Whoever takes six years between posts?

Real Spring is late this year. April 15 and snow flurries greeted me as I went out to milk and check my girls. A welcome harbinger is the blue heron in the shallow water of mid-tide on the ‘front’ beach, but she is not reliable. Last year we didn’t even see her until July, which, we figured, was after her nesting. We will have our own birds this summer...for as long as we can keep delectable blue egg laying hens alive in the eagle, osprey, owl, mink capitol of the island. I am belling one of the two adult goats to see if the gentle noise on the wind deters the predators. Cassie will wear a Swiss bronze bell that should let me know where my girls have wandered to find the not yet existent new growth to forage. This August marks the end of our ninth year on the island. For the last two ‘spring’ seasons I have been lettering the transoms and cove striping of wooden boats, mostly sailboats, one notable lobster boat. This job, more than anything I have done here identifies me as a true islander, not born here, of course, but established as really here. The Yacht Yard is the best place I have ever worked outside of home.

Things Have Changed

I noticed it weeks ago when the birds, jumping at their harbinger responsibilities, started actually singing early in the morning. It was too soon. We were to have two more rather serious winter storms that mounted into heaps and heaps of snow after the cardinal sat in the top of the pine singing vernal solos at the top of his voice. Some of that snow needed to melt and the sun needed to move in the sky before I was ready to acknowledge the Change. A week of mud helped. If there was ever a season that I am tempted to want to rush through it is mud season. It is inescapable. It is so pervasive that it covers your car, your dogs, your children, your house, the road, every building you visit, your coat, your boots, and your shoes if you are brainless enough to wear them as outer gear. There are few places to hike. The snow is still too deep in the woods and the dirt roads are so muddy that you have to watch your feet all of the time instead of the sky and the beauty around you. The beaches are one of the only open places in mud season. The wind off of the water is still cold and there are still ice shelves in places but the beaches make for pleasant walking and mud-free dogs. Thinking about the work of Springtime is always daunting in the abstract. It is good that something changes inside of us when the weather changes. There is some natural inclination to start moving things outside and picking up the winter debris. Not because you have to, it is early yet, but because it draws you, seduces you, perhaps, into initiating great outdoor projects like "The Garden" and "The Yard", "A Few Shrubs" and "Trees". So, here goes. I haven't written much over the winter but I can guarantee there will less during the Spring. I will be outside.

Winter is for Thinking

This is #2 in the "Can you describe what it is like to live on an Island" series.
We live in a place where one can think. I know I might be the posterperson for adult ADHD but I was finding it harder and harder to carve out space in my life for uninterrupted thought before we came to the Island. From the point of view of someone who recharges batteries by turning things over in my head, this was difficult. Don't jump to the conclusion that life is not truly busy here. We have kids and dogs and work, house and yard and exercise and responsibilities that take up lots of time. But there is space to think, here. We used to drive an average of four hours a day when we lived on the mainland. Some days here, we don't use the car at all. One tank of gas lasts us two weeks, maybe more. That drive time is ours to use now, for thinking, or walking, or working, or reading. This is a restoration...like getting back something lost. And when we do drive, thirty miles an hour is sufficient. No harrying traffic. No white-knuckle, multi-lane Interstate merges to raise the blood-pressure and force all of the thoughts out of your head. The only distraction besides the overwhelming beauty and unbelievable color in the scenery is the need to be sure to wave at any traffic that might come from the other direction because it is someone you know and are glad to see.
Thinking time is wonderful. So refreshing to contemplate something new, sort out something troubling or disconcerting, make a mental list of things to research when you are able, formulate questions for your own subconscious to turn over...pray. Nothing organizational, really...that's more like what I do with my work time. It's the free brain stuff that is so good. Ideas that won't come to the surface until the noise and distraction and talking stop are allowed to bubble up with creativity in the atmosphere here. Not really a lot in the environment to force your attention away from your thoughts, no advertising, blinking neon, billboards, signs, or street and traffic lights. Some of my adult kids have withdrawal symptoms when they visit. For anyone that is comfortable in their own head, life on an island is extraordinary.

The First

When we moved to Islesboro in August of 2009 we were entertained by the islanders' general opinion that this is the 'real world'. We were mainlanders for a lifetime and convinced, as most mainlanders are, that this was far from the real world...at least three and a half miles over the bay, if not much more to what we knew of civilization. Now that we are on our second calendar year and have found ourselves in the community, we are of some of the same persuasion. One year is hardly enough in Maine to claim much, but one year has taught us many things about island life and ourselves. When the winter population is less than four hundred, when the ferry only runs seven times a day, when the two stores on the island close at 5:30 and 6:00PM, life is different. Our kids can ride their bikes, safely. Uninterrupted family life begins when the kids come home from school. Anything you don't have, you don't need. Ama*zon Pri*me becomes a serious good deal. You can and will borrow a cup of something or other from your neighbor. You know everyone that drives by in their car and everyone waves because they know you. Moreover, everyone knows your kids. That basically means that everyone acknowledges each other. If some child slips by on their bike without a helmet, a neighbor will remind them. If the kids leave the light on in the back seat of the car, someone will call. If you need help, there is an island of community. That's the biggest and the most significant difference. Anyone can understand those words but few in the old 'real world' can identify with the experience. The obvious stuff...the natural beauty, the breathtaking colors of the sky, the water, and the coastline, even the rugged, downed evergreen tangles that are typical of the hikes around the island constantly confront our consciousness with what we call, "more than." So much that you just can't take it all in. So much, day after day, that it fills your sense of life. But not even this powerful beauty is as startlingly impressive as the sustained underlying decision on the part of most of the people that you live around to be real community. To matter. To allow you to matter. Trips to the mainland for groceries or new boots are fast because of the ferry but they are also accompanied by the strangest pull to get back to the island, like the band that keeps you is stretched and uncomfortable.