Haunting memories can be sweet

Daughter Lillian peeks from the gable of the award-winning haunted house as partner
Lux waves in ghostly fashion and your loyal correspondent poses as a nerdly ghost hunter. Sue Burton photo.

I’M HAPPILY BACK on my little island after enjoying a mainland highlight of my year: the family Halloween party.

After relishing the southbound drive across the autumnal Skagit Valley, enjoying views of crimson-leaved blueberry bushes and the season’s first snow geese, I piggybacked two nights at daughter Lillian’s new digs in Seattle’s Roosevelt district with an overnight at the delightful Magnolia Bluff brick bungalow that is home to former Seattle Times travel-writing colleague Carol Pucci and her husband, Tom Auciello. Collectively, they are popularly known as the Pucciellos.

Skagit Valley blueberry bushes wear their fall crimson as October clouds hug the Cascade foothills.

The Halloween party was last Saturday at the home of my sister-in-law Margaret and her husband, Tom, in Shoreline. It’s been an annual event for almost 50 years, almost half of which have been at Margaret’s home. There’s a trophy awarded for best costume.

Lillian brainstormed our costume effort this year. Lil went as a haunted house. Lil’s partner Lux was a scary ghost (Charlie Brown bedsheet with holes, but with an added “bloodstain”). And I was Todd, chief investigator for Acme Paranormal Investigations LLC.

Lillian’s haunted house was a three-dimensional work of art, created in the media of delivery-box cardboard and tempera paint. It featured boarded-up windows (one of them with simulated broken glass) and a hovering ghost that lit up when she flipped a switch.

I wore plaid suspenders with matching bowtie and carried various ghost-detecting tools, including a hand-operated eggbeater with glittery ribbons that swirled with the beater blades. (The effect often causes nervous ghosts to appear when they don’t otherwise intend to; this is a well-known technique. Honest.)

We won the trophy. Or, more accurately, Lillian won the trophy for their creativity and willingness to wear the costume even as they ate dinner, laboriously transporting forkfuls of enchilada to their mouth despite the constrictions of the gable that wrapped their head.

Competition was stiff, including the two “forensics investigators” who left numbered evidence markers all over the house; the sister-in-law, her daughter and partner who all came dressed as the dad of the family, who has come to the party for years without wearing a costume; our hosts’ grandson who piloted a child-size submersible research vessel created on a 3-D printer by his Boeing-mechanic father; and many more.

Seen from Magnolia Bluff: A sailboat exits Elliott Bay as distinctive clouds frame Puget Sound.

Monday night I accompanied my Magnolia friends Carol and Tom, along with another former Seattle Times colleague, Holly, on a memorable walk along the edge of Magnolia Bluff. A purse-seining fishing vessel circled in the water below us and a sailboat scudded out of Elliott Bay as dramatic autumn clouds ranging from cottony white to gunmetal gray framed the panorama of Puget Sound. We dined at a cozy Thai restaurant in Magnolia Village before returning to my friends’ home to lounge in front of the blazing fireplace and debate the state of the world.

Tuesday I shopped for a month’s worth of groceries, packed them in bulging plastic totes and caught a 3 p.m. water taxi back to my hermitage.

Whew. Winter’s on its way. The pantry is full. Time to catch my breath. Happy Halloween, friends.

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.

In island life’s to-and-fro, sail beyond the routine

Seen from my favorite lunch stop: Skippers from the Anacortes Radio Control Sailors club line a dock during a recent regatta.

STRICT ROUTINES ARE PART OF MY ISLAND LIFE. Getting on and off my remote rock can require planning days or weeks ahead, including advance bookings on the mainland, elaborate shopping lists and careful attention to weather forecasts and water-taxi schedules.

Oversleep, miss a water-taxi pickup and I might have to reschedule a long-planned medical appointment. Get mired in Everett traffic on the way home and I could miss the day’s last boat and be looking for a hotel room. And if winter winds are too harsh, the boats might not be running at all.

Yes, routines and attention to detail add a little stress to the pleasures of my island life.

But I’ve built little joys into my routines, too. Since forays to the mainland often put me on the move around noontime, I usually pack a lunch. A turkey wrap slathered with mustard and relish, along with a baggie of sliced vegetables and apple, and maybe one of my homemade oatmeal-craisin-chocolate chip cookies, tends to be my standard. Once I’ve picked up my “mainland car” at Skyline Marina in Anacortes, I’ll make a quick stop for a good coffee-to-go, then find a front-row parking slot at my favorite lunch-munching spot, Seafarers’ Memorial Park on the Anacortes waterfront.

A fishing boat chugs toward the entry to Cap Sante Marina in Anacortes, as seen from Seafarers’ Memorial Park. Mount Baker and the North Cascades loom in the east.

The park includes a monument listing the town’s lost seafarers and fishing crews. Anacortes has a long history as a base for Alaska-bound fishing boats, and its sobering “lost at sea” list includes 127 names, starting with Harry Dunn in 1913. The most recent loss listed: 2020.

On a point overlooking Cap Sante Marina, a poignant bronze statue of a woman holds aloft a lantern as she looks out to sea, her other hand comforting a child who hugs his mother’s windblown dress.

From my parked car I look past the nearby oil refineries — every wonder has its warts — to a view of wooded islets, the snow-frosted Cascades, and a parade of working boats and pleasure craft coming and going from the marina’s narrow entrance.

That, and one of my favorite sights, the seemingly frequent regattas of the Anacortes Radio Control Sailors club, which sails in a protected saltwater lagoon fronting the park.

Model sailboats raced at Anacortes are about 3 feet long with masts reaching 5 feet. Realistic details extend to the bulb keel typical of full-size racing sloops.

The sleek model boats that race here are typically about 3 feet long with 5-foot masts. Competing in laps around buoys as their dockbound “skippers” guide them with handheld radio units that can control rudders and sails, they resemble boats that my daughter, Lillian, and I once rented and sailed on a pond in New York’s Central Park.

Other boredom-breaking parts of my routine might include driving an off-highway route across the Skagit Valley to view whatever crops are in season and flowers in bloom. (Daffodils should start to show color in the month ahead; tulips in April.) This time of year often includes fields full of migratory flocks of Snow Geese and Trumpeter Swans. If I need a special grocery item, I’ll detour to downtown Mount Vernon’s Skagit Valley Food Co-op, among the best hometown natural-foods markets in the Northwest. A summertime stop might be Pleasant Ridge Farm‘s well-stocked self-serve stand, including a Crayola-colorful cut-your-own zinnia patch, or Fir Island’s Snow Goose Produce, where you can get a pot of authentic Skagit Valley tulips or what they advertise as “immodest” ice cream cones (they’re huge). Be patient for your colossal cone, however; closed now, they reopen for the season March 1.

Just a few ways that I break up my travel routine. Even the most hectic days can be spiced with a little joy.

Daffodils brighten the Skagit Valley floor as seen from the Best Road in March 2023.

Winning the Mildred, and other highlights of the season

Halloween brought a respite from storms, as Mount Baker towered over Skagit Valley blueberry fields ablush with autumn color.

GETTING OFF OF THE ROCK means even more to me these days when it includes an actual social event, with real people who are all vaccinated and not wearing masks.

Well, there were a few masks at the social event of which I speak, but not the kind you’re thinking.

Halloween was a treat last Sunday, as it always should be, and moreso this year because it brought the almost-post-COVID return of the annual Burns Family Halloween Party, a highlight of the social year for me and my late wife’s family since, oh, probably the late 1970s. The pandemic caused its cancellation in 2020.

Mary and her monster. Note the clay heart in Lillian’s hand, and the jumper cables hanging from my pocket.

Since its inception, it has been a highly competitive costume party, with a trophy awarded. The legend is that my sister-in-law Kathleen went to Goodwill decades ago and acquired an old bowling trophy that had been awarded to a woman named Mildred. Kathleen replaced the bowling figure with a little waxen witch on a broomstick. Thus was born the Mildred Award for Best Costume, which has been passed around among champions of the sartorially macabre for lo these many years.

Barbara and I took the competition seriously, and over the years came up with thematic costumes that paired together. I was Ichabod Crane and she was the Headless Horseman. I was Edgar Allan Poe, she was the Raven. To mark the 50th anniversary of the first American ascent of Mount Everest, I was an ice-ax wielding Jim Whittaker and Barbara was a crazed-looking, prayer-flag-bedecked yeti. (Thanks to friend Suzy Burton, who has compiled this digital album of costumes from the party over the decades.)

It was tough this year without Barbara. But she was sweetly memorialized in the elaborately decorated Day of the Dead altar that my sister-in-law Margaret always creates as a comforting adjunct to the Halloween celebration. And daughter Lillian stepped up with a brilliant costume pairing idea: She went as “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley, circa 1818, and I was Shelley’s monstrous, galumphing literary creation.

In keeping with the spooky holiday, Mary Shelley fit right in. Not only did she create one of history’s iconic creatures of every kid’s bad dreams, she was certifiably odd in her own way. After her husband, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned at a young age in a boating accident, she is said to have carried his preserved heart with her wherever she went. So Lillian molded an authentic-looking human ticker from modeling clay and carried it around at the party.

Like the Addams Family, we were creepy. We were kooky. We were altogether ooky. We won the Mildred.

Halloween weekend offered a welcome sunny and calm break from the gales and rainstorms that have beset us of late. It was but a respite, however. As I write this in Nuthatch cabin, the towering firs and maples outside my wall of windows sway alarmingly in high winds. The lowering sun, just emerging from rainclouds, flickers through the teetering trees like a blinding locomotive headlight of cold, pastel yellow. Cast in stark shadow, waving branches bearing autumn’s last leaves dance enchantingly across my cabin wall.

It’s November in the Northwest. I enjoy clement weather, but when I think on it, to live without seasons would be, well, monstrous.

A daughter’s birthday with Eggs Benedict, herons and beer

A Great Blue Heron wades through grasses along the Padilla Bay Shore Trail in the Skagit Valley.

ONE OF MY ISLAND HOME’S GREAT ASSETS isn’t in the San Juans at all. It’s the nearby Skagit Valley, which one crosses to get here. It’s a beautiful agricultural valley bisected by one of the West’s great rivers and edged by snowy mountains. Its saltwater sloughs, scenic bays and verdant farming fields attract migratory geese and swans, along with countless Great Blue Herons and soaring raptors that make the valley home.

With a day off from work to celebrate, daughter Lillian chose to meet me there Monday to mark her 30th birthday.

We started the day with deliciously vulgar breakfasts at our favorite La Conner cafe, the Calico Cupboard, perched on the edge of Swinomish Channel. Lillian’s platter of Eggs Benedict swam with smoked salmon circling a giant island of hash browns made from Skagit potatoes. My Morning Glory Omelette’s three eggs were a happy vessel for crisp bacon, avocado, tomato, baby spinach, and cheddar cheese, topped by sour cream and green onion. Lil eventually had to cry “uncle” to that Greenland-sized mass of taters, but I was a proud member of the Clean Plate Club.

After our late breakfast, we toddled (or, maybe, waddled) in and out of La Conner’s shops, easy targets for merchants of kitchen gadgets (she really needed that cheese slicer) and the latest books appealing to 30-year-old readers of fantasy fiction. We enjoyed poking our noses into the new nautically-themed boutique that now occupies what was the one-room town library where Barbara was the sole librarian in the early 1980s.

After a pleasant wander along the town’s delightful new (in the past decade) waterfront walkway looking across to a tribal park’s pavilions fashioned to resemble woven-cedar hats, we motored northward and parked the car for a breakfast-burning 2-mile hike on the Padilla Bay Shore Trail. Beneath a blustery autumn sky split between patches of gingham blue and darkly scudding clouds, we watched wading herons hunt for their own brunch along the muddy banks of meandering sloughs.

Back in the car, we followed Bay View-Edison Road to its terminus: the village of Edison (est. 1869, pop. 147), which holds up bravely under a massive overdose of charm.

I’m not sure what it is that makes the place so appealing. Maybe that there are only about five businesses that manage to keep their doors open, and you’d better be prepared to pay cash because credit cards are too newfangled. Or that “downtown” is only about three-quarters of a block. Now with a decidedly Rural Bohemian vibe, it has the air of being stuck interminably in the 1920s (a decade when its high school produced famed journalist Edward R. Murrow). Probably key to its commercial survival today is that it is world headquarters to Breadfarm, which might be my favorite bakery on the planet (and I’m not the only loyalist).

After Lil bought a black-olive ciabatta loaf to take home, we reviewed the “fun things to do” list I’d compiled for the day (travel editor, remember? it’s what I do). We looked at our watches, noted that the day was marching on and decided we didn’t feel like rushing up Chuckanut Drive (which doesn’t deserve to be rushed) to a Bellingham pub I liked (Aslan Brewing, which seemed appropriate because Lillian and I have been reading “The Chronicles of Narnia” to each other).

As we hesitated, we noticed a sign pointing to the end of Edison’s main drag. It included the words “brewery” and “pizza.” Perfect! A bird in the hand.

The Birthday Girl with a loaf from Breadfarm, the planet’s best bakery.

Indeed, looking out over lazy Edison Slough, I could spy yet another heron from our cozy window table at Terramar Brewing, where Lillian and I sipped some tasty brews 20 minutes later. Lil (her Guinness-devoted mother’s daughter, for sure) had a pint of Red-Eye Porter “with notes of fresh-ground coffee and bittersweet chocolate,” while I quaffed a glass of Old Number Six, described as a Blonde Steam Beer with a rounded malt profile.

Those generous breakfasts were still with us, so instead of pizza we snacked on a starter portion of roasted Shishito peppers, spiced with anchovy and garlic. Boo wah! (Burp.)

To end the day, we headed for a picnic table edging Cap Sante Marina in Anacortes where we would celebrate with massive chocolate cupcakes I had baked and a Thermos of hot tea. But as soon as we stepped out of the car a cool breeze reminded us with whirling gusto that it was almost friggin’ October.

So we parked with a view of the boats and gobbled cupcakes in the car. As far as I can remember, these might be the first cupcakes I’ve ever baked, so I had no idea how much batter to spoon into each cupcake paper. And my Barbara, who didn’t believe in doing things in a small way, kept only an oversized cupcake pan in the cupboard. So not only were they big cupcakes, they had overflowed the tin. They were Cake-zillas.

But topped with chocolate icing and maraschino cherries, they were pretty tasty.

Hard to believe she’s already 30. My daughter is a wonderful young woman. She gets most of the credit for that. But Barbara and I did good.

Living (and baking) off the fat of the land

The “before” picture: Raspberries from Hayton Farms on Fir Island, the fertile island nestled between the North and South forks of the Skagit River where it flows into the Salish Sea.

SURPRISINGLY, LIVING OFF THE FAT OF THE LAND, as George and Lennie aspired to in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” isn’t too hard on my small island in the summer. Having the fertile Skagit Valley as a neighbor doesn’t hurt.

Returning from a visit with friends in Portland and Olympia earlier this week, I stopped at two favorite purveyors of such “fat”: the Hayton Farms berry stand on Fir Island, where freshly picked organic berries of just about any variety are offered from June to August, and the Pleasant Ridge Farm stand, a short distance north of the North Fork of the Skagit River.

The “after” picture: Raspberry-Apple Crumble, destined for a family barbecue in Seattle.

I picked up a four-pack of fresh raspberries at Hayton Farms and a couple of summer squash and some kale at Pleasant Ridge, a self-serve farmstand that Barbara and I patronized for years. Besides offering bins of some of Skagit’s best sweet corn it has the added charming feature of a field of you-cut zinnias (50 cents a stem) behind the barn. Somehow I got into being a fanatical zinnia grower when I was about 10, and I’m always cheered by these simple, vividly colored blooms ranging from lemon yellow to rich claret.

The squash I supplemented with a pretty orange pepper from my neighbor Monique, proprietor of the Under Sail Produce Stand on Center Island. (The name derives from the old Hobie sail she and husband Chris have rigged up as a shelter for the stand.) Together the summer vegetables went into a tray bake I contributed to a Wednesday dinner with neighbors Carol and John “The Mad Birder” Farnsworth. It nicely complemented the Mad Birder’s salmon cakes and Carol’s pasta dish.

The raspberries are also for sharing. An hour ago I pulled a raspberry-apple crumble out of the oven, my intended contribution to a family barbecue tomorrow in Seattle. Back on the water taxi for me and Galley Cat in the morning.

The dessert is my second outing at baking berry crumbles, a simple treat that my brother Tom liked to create while he was visiting. Barbara was always the Nuthatch’s baker and head chef. I was glad for Tom’s inspiration.

So, the Nuthatch is perhaps a bit like George and Lennie’s dream of a little place where they could live “off the fatta the lan” and maybe keep rabbits (Lennie’s idea). But I don’t need rabbits. Galley Cat, who ducks in and out of my writing hut for another kitty treat every five minutes, even as I write this, keeps me busy enough. Bless her fuzzy little heart.