Living Together

Three days of sunshine over Memorial Day weekend–how many of those do you get in a lifetime in Washington State?  Tom and I took off mid-day Saturday to Harstine Island where we have an acre on a hillside overlooking Case Inlet in the South Puget Sound.  Our property on the island is surrounded by treed lots, dense with native vegetation, that are essentially ignored by their absent owners, leaving us to feel like our boundaries are as far as we can see and then some.  To the north of us, a ravine plunges a hundred feet.  Skyscraping old growth cedars and Douglas Firs bolt the steep green slopes in place lest they slip with the eroding drip, drip, drip of water draining the crown of the island.  Blue herons, red-headed woodpeckers, and a whole chorus of palm-sized songbirds ornament the oozing, verdant space where no one will ever be able to build a cabin let alone develop a cul-de-sac of cloned two-story boxes.  Tom and I smile with satisfaction at our good fortune.  Someone else owns the ravine, but we benefit from its untouchable nature.  When we are at the Island, we often experience the memory of place–the essence of the Puget Sound ecosystem before it was sliced and diced and bulldozed about so individuals like us could have our piece.  But events of this past sunny weekend challenged our sense of having a personal paradise.

The reality check began with our arrival Saturday afternoon when the usual quiet of the island–a quiet so thorough that I can often hear the tide lap the beach a quarter mile away–was assaulted by a neighbor across the road who decided this was a perfect weekend for yard work.  The roar of two-stroke engines dominated the rest of the afternoon as he successively trimmed his patio-sized lawn with a riding mower, razed the remaining fringe with a gas-powered weedeater, and blenderized the branches of a downed cedar in his handy-dandy chipper.  When the industrious weekender started a bonfire a couple hours later to tidy up from the tree dissection, I might have found it a relief, since it’s hard to feed a fire and run–uh, what’s left?  Oh!–a blower at the same time.  But relief it was not,  since by late afternoon, the air had become still, evidenced by the parade of sail boats on the inlet that were dropping canvasses and powering up in order to make it to Olympia for dinner.  As our neighbor’s fire grew, the wood smoke rose slowly, spread widely, and then nestled itself over our property for a long, lazy visit.  Between the noise and the smoke-choked air, I was as mad as pestered bee.  My plan for my island time this weekend was to perch on the edge of my property in a camp chair and be distracted from my book by the sun reflecting gold off the rippled dark blue skin of the sound.  All should be quiet and fresh, I ranted to Tom.  Smart man that he is, he readily empathized with my irritation but gently pointed out that if we ever go ahead and build our cabin, we’ll be making months of noise ourselves.  We’ll most certainly impact someone else’s idyll, he made clear.  About then Ruby began barking at a squirrel, which invited a cacophony of comment from a half dozen far-flung dogs who were likewise keeping their owners company on a holiday weekend on the island.

Sunday morning, cool and hazy, hinting that the sun would come later, greeted us sans human sounds.  Ahhhh…in such quiet my shoulders dropped, my heart rate slowed, I smiled.  A pair of woodpeckers swooped to one of our cedar trees from a grove across the road.  Even they were quiet in their knock-knocking on the cedar bark, silently sucking up little bugs to share back at the nest.  I settled into my camp chair early with a pair of binoculars around my neck and spent the morning bobbling my head between my book and the binoculars.  Sail boats, kayaks, and fishing craft criss crossed my view.  By late morning I saw that the tide had receded, and this day it was low, low, limbo low.  I hollered at Tom to leash the dogs.  “Let’s go to the beach!” I cried.  A few minutes later, the four of us were at the Community Beach, eager to walk the half mile or so to the point.  Ruby and Maggie whined softly and pulled at their leashes knowing that further down the beach Tom and I would sit them down, unclasp their leashes, and say, “Okay!” to signal their temporary freedom.  The canine destruction crew would then tear up and down the beach, climb trees, climb cliffs, leap from heights to bound to the water for a taste of the salty stuff and a rinse.  While the Community Beach is only about 500 feet of waterfront, including a boat launch, the area abuts an undeveloped point of land that continues from community area another half mile to the north.  The owner of the land has always been a community-minded guy, too, giving the people of the island express permission to walk the shore and hike the woods.  Again, what wasn’t ours–the stretch of beach to the point–has seemed to be for the seven years we’ve owned our property.  Another reality check was on the way.

As we meandered down the beach, Tom and I noticed a couple men in the distance standing near the point.  A number of people walking the beach wasn’t unusual, but we didn’t let the dogs off leash when folks were around.  One of the men headed toward us.  About that time, Tom and I noticed someone had stuck “No Trespassing” signs along the high mark of the beach.  “Well, Mark said we could walk here,” I said, “maybe it’s to discourage boaters from landing,” I reasoned.  Before Tom could add his thoughts, the man from the point was upon us.

“I”m going to have to ask you to leave.  This is private property,” said the man, who I quickly recognized as an island  property owner who had been fighting with a number of his neighbors for years.

“Mark has given us permission to walk here,” I asserted.

“Mark doesn’t own this anymore, I do, and I don’t want anyone on my property,” he rejoined.

“But what harm would we do?  We’ve been walking to the point for years!  What’s the problem?”

“People take goeduck and oysters and…well, I don’t want the community beach people on my land.  When I tried to build my house, you all were against me.  No one stood up for me.  People vandalized my trailer.  So no one can be on my beach.  I spent millions for this land, so it’s mine,” he said in a voice alternately aggressive and hurt.

Tom and I talked with the man for about ten more minutes, trying to reason with him that we weren’t the enemy, but it didn’t matter.  In the course of the conversation he as much as admitted that he and a partner had bought the point just to spite the people of the area.  Since his neighbors had thwarted his plans he’d take something from them.  No more beach walk for anyone.  Tom and I marveled at what lengths people will go to punish others.  This guy had claimed he was nearly bankrupted by the legal costs of trying to build his house; so how was he able to buy 100 acres or so of prime waterfront land?  What did it matter, Tom and I agreed, with the sale of the property, we had lost our point.

The weekend has changed my relationship to the island.  I have felt, for seven years, like it was mine: the quiet, the air, the view, the expansiveness.  But a couple days of others living loudly and visibly beside me, residents exercising their rights, has brought me to earth.  My enjoyment of the island is powerfully dependent on how others are enjoying the island.  It is one piece of land, with one air supply; what I do on my property will affect my neighbors.  One person’s weekend of yard work interferes with another’s peace.  What’s true for the island is true for the planet, of course.  North Korea tests nuclear bombs to spite a world of nations who shake their collective finger and say, “No you will not!”  I can do what I want on my property is the argument used by resentful island residents and megalomaniacal leaders of rogue nations.  Yet we all live in one boat. 

When Tom and I got back home Sunday night, we set about watering our vegetable garden.  The warm days had prompted an explosion of green shoots:  beans, spinach, beets, potatoes, and squash had all thrown off their blankets and were stretching toward the sun.  I dropped my frowns and sighs from the island in exchange for the delight of a new-born garden.  About then, the teen-age neighbor boy started up his new dirt bike–think jet engine attached to two wheels–and began cutting up and down the hill behind our garden fence.  The bike was so loud I couldn’t stay in the garden.  Dejectedly, I wondered how we, as a world of neighbors, were ever going to tackle global climate change; I wasn’t even sure how to explain to the boy that his new toy was torturing me. 

Monday afternoon found me again in the garden when I noticed a helmet clad boy roll out his bike.  I might have thrown myself down in the dirt to cry dramatically but was saved by a holler from the boy’s father.  “Susan, is Karl’s bike bothering you?  It’s really loud.  We don’t want to chase you out of your garden.  What can we do?”  With that, Karl, his dad and I discussed the options and came to some agreement that would give us both much of what we wanted.  Most of all, the conversation gave me hope that with a little thoughtfulness and sensitivity to others besides one’s self we can find a way to agreement, to peace in the shared space where we live together.

What to Read

Long before the internet came around to deliver an unlimited supply of nonsense, I was a print junkie.  If you could read it, I probably would.  Cereal boxes, certainly, but weeks old newspapers, dilapidated copies of almost any magazine, small print on warning labels–but it’s been a few years since I could manage that–it didn’t much matter what, if some kind of printed material was within reach, I’d reach for it.  That behavior proved useful.  I’m blessed with a one-pass memory, whereby a single skim of some article on, say, the nutrition benefits of insects in our food supply, and I could hold forth on that subject longer than my companions could hope for.  In other words, the combination of lots of ambient print and my ability to absorb it has kept me a popular conversationalist.  But the fire-hose flow of the electronic world has confounded that.  I now find myself challenged to know what to read, since within reach is my laptop, and it represents a volume of information so vast that I can’t find a metaphor to do it justice.  Let’s suffice it to say there’s a lot.  My well-worn and mindless habit of leaning across the breakfast table to a pile of print and reading whatever luck would have me grasp, while I contentedly munched my Grape-Nuts, is challenged by having to choose what to read online.  Having to choose eliminates the grab-bag benefits of pulling something from the pile.  I must now have a reason to read something, and that is forcing me to think about what I want to read. 

Last fall, as I discovered myself doing more and more of my reading online–the elections, you know–I began to discover where to go to read all manner of stuff.  On many a morning, I’d do a general news check-up with CNN.com, then go to Politico.com for news and opinion on the elections, read much of the “Cheat Sheet” at thedailybeast.com, and then compare what it offered to Salon.com.  I’d skim the Tacoma News Tribune online, to see if a sex offender had recently been released into my zip code, and finally, I might linger over Newsweek.com or Washington Post.com for some cogent analysis of an international issue or recent study of what favorite food will now kill me.  Before long, the winter set in and I would curl up in a chair in the oppressive gray light for hours, soaking up dark news and the electromagnetic field of my laptop.  By late spring, I knew my Seasonal Affective Disorder was compounded by electronic information overload.  Me, the rapacious reader was full up, and my news diet was worse than carbs.  With the new start of spring, I decided to slim down my online reading.  While my past print habits were about random reading, my new online reading habit needed to be about purpose.  So, I purposed to read from only a few sites and to choose only those articles that had something to offer me–news I needed to know, information that could benefit my life, entertainment that was at least somewhat edifying.  (Under these new guidelines, for example, I wouldn’t know that Miss California’s pageant organizer treated her to implant surgery.  But I had ten minutes to kill at the hair salon, and that informative article was in a People magazine.  I still reserve the right to read all print.)

I began my new approach a couple weeks ago.  What I’ve discovered in that time is that, according to my purposes, there’s not much to read on the internet.  As far as news I need to know, well, most of what’s listed on CNN each day offers me little of use.  Sure, I’ll be careful not to go to a dark street corner with $3000.00 in cash when buying a car from Craig’s List, but I’m pretty sure I’d have seen the folly in that before I read the news story.  And when the lead story at The Daily Beast is Megan McCain’s “I believe in sex” comment from the Stephen Colbert Show, I find myself feeling affirmed for spending the previous night with the dogs and a novel instead of the T.V.  This morning I surfed Salon.com, the News Tribune, and CNN, and found nearly nothing worth two minutes of reading, save one more article about whether Adam Lambert is gay.  (I’ll admit I was fudging my own rules, but I thought maybe he’d finally answer, and that would be entertaining, albeit edifying is up for debate.)  To be fair, I listen to NPR news every day, which fulfills my “news I need to know” purpose, and I’ve even begun to turn off the radio when some news story feels like a drubbing instead of an invitation to act.  But still, I love to read, and I want to read stuff that stimulates my thinking, adds to my knowledge, and bores my family.  I like knowing random bits of stuff that I bumped into by happenstance rather than sought out.  Given the choice, I won’t click on to an article about Miss California–it’s just too humiliating; I feel like a voyeur.  But if she is thrust at me from the pages of the only thing to read at the salon, well I can now dish with my sisters without feeling dirty.  I miss print.

Recently, to amuse myself during a long trip, I bought a copy of Vanity Fair magazine.  I loved it.  I’ve read most of the articles–fascinating.  Think Seth Rogen in a body leotard.  I’m going to subscribe.  I know I could read it online, at least the best articles are usually online.  But as long as the presses are still running, I want to support journalism, and that means pile my table with the pure and the dreck alike, sit down with my cereal and coffee, catch up with news on the box, and then reach into the mess for some unexpected plum.  Now excuse me while I find out why Seth Rogen is wearing that leotard.

To Go or Not to Go

Thirty years ago this June, I graduated from high school.  THIRTY years.  I can’t believe it, until my twenty-five year old son sends me a text message reminding me what I’ve been doing all those years–at least in part.  Somewhat unexpectedly, a couple weeks ago, I received an email, followed by a flier, followed by an email inviting me to a reunion of all those folks I spent high school with.  Nearly all of whom I haven’t seen for twenty or more years.  I stare at the flier.  Should I go?  Why would I go?  I’m not much for large gatherings, so I’m already leaning toward skipping it, but there’s something seductive about a class reunion–like peering at a car wreck.

High school wasn’t a bad time for me, but I didn’t love it either.  I took a practical stance toward that period of my life, milking my high school years for every opportunity I could get that would benefit my future.  I pursued a college prep curriculum and did well, turned out for soccer and tennis and didn’t entirely embarrass myself, and even served on the student council.  My social life was full, with a nice, mild mannered boyfriend and a circle of girlfriends who thought adventure was breaking into a boarded up building and risk was stealing a beer from their parents fridge.  We had our fun dialed in at “medium.”  But despite the camaraderie and achievements, high school felt confining, ritualistic, repetitive.  I was eager to get out the first day of my ninth grade year, so I ducked my head and drove forward through the rest of it.  I’ve never pined for those times.

Over the years, my connections with my high school friends atrophied and fell away.  Out of high school, we were each free to devise the lives we wanted for ourselves, free of the chalk lines and fences of high school life in the 1970s.  In my experience, there is no one more judgmental than a teenager from a small town.  For all the clamor about identity and individuality being the pursuit of adolescents, at least when I was 16, the pressure to join the ‘Borg (and be Two of Seven) was pretty heavy.  And so while I had countless fun and funny moments in high school, loved many friends,  and learned I could survive excruciating rejection, I considered that time a chrysalis, a preparation, an end to a beginning.  So what would be my purpose in walking into a room of people this summer that I haven’t exchanged two words with since our tenth–and boy was that…well, a rerun.

True to my nature, I suppose, the only reason I can identify for showing up to party with all the teens-turned-gray is curiosity.  Answering first hand: “Whatever happened to so-and-so?”  The problem is, though, that I, in turn, might be someone else’s so-and-so.  Then what do I say when former classmates I barely remember, let alone now recognize, ask me what I’ve been doing?  What part do I tell them?  I imagine if it feels competitive, I can lead with my degrees and awards, and maybe I can have some pulled quotes on a 3 x 5 card I can share, compliments people have paid me over the years for my professional leadership, and such.  Wearing my medal for my marathon might be a bit much–do you think?  Or if someone’s interest in my life seems more about my family, I guess that possibility is the excuse for buying the Iphone I’ve been considering.  I’ll load that baby up with my whole visual history of parenting, although I’ll discretely leave out husband number one.  Who wants to go there?  Or maybe there will be someone at the reunion who just finally wants to share that he had a massive crush on me the entire span of our school days.  Oh how I don’t want to face that.  So I’m left with no really good reason to go, you see.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I’m hearing someone say something like, “Lighten up!  You should go and just say hi.  People want to see that you are alive and well.  You’ll have fun.”  Messages such as that seem to eminate from the deeply stuffed normal part of me, stifled most often by the neurotic part of me.  Knowing that, you’d think I’d write a check to the reunion committe and start doing a few more sit-ups, but the reality is, I’m still undecided.  To compromise, I may have Kinkos produce a life sized picture of me with a speech bubble.  I’ll paste some safe little comments in the bubble, like “You look great!” and “I’m doing great!” and “Isn’t this great?!”  I’ll mail it to the reunion committee to set up in case my curiosity never gets the better of my fear.

Somewhere It’s Sunny

My mom used to joke when I was a kid that the only difference between winter and summer in Washington is the temperature of the rain.  This spring it’s the truth, and it’s not that funny.  We seem to be having a sunny day-to-rainy day ratio of about 1 to 10.  Even my moss is growing moss.  I planted lettuces and spinach a month ago, and since they are cool weather growers, I was pretty confident I’d be eating home-grown greens by mid-May.  But the abundant rain seems to have stunted the little sprouts; in fact, they look like mere suggestions of sprouts (to be fair, they did have to endure a couple inches of snow twice in April), and even a dose of organic compost tea hasn’t invigorated them.  I suppose what my tiny little lettuce leaves need to fortify them is a dry-rubbed steak. 

As much as I hate to admit it, there are a number of benefits to gardening in a drizzly climate.  For example, the new leaves on all my shrubs, shellacked with rain, glimmer like millions of little finger nails freshly painted and waggling in the air to dry–far more lovely than a dust-encrusted cactus.  In the spirit of a spring scrubbing,  I chucked over the bank the plants that drowned or froze this past winter, leaving the real toughies to dominate.  Natives like salal and currant aren’t easily bullied by a winter that won’t go home.  In fact, true to their wild natures, they swing both ways:  they like damp conditions but are just as happy with dry summers.  I’d really like to give the dry summer thing a whirl–to test them, of course.

Since we are nearly at Mother’s Day, I am feeling the pressure to get my summer vegetable seeds in the ground.  I planted potatoes, onions, carrots and summer squash last weekend, and today the plan was to add beans and beets.  Though soaked and blown about by an “unusual” (said the weather guy) spring storm, I stuck bean after soggy bean into what amounted to mud this morning.  I am hoping that note on the seed package that says, “prefers well-drained soil” is just that, a preference.  Let’s hope those beans are willing to buck up to the slurry they are now living in and produce anyway.  Maybe I’d better read up on hydroponic gardening, too.

I looked at the long range forecast this morning, with crossed fingers and a prayer, because all my garden lacks right now is a shot of sunshine.  Give me a few intense hours, better would be a day or two, and seeds would germinate, buds would pop, and the pruney skin on my hands might smooth out.  The best I got was a tease.  For the next week, the phrase “some chance of rain” dominated the prognostications.  In Washington, when is there not some chance of rain?  A chance of rain would be news in Death Valley, here it is the air we breathe.  Some chance of sunshine, though, is the reciprocal, and so I may get my couple hours yet this week.  And while I may be serving micro greens instead of Caesar salad in June, it will come from my own garden, fresh, organic, and wet.