirement community, so I visited many times in the 1990s. My daughter was part of Evergreen’s Class of 2013, so I was here for dorm move-ins, parental visits, and graduation.

This election was a sea change. As soon as I knew the outcome, I was certain I wanted to be in this little center of power in Blue America.

Here I can work for the American resistance. For now, Washington state, and its capital, remain something of a refuge. While the national results were not what I chose, our state “had a very good election,” Pramila Jayapal, my congresswoman when I lived in Seattle, told an online national gathering of almost 150,000 resisters a couple days after the election. “If anything, the state went bluer.”

Visitors play on the Rainbow Rails, a decorated stretch of abandoned railroad trestle on Olympia’s Budd Inlet. When someone repainted the rail ties black and white during last June’s Pride Month in what some labeled a hate crime against the LGBTQ community, volunteers immediately stepped forth with paint brushes to renew the rainbow colors.

Every statewide office went to a Democrat on November 5, and the Dems’ control of both houses of the Legislature grew by a few seats. The new governor-elect, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, was a national leader in filing largely successful legal challenges to the blunders of the first Trump Administration.

That galvanized my thinking. For me, Olympia can be a bastion of kinder, smarter public life. I will support the resistance by supporting this community, doing what I can to make it stronger.

If I live in Olympia, I can testify before the Legislature when good laws are being debated. It’s familiar ground: As a college student, I interned with a public television news program covering a legislative session. Living in Oly, I can add my boots on the ground to the causes of publicly minded nonprofits. When the red hats come to town, I will join the defenders of democracy waving signs on the Capitol steps. I can be a noisy old fart working for the good guys.

The choice seems simple now. This is a time and place, like 1930s Europe, when nobody gets the luxury of sitting innocently on the sidelines. My physical move will take some time — a year, or even two. But our free nation is under siege. For the moment the bozos who want us under their thumb have the edge.

It might be a battle for the rest of my life. It’s time to get started.

The social butterfly of autumn

Your loyal correspondent tops out on a 700-foot+ dune in Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. North America’s tallest dunes build from windblown grains of sand at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, seen in the background. Photo by Douglas Cantwell.

ISLAND LIFE CAN BE LONELY AT TIMES, you’ve heard me say. With Center Island’s year-round population hovering around 20, the social life has its limitations.

But, boy, loneliness hasn’t been an issue for me this fall.

So far, my autumn has been a dizzying — and delightful — whirlwind of visits by family and old friends, along with travel to visit family and friends in locales ranging from Orcas Island to Moscow, Idaho, to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Hilary, Christi and me on Center Island. I love visitors, and I’ve had a few good visits lately.

It began with my Labor Day outing to Sucia Island with daughter Lillian, closely followed by a visit here by Hilary Hilscher and Christi Norman, two longtime friends. I first got to know them through their association with Audubon Washington, for which they drove all over the state together in a sort of “Thelma and Louise Go Birding” partnership about 20 years ago to create the Great Washington State Birding Trail. Laid out in a set of seven detailed and beautifully illustrated maps, the Birding Trail comprises the state’s best bird-watching sites. As outdoors editor for The Seattle Times, I piggybacked on their great work with a regular newsfeature called “Birders’ Top Spots,” spotlighting sites from their maps. (Six of the seven maps, published between 2002 and 2011, are still available to order online here for $4.95 apiece).

Hilary and Christi, who both live with their husbands in the greater Puget Sound area, have been regular readers of “Cantwell’s Reef” and decided they wanted to see my little rock. We ate lots of good food, drank good wine, and enjoyed renewing our friendships.

The same can be said of a visit shortly thereafter by Ken and Kate Brinkley of Portland. I first met Ken on an impromptu shared sailing afternoon out of Orcas Island’s Rosario resort in the 1980s. He became a lifelong friend. Ditto with Kate when she married him.

Ken, Kate and yours truly among Center Island madronas.

Not long after the Brinkleys departed in late September I left my island for a marathon day’s drive across the state to visit a new friend, R.J. (for Robert James). He lives in Moscow, Idaho, just across the state line from Washington State University, where he manages a library. I guess I’m partial to librarians. I met him online, which is a good way to make friends when you live on a small island nobody’s heard of. We’ve become chums.

Sandwiched in there somewhere was a visit with another friend discovered online, Tom, on Orcas Island. My boat, WeLike, got me there. It’s nice to find local buddies, too.

Doing the Idaho road trip in one day each direction was exhausting but also a treat. It had been a while since I’d seen so much of my home state, from the San Juans to Seattle, over the Cascades, to a bit of Coulee Country before navigating the rolling and roiling Palouse. I renewed acquaintance with phenomenal State Route 26, which slices straight as a razor across much of its 114 miles of Eastern Washington as it blazes a path toward Pullman.

Farmers had just completed the wheat harvest. The bright yellow-white stubble glowed in the sunshine as I crossed into Whitman County, where welcome signs boast that it grows more wheat than any other county in America. (In 2015, growers there harvested nearly 30.5 million bushels, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.)

Less than a week after my return to Center Island I again caught the Island Express water taxi. I was bound for the Seattle airport, where I hopped an Alaska 737 for Albuquerque, via a layover in Phoenix (where I was glad I didn’t need to step outside into the 108-degree October heat). New Mexico was more clement, with daytime highs in the 70s and low 80s.

My brother Doug met me and drove us the hour to Santa Fe and the lovely adobe home he shares with partner Lori, whom I enjoyed meeting for the first time.

My brother Doug Cantwell at our Great Sand Dunes National Park campsite in Colorado, about three hours from his Santa Fe home.

The next day I acclimated with a pleasant hike with Doug on the outskirts of his town at 1.3 miles of elevation (blowing a raspberry at your Mile-High City claim, Denver). A day later we aimed Doug’s shiny new Outback at southern Colorado for a three-night campout at stunning Great Sand Dunes National Park. I’d never heard of the place, which became a national park at the end of the Clinton administration, but I won’t soon forget it. North America’s highest dunes pile up against the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, dominated by 13,297-foot Mount Herard, of which we had a front-row view from our campsite that Doug had hand-picked from a prior stay.

Autumn colors are spectacular among Colorado’s aspens, willows and cottonwoods.

Piñon Flats Campground was named for the scrubby pines that this year were groaning with cones bearing the famed pine nuts that are so good on salads and in sauces. For two geezers whose combined ages approach 140, there was one advantage to having to rise from our cozy sleeping bags in what’s aptly called the “wee hours”: With a combination of dry air, little light pollution, and high elevation, Great Sand Dunes is certified as an International Dark Sky Park. “Wow” and “whoa” dominated our midnight vocabulary as we encountered Orion, the Pleiades, and a bright, night-piercing Jupiter, high in the eastern sky. Doug spotted more than one shooting star.

Though I puffed from the 8,800-foot elevation (I live just above sea level, remember), Doug and I made it to the top of a 700-foot+ dune, often slipping and sliding in the sand that dominant winds bring from afar. During my visit, warm sunshine brought out the startling gold of the area’s aspens and willows. An afternoon thunderstorm swirled towering black clouds around the mountain tops. And, after a half-day drive to the top of 10,856-foot Wolf Creek Pass on the Continental Divide, we experienced a wind-blown snow shower.

This past Saturday, before Doug and Lori dropped me at Albuquerque International Sunport (rivaling in airport-marketing silliness the “Sky Harbor” of Phoenix), we witnessed the final hour of a mass ascension, part of the final 2024 weekend of Albuquerque’s famed Balloon Fiesta. The colorful event draws some 600 hot-air balloons each year.

Frank Boy, a sort of young Frankenstein balloon, came from Brazil for Albuquerque’s 2024 Balloon Fiesta.

I’m back at the Nuthatch today, catching my breath. Over the next two weeks I plan to buckle down and write more get-out-the-vote letters for Vote Forward, which expects to contact 10 million voters before November 5. Ten days ago I mailed 140 letters to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. Doug will be busy in coming days, too, having committed to 200 letters. There’s still time if you want to join us with your pen.

All the socializing and travel has been great, truly. But sometimes I love my quiet island. A good place to write.

Influencing the future from my little island in the San Juans

THIS CAME IN MY EMAIL and they asked me to post it. Not something I usually do in this venue, but it’s absolutely not a year to be neutral.

If you want to take action that might help get out the vote in crucial swing states, please join me in writing letters for Vote Forward, which aims to mobilize potential voters in communities that have historically been marginalized in the political process—such as people of color, women, and young voters.

Without naming a candidate or party, such letters encourage voters who likely support democracy and the U.S. Constitution to turn out in strategic states and districts. It’s a proven tool that can make a significant difference in close races. I like it because it’s something I can do from my kitchen table on my remote island far from the action. (We have daily mail pickup, even here.) At the Democratic convention last month, Michelle Obama urged us all to “Do something!” This is something I can do, whereas putting a sign in my yard doesn’t have much impact.

Your choice of political party doesn’t really matter this year, it’s a choice of candidates and their clear impact on our nation’s future. Just yesterday, more than 100 Republican former national security and foreign policy officials endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a joint letter, calling Donald Trump “unfit to serve” another term in the White House. Even former vice president Dick Cheney, neocon poster boy for the G.W. Bush administration, has endorsed Harris.

From a little island nobody’s heard of, that’s my nickel’s worth of politics. Autumn is election season! Don’t sit it out this year.

Rites of island autumn include loading the larder

Soft autumnal colors stretch to the Cascade foothills as the Padilla Bay Shore Trail winds along Little Indian Slough in the Skagit Valley.

I KIND OF LOVE MY ROUTINES on this little outpost surrounded by saltwater. Maybe it says something about me. I’m an island dweeb.

For example, the Big Monthly Shopping Trip to the Mainland is one of my highlights. And if I don’t follow a set routine I don’t get everything I like to have in my fridge and pantry.

So I keep a magnetized pad on my fridge and add to my shopping list every time I notice I’m low on something. If I don’t immediately add it to the list, chances are I’ll dork out at the grocery and forget about it. And next week I don’t get my nightly piña colada yogurt treat. No cinnamon to sprinkle on a ripe pear. No peanut butter in which to dip my lunchtime celery. (Horrors!)

That might all sound trivial to the landlubbers among you — those who don’t have to cross a saltwater strait to find a Fred Meyer or Costco. But it’s a serious concern when one lives on an island with no stores, where even a 7-Eleven would be luxury. (Access to a rotisserie hot dog, just down the block, rain or shine, any day of the year? You better know how lucky you are.)

Yesterday was my big monthly shopping day, and as my shopping days go, it was Extra Big. The larder was low. The pantry cupboards were no longer sagging under the weight of extra Paul Newman pasta sauce, flagons of avocado oil, or lashings of Chunk Light Tuna. Autumn is here, it’s time to stock up!

I grabbed the shopping list on my way out the door to catch the 9 a.m. Island Express water taxi to Anacortes. I would have until 5 p.m. before catching the last boat back. Plenty of time to shop, right?

As is my custom, I used the morning boat ride to divvy up the shopping among my three customary shopping venues: Costco, Freddy’s and Trader Joe’s.

With TJ’s in the plan, that meant a drive to Bellingham, Joe’s nearest locale. Even better, as shopping days went: extra adventure in one of my favorite towns. Brew pubs! Waterfront trails! Food trucks!

Also on the to-do list was a stop at a post office for more stamps for my Vote Forward letter-writing efforts, along with a haircut. (I really don’t do well cutting it myself I conceded after that time with the big bald patch on one side.)

I roughly calculated the time needed for all these stops, and realized I might be running for that 5 o’clock boat. So I prioritized. First stop: the cheap hair salon in Mount Vernon. The hair was getting seriously bush-like.

After a half hour of rapid snipping, oddly chopping and “how high is your part usually?” questions, the obviously inexperienced young woman behind the scissors set me loose considerably more light-headed, if slightly off-kilter up top.

On the chance that Bellingham was too ambitious, I decided to do the bulk of my shopping in nearby Burlington. First stop: Costco.

Though the prices and quality are good, Costco infuriates me with (A) the quantity you must purchase (Nuthatch Cabin doesn’t have storage for 30 rolls of T.P.!), and (B) the lack of basic supermarket organizational signage indicating which aisle holds canned corn and which is home to raisins.

So I had no choice but to race up and down every food aisle in search of the dozen items on my list. When driving one of those Costco carts that could double as a minivan for a family of four, speed is dangerous. I nearly took out several track-suited homemakers on a field trip from Sedro-Woolley and had a near miss with an octogenarian couple deep in debate over whether to get the regular prunes or pop for the organic.

But I had Bellingham on my mind. Dassn’t tarry.

After spending $191 at Costco, I lucked into a parking space within sight of Fred Meyer’s front door. I grabbed a large cart and tackled the longest part of my shopping list. I bought every carton of piña colada yogurt in their dairy case. Picked out enough shiny red apples to bake a crumble and slice for lunches for weeks. Piled the cart high. Filled seven bags at checkout. The tab: $174.

Back at the car, I laboriously packed my purchases into plastic totes and insulated cold-bags, then jumped in, steered toward Interstate 5, and put the pedal down for B-Town.

As I sped northward at 74 mph, my mind caught up with my accelerator foot. I let up on the gas a bit. Did I really need a Trader Joe’s stop? I might miss the extra bag of dry roasted but unsalted almonds. Or the frozen French green beans. But I had already bought almost $400 worth of groceries. Did I really need more?

I could probably make it to Bellingham and back, but I’d be racing. No time for a brew pub, or anywhere else. And I hate being late for my water taxi.

So I hit the signal and pulled into the exit for Bow Hill Road. I turned left and headed for the charming little Skagit Valley communities of Bow and Edison. A scenic route across the Samish Flats would lead me back toward Anacortes. At a leisurely pace.

Happy serendipity: One of the few structures composing the tiny burg of Bow was a tiny U.S. Post Office. I pulled in to the lot and interrupted the lone clerk who was vacuuming his itsy-bitsy lobby, seemingly surprised to get a visitor. I purchased a pane of fall-color stamps, which will help me encourage voters in Pennsylvania and North Carolina to go to the polls this election.

Along my pleasant drive across the valley, I stopped at a self-serve farmstand in Edison for a pint of fresh blueberries. I craned my head to try to count the number of fisher-folk wading in the Samish River, which must be having a big coho run. I stopped and hiked a mile on the Padilla Bay Shore Trail, from which I enjoyed expansive views of the Cascade foothills beneath multi-toned layers of soft September cloud. A lone heron was the only fisher here.

For me, this “Plan B” was so much better than racing about like a chicken with its head cut off, as my farm-raised mother used to say.

I paused at Seafarers Memorial Park in Anacortes for a few minutes of in-car shut-eye, then got my latest COVID vaccination and flu shot at the Safeway pharmacy, and made it to my boat with time to spare.

Home again, home again. Larder loaded. Sitting pretty, with autumn arriving.