Resolutions, What Else?

My first resolution is to stay on the island. This is highly measurable. Next New Year's, will I be living here? Yes: I am a brilliant an self-sufficient adult, move forward two spaces. No: I am living with my parents and obviously need to regroup- move back three spaces.

Second resolution? Continue the good work drinking in an intelligent manner. Sticking with only champagne or some slight variation on it for New Year's? Good job.

There will be other resolutions to follow, but really, I am three prosecco flutes into the night, and spelling/typing is a challenge.

Happy New Year's!

I need to dance.

Moving Out, Moving On...

It is amazing how saying goodbye to one person can buoy you, while saying goodbye to another leaves you bereft. Over the holiday I took the opportunity of being off-island to remove personal belongings that were still in my former boyfriend's apartment. After the break-up three months ago, all has been cordial, if superficial. Obviously I have been wrapped up in life on the island; free at last to embrace it fully, to wander at will without worrying about getting home to spend virtual time with my partner. I ended the relationship with no regrets, and until the last few days, little enough reflection beyond a deep relief.

While I was intrigued by the narrow boy, he had no bearing on the dissolution of bond- and when the Doc and I broke up, the Dark had not yet set foot on the island. Distance was reason enough cancel the contract, and we left it quite simply at that. Sometimes you just don't need to go beyond the tip of the iceberg- you see the ice, hear the sound of a ripping hull, and can safely say you are fucked without thoroughly examining the extent of the damage. So no conversation of guilt and recrimination, just civility and the earnest intent to remain friends. It is a comfortable lie, and an easy end to a two year trial.

Saying goodbye to someone after two months- that is a labor indeed. Two months is just enough time to become smitten in spite of yourself, and not enough time to get bored. In sixty days you have discovered details, can list off little charms, have developed a heightened sensitivity to their presence. After sixty days, you might find yourself wanting the luxury of sixty more- or six more- or whatever you can get. I rushed back to the island ahead of schedule, hope a fluttering song bird in my rib cage, so that I might get two or three more hours.

Better judgment did prevail. I made the late boat, getting home the evening before I had originally scheduled. But I did not pick up the phone to let him know, to see if he was still here, only two miles away. Because we had already said our goodbyes. And it was a full-stop "goodbye," not a soft and sweet "aloha." And he would need to pack, to spend the last of the hours with his family. Grown-ups are graceful: grown-ups let go. And dammit, this is me, letting go.

So tonight, the next-to-last night of 2008, I will claim this face-saving victory as my cold comfort. Back to thermals, back to buttoning up, back to bound hair. Resilience, you know, is a virtue.

Huh. Sounds like someone's at the door.

Christmas Eve With the Grim Reaper

I did finally leave the island, sledding my suitcases down to the landing, handling the sled's painter like a dog leash at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show: "No, no heel! Not nip my heels! Heel!" I got a good early start, so no one was witness to the first part of the trip, when I was still struggling to balance two large suitcases on a plastic sled meant for a grade-schooler. There was even time to grab my mail, which I had not checked in two weeks. Getting on the boat, I thought I had dodged the bullet of riding the same boat as the Dark and his dad. He and I had said our goodbyes the night before, and I did not really care to spend forty minutes pretending to be mere acquaintances.

Of course they were taking the morning boat. They were just the last to arrive.

And I spent forty minutes pretending to be an acquaintance, while he buried his shapely head in a National Geographic. God love me, I had brought the collected poems of Emily Dickenson- for a measure of solace. Books become talk on the mailboat, and soon it was "Oh, whatcha reading?" and "Emily Dickenson? Why Emily Dickenson?" I couldn't bust out with "I am preparing my soul for the descent back into passionate, yet asexual spinsterhood," so I settled for "Taking a chance over vacation to get my New England Studies back on... thinking about my thesis..."

I am fairly certain his environmental science major did not include the study of Emily Dickenson, so I daresay the Dark, overhearing, did not jump to the conclusion "damn, she is going to miss me." Unless poetry is now so seldom read that one assumes the reader must be tending to a raw heart. Next time I should brown bag the cover or stick to Robert Frost. Ugh.

That was only the second stage of the journey (yes, I will count the sledding as the first). Next I had to drive the beloved, yet unregistered, uninspected Jeep some fifty miles to the family homestead while not being caught by the authorities or busting the slack rear wheel. It was tense, but I made it.

I settled into the guest room, where my mother and aunt had erected my late grandmother's fake Christmas tree: I didn't have a tree on the island, and they felt I had earned one. In the afternoon we left to go visit my surviving grandmother, who has now been in an assisted living facility for a year. Our departure was only slightly delayed when I took my time putting on my boots, finishing up my Sanka, etc... Uncle Charlie seemed to be in no rush, so I saw no reason for me to do so. Turns out everyone else was in the van waiting, and Charlie wasn't going on the trip at all. Sometimes I suffer from a false sense of complacency.

Happily, nothing will jar you from your complacency like a visit to an assisted living home. I may be on the verge of thirty, but my grandmother is verging on ninety. She has been a lot happier since moving to the home: she dances, she plays Beano, she flirts with one of the male workers, and now includes "young men" on the list of things she wants us to put in her casket. They rate right up there with her cane and "cross words." Last year, as my mother and aunt were agonizing over the decision to farm her out, I told them it would be like old-age boarding school. I mean hell, the greatest increase in STDs is in the geriatric set. It is nice to see her happy; to see her outside the context of the family household, where despite everyone's best intentions, she became the burden she never wanted to be.

And it is also wholly depressing, as proof that if I do live a nice long life, this too too solid flesh will sag and fail... eventually to resolve itself into ash and steam, if not dew. I have spent the last month haranguing and corraling children, rambling all over the island alone and in company, pressing my lips to equally vital lips- how could I not be aware that I am approaching my prime? That I am well into it? Just as my grandmother had her prime, skating with young men, casting sideways glances while making a quip... every so often shades from her youth flash across her face, a face not unlike my own.

Today she once again used an expression we hadn't heard in a while, upon unwrapping some Christmas gifts: "Boy oh boy, aren't I glad I didn't die last night!" Once in a while, I have moments, generally outside during a walk, when I think "I could go now, and be okay with it- no regrets..." In those moments I feel saturated in the beauty of this life- but of course when I return to my laundry, the prospect of compost and cat litter, or think about something I don't have (hello masculine companionship!), the joie de vivre slowly drains out, leaving me less obviously soppy. Which is just as well. Because while it was wonderful, boy oh boy, aren't I glad I didn't die last night!

Just What We Needed: A Swedish Princess

Two days later, I finally dug out from the solstice storm. I don't mind wading through snow to get to the road, so digging a path from my house to the street hardly seemed much of a priority. Add to that the fact that the good snow shovel seems to be missing, and we have the perfect recipe for a procrastinated chore. Today, after rolling out of bed at nearly eleven o'clock, I decided I would finally insert my Yankee spine and spend some time character building. Of course, this raises the question: "can character be built so late into the morning?" If I had really wanted to make it a worthy day, I should have been up at five, clearing my driveway with the heaviest shovel I could find. As it was, it was well past noon before I had braided my hair, baked some scones, picked out appropriate layers and ascertained that no, the feather-like plastic shovel was not going to descend from the heavens. It was lost, and as I have mentioned previously, 'tis the season to get over losing good things.

We got quite a bit of snow. Had I mentioned that it was a blizzard? God's truth, NOAA's honor. Still, it wasn't that bad. I just hate shoveling snow. With metal shovels. As I made my way down the drive, cracking through the surface layer and using my hands to throw aside that top sheet of two inches, I reflected on my Scandinavian origins. My people were made for this- all well adapted to snow, life in the cold climes, blah blah blah... Yet in three generations, through interbreeding with Baltic people and New Englanders (supposedly also hardy), and an increased standard of living, America had spat out me, a lackluster twenty-something who kept up an uninterrupted inner-whine during the hour it took her to shovel a pitifully narrow walk from the road to the nearest (and most dangerous) ramp into her house.

It occured to me during this time that the Swedes in my family moved from the Frosted Fatherland (Sweden should be a motherland, I know, but I crave alliteration like a sweet) to New York City. NYC. Where there are road crews and shit. Probably roads crews of Norwegians, hardy Norwegians, built to shovel snow. Swedes are built to contemplate snow. My step-grandmother was a prime example of Norwegian snow-shoveling. She shoveled her own snow with apparent good cheer (and in skirts) until she was well into her seventies. My grandfather (the first generation Swede-American) had a heart condition, so this Pan-Scandinavian pairing worked well. I have been putting off having an actual adult physical, where they draw blood and tell you to stop eating so much cheese, so I don't know that I have a heart condition. But I suspect that shoveling snow with the heaviest shovel in the world is enough to give me a psychosomatic one.

The worst thing is living "in town." People tend to drive by and bear witness to my snowy labor. They smile, laugh internally and think "she is using the wrong kind of shovel... does she know that?" The shovel I am so maligning is a heavy metal and wood deal, with a plow-like scoop shape. Would have been great if I had used it every twenty minutes during the day-long storm. Still would have caught on the uneven gravel surface of my driveway, but it would have performed better than this afternoon. This afternoon, I looked like a woman doing the doggie paddle in a serious survival situation. Eventually, however, I triumphed.

And then I went snow-shoeing. I did mention I don't mind wading through snow, right? After a year, it was time to take my snow shoes, Christmas presents from '07, on their maiden voyage. I yax-trax-ed it up Annis Hill, and turned down the road to Point Lookout, the island's private summer colony. Securing the snow-shoes to my boots, and throwing the yax trax into my back pack, I headed off into the world of privilege. I love people who can abandon homes for 10/12ths of a year, because it means those of us who cannot afford a vacation can at least spend some quality time wandering around on private roads. The universe finds balance.

Now if only I could keep mine. Some of you may recall last year, when I planted my face on the ice while endeavoring to skate. I split my lip, and got a nice subtle scar for my trouble. The other night, during the storm, the Dark was adding to his footage of people randomly running through the woods, and got me to participate. It was snowy, and he had set up the shot so that it was a down-hill run. Of course I fell. The other day, doing a pirouette in my living room, I no sooner got through the first 220 degrees, when I found myself sprawled on my ass. I fall. I have even been designated by the Dark as a faller.

Tonight was no exception. I got down to the Point landing, got to taking pictures, and when I went to get some shots of interesting drift patterns, I failed to attend to the fact that the drifts were built up over huckleberry bushes. And that the drifts were deep. First I was up to my thighs, and then I was on my back, up to my nose. Or nipples. Whatever was the highest point of me at the time. It is a good thing I enjoy looking up at the sky, and that normally (the skating incident, and okay, the Champlain incident aside) I fall backwards. I am getting pretty philosophical about it all. In fact, I have a growing suspicion that I am literally falling for the island. And when I take it a bit further, and refuse to accept my own gracelessness, I come to the obvious conclusion that the island is actually sweeping me off my feet. With that first scar, it marked me as its own. I succumb, dear island!

Continuing on this island bride theory, tomorrow I will test out my ability to communicate with woodland creatures through song. Or pack to go home to my family for Christmas. If I don't make it off the island, I probably just fell on the way to the boat.

I will make it home- maybe!

Winter Solstice

Tonight is longest night of the year, and it arrived on the island riding the winds of a blizzard. I spent the earlier part of the day performing the pleasant labor of baking when there is no pressure. I threw together some pizza dough for later, used the verging-on-over-ripe bananas for banana walnut bread, and got to work making and bottling lemon curd for island neighbors. There may have been a nap in there somewhere... I have moved an armchair into the kitchen, rendering it more or less the most functional room ever. Because really I can do work sitting in a comfy armchair, my feet up on a stool. Lap=laptop=work. Everyone accepts the truth of this commutative property. The key is I can't allow myself to curl up in the armchair. With anything remotely resembling a blanket. Fetal position + blankie = sweet sweet slumber.

About an hour before night closed in, the Dark arrived at my door, ready for his second hike of the day. I stripped down and re-layered for the storm while he foraged in my kitchen, pleased that I had carried out my plans to make banana bread. Once I was fully bundled, we headed out into the brunt of the storm, which had worsened since his earlier trip to Seal Trap. My plastic sled in tow, we made our way up Annis Hill to the Champlain trail head, where we stashed my sled at the side of the road and headed into the woods. With the variation of weather, season, and light, I could never grow bored of this place. The huckleberry underbrush looked soft with the snow; enrobed in white, the spruce seemed taller- looming over the path with a magic that promised potential danger or delight. Even in the forest, the wind scoured the land, shrieking through the thinner areas nearly undiminished. This was not a gentle evening, but since I was well-clad and warm, it was strangely peaceful. In the last light of this shortest day, the island again turned to a more sepia-tinged shade of grey. Champlain is slightly bald at the top, mostly ledge, huckleberry, and scraggly spruce that look a little sheepish, like they knew they should have left the party an hour ago. The world was wild at the summit, and I tilted my head back to watch snow sheet across the sky.

It was the peak of the island, the peak of night for the year. And yes, the peak of the affair. At some point you have to pack up the picnic, get out of the water, or come in from the cold.

We made our way back down the mountain, this time at a slower clip- ever the lover of the ephemeral, I need some stillness to take in the transition. Emerging on the road, we recovered the sled, debated the best method of descending the hill (seated or on stomachs), and let gravity carry us down to my house.

After a time, he was back to foraging in my kitchen- this time for supper: I was assigned the task of making cocoa. Having warmed up and replaced some calories, we rebundled to go in search of the Tall. The storm had gained in power as night took hold, and the walk toward town was wicked, but conditions weren't quite white-out. By the time we reached the post office, we spied familiar headlights approaching, the Tall, in the nearly-clutchless truck. Together they needed to head back to their place, to literally keep the homefires burning. While the Tall could have managed this on his own, we three have been walking on the tension wire of a bizarre love triangle. Hooking me up with his friend was a gas in theory, but the Tall found it less appealing in practice: he and I have traded off feeling like a third wheel.

As we arrived at my house, I was deposited with a quick kiss goodnight just outside of the truck, and off they went, making their way up the steep hill, the snow closing in behind them.

In a week's time this portion of the year will be over: no more holidays, no more boys of Autumn- they will return to their respective homes out West to work the ski season. Long nights have never bothered me- every year I watch winter approach with a sense of comfort, that the dark is a blanket thrown over the earth, reminding us to rest and reflect. To dream with eyes open.

Now to accept that the dark will recede.

Four Years of Study- Worth Every Penny...

Gussied up for the Xmas Pot Luck

Once a year I pull my theater training out of the closet, dust it off, and put it to work. At least that is the case in my life here on the island. After Thanksgiving it becomes painfully clear that "wow, we don't have a lot of time until Christmas" and that the school's annual Christmas Show will not, in fact, happen on its own, and can't be canceled- however much we might wish it. Traditionally, the show is fobbed off on whatever fresh-faced and civic-minded newcomer has washed up on the isle's shores for the winter. Last year that newcomer was me, and really I had no way out since I had a degree in theater, and was being paid to be useful in whatever way necessary. This year I wanted a way out, but found that that particular Christmas wish was not going to be granted. This year's Christmas miracle turned out to be finding a staple gun when I needed it.

Thankfully, I was relieved of picking the material. We have a new music teacher who comes out once a week, and she brought in the script and canned accompaniment for "Christmas at the OK Corral." It concerns the town of Snowy Gulch, and one villainous grump by the name of Bubble Gum Bart, who threatens to cover the town in bubble gum if they carry out their holiday festivities. Logically, the townsfolk wire Santa a request for help, who sends the Candy Cane Kid; everything gets talked out, a saccharine ballad is perpetrated, and there's a ho-down. Classic New England Christmas fare. And it was my job to make sure it actually happened.

A few words about our school: we have eight students, spanning grades K-8. In this group of eight children we have two sets of brothers, and another student is half-uncle to one of those sets. The male to female ratio is 6:2, a vast improvement over last year's 6:1. You would think that working with only eight children would be a dream- with so few students and so many adults (two to four, depending on the day) surely the days must glide by in a pleasant atmosphere of scholarly inquiry.

You would be wrong, asshole.

It is like homeschooling the most disfunctional family of all time, except we have no control over their home lives. And the whole one-room schoolhouse thing is all very romantic until you realize you can't hit them with rulers. Eight kids will make the noise of eighty, and there's no handy principal with an office, or guidance counselor, or special ed room, or oubliette. Though perhaps we could find an old well...

The only thing to do, given the personalities involved, was to divide and conquer. I ruthlessly excluded one of my students from almost every blocking rehearsal, staging him fully upstage, behind a large set piece. His blocking was simple and, per his request, he never had to dance. He could be kept out of the tedious blocking rehearsals. Not typically a fan of exclusion, I will embrace it whole-heartedly when it means avoiding disasters and migraines. The process was still pretty ugly, but by the time I plugged the student back into the rehearsals with the other kids, the larger group all more or less had their act together. Of course, the little kids still loved to turn upstage to sing to the back wall, generally miss their cues, forget their lines, and totally lose track of what they were supposed to be doing. If they didn't come by those habits naturally, I guess I would've had to have staged it.

To get everything to come together, I had to move beyond the use of my teacher voice, and into the use of my director voice. My mother wondered what the distinction is between the two, and I think it was good to have the opportunity to elucidate the difference. A teacher's voice will be strong and angry, but will have a undertone of weariness and frustration that hints at her proximity to the breaking point, or at least incipient alcoholism. A director's voice promises that the director will crush the actor's ego, extract the blighted soul, and then have a nice cuppa.

Either my director voice is rusty, or the kids are semi-impervious. Nonetheless, we made it through, and there were moments when they paid attention, but by and large it was an exercise in controlling chaos. When set before an audience, they were adorable and didn't yell insults at one another across the stage. The audience laughed and cheered, and as I stood backstage to help with quick changes, I couldn't help but laugh and grin, and think "Oh, my kids are the loveliest lovelies!" Which is proof that the holidays render me somewhat soft in the head.

The Dark wanted special credit on the program for his efforts to keep me on an even keel: "It's just for the kids: I am doing it for the kids."

A Wandering Mind

It is Sunday again, and often times Sunday seems the most opportune day of the week to go adventuring. It's become a bit of a habit of mine to swing by the church first to offer up some prayerful communiques to the universe (thanks for the life I've found, thanks for not yet crushing me for the sake of an ironic joke...), and then move on to whatever course seems likely. Today I retraced a trail the Dark had just introduced me to, happy to be alone so that I could dawdle as I liked, lost in an interior life rivaled only by Walter Mitty. The workaday world falls away, and there's just the curiosity of what wonder will be around the next bend- a shapely bit of ice, a shaft of light, and always, ever, the sound of the creaking spruce, threatening to fall.

Sadly I am no naturalist. Moss is just so much carpet in the cathedral; a tree a dryad; a bog a place of blonde grass concealing dark waters. Growing up, I devoured folklore, not nature guides. So when on my own, straying from the path takes on new meaning- crossing a bridge entails unseen trolls, and blow downs are evidence of giants, or of vicious winds released from knotted rope. This doesn't mean I literally believe in the host of creatures folksy and mythical, but that I am firmly a fan of imagination. These woods are my Arden; these shores my Illyria.

Walking, and solitary, I can give myself over to it- signs, portents, stories; my head swims in metaphor, and words, always so many words-

So in love with the world was I,
I promised myself I never would die...

Today, as that macabre scrap flashed into my mind (talk about tempting Fate), the rustling thunder of wings burst out of the limbs above my head, and a maddened crow swept toward the thoroughfare: one for sorrow. I had not noticed the black of the bird in the black of the boughs. Taking off so quickly, so close, it sounded like a much bigger bird, an owl, or a hawk- or more birds, a murder.

Is it not a wondrous thing- to be a girl, alone on a path through the darkening woods?

Goddamn, It's Windy!!!

I suspect that when this house was renovated, the insulation was skimped upon, since its was to be primarily a seasonal home. At any rate, I finished and put up the new window quilts in the bedroom last night, and was pleased to feel the decrease in the draft from the windows, but couldn't help but notice the cold air oozing from under the baseboard of the exterior wall. I know: I should have shut this room off and moved to the back, South-facing bedroom, but the scale of this one is much more human, its shape more furniture-friendly. And yes, the wind sounds even louder here, which is usually a charm to my ears. Since I am commmitted to this front room, the added bonus to the new curtains is the increased privacy. Ill-fitting muslin curtains were not the most discreet option ever, though they were, as the saying goes, "better'n nawthin." Of course viewing is a two-way street, and now looking out the windows to see street and water traffic will be more cumbersome. I am still adjusting to the dining room having curtains.

As for last evening, I did not, in fact, make gingerbread. After an afternoon spent working, then wandering about in the weather, I was not up to digging out, and gingerbread should be shared. Instead I started decorating the house for Christmas, stringing lights around my windows between the panes and the window quilt panels. In happy coincidence, the dining room quilts are backed with slender white stripes on a red background, so the result is pretty festive when you look from the outside world. I hung a delightfully fake evergreen garland along my banister, then wrapped it in colored lights. For now, the tree-topper is perched on the newel post.

Alright- I just got brave, went downstairs, turned on said lights (since it is still dark out), and made my breakfast: oatmeal w/ maple syrup and dried cranberries, and a mocha. I will face the dishes when the temperature in the house is somewhat more reasonable. I did duct tape the insulated curtain tight to the door frame in the kitchen. The wind is shrieking through, miserable, miserable, but slightly less miserable now, for the quilted hanging. If anyone was wondering, I would like tapestries for Xmas. Now I am ensconced once again in my bed, thankful for Tempur-Pedic matresses, down comforters, and the polar fleece blankets I put between the flannel sheets... my place was still warm! Breakfast in bed is pretty fantastic on a cold day, even if you had to get up to make it yourself. So glad computers and work became so lap-friendly. Let the week begin...

What's in a Weekend, or, Waiting for Snow on a Sunday

From the vantage point of last Thursday, it seemed like this weekend would be slow, sweet, and rich like molasses; now, however, it is Sunday morning, and with the school's holiday show coming up and the December fellow retreat this week, I have a lot to accomplish before I can head out on the mailboat Tuesday night. Happily, on the weekend you can accomplish things after a leisurely cup of coffee and gentle puttering. So it is that I am up, showered, dressed, and indulgently blogging, my little red coffee cup to one side, my faithful feline companion to the other.

Now that I look back over the weekend in order to recount it, it has been rather pleasantly reminiscent of molasses. I devoted my Friday night to potato leek soup; and incidentally, myself. After a day of running back and forth from the school to my house, choreographing, teaching and report writing, I sent off my monthly report, and took a walk down to my adoptive island family. My mother had sent me advent calendars, and included one for the little boys of that household. It seems I talk about them a lot, and I suspect this is her way of thanking them for winding up the ol' biological clock. If only children would magically spring out at the age of seven, adorable, on the verge of reading, and with a sly sense of humor like my favorite little blue-eyed boy.

(side note: here is the anticipated snow, in the smallest of flakes)

Anyone who has read this blog at all knows that I love walking. Friday's walk was at the very edge of dark, which now coincides with the mailboat arrival. It steams in, running lights on- the colors gently suggestive of the season, red to port, green to starboard. Given the paucity of daylight, the evening stop is all business: some nights it seems they barely even tie up. Under cover of the deepening twilight, people bustle to move cargo, and to get The Mink back on her way uptown. It is all more or less year-rounders and workers now, and it is a pleasure to watch the swift and purposeful exchange of people and goods, morning and night, a cycle of certainty. The boat and store hours, they are the measure of the island's pulse.

I always slow my pace to watch the evening ritual, whether I am on the road just above the landing, or at a distance on Kennedy's field, looking South down the thoroughfare. I am a voyeur, but a very prim one. I like to watch the mundane traffic of this place: the boats coming in, barges carrying in concrete trucks; my neighbors heading to get their mail. I like lit windows at night, not to see into, but just because they offer proof that people are warm, fed, housed. Signs of life in a sleepy place. The beauty here verges on gratuitous, but never grows tiresome.

I have digressed from potato leek soup. My walk did come to an end, though not before I passed by the narrow boy, silently making his way from the store to his house- well after the rush of the mailboat. It should not come as a surprise that he gets his groceries on the off-hours; given his position at the store he has the means, and invisibility is exactly his style. We exchanged hellos without breaking stride, and I continued home with just my moon shadow at my side, pleased to have encountered him, to have had a simple look into his life.

Ending a walk is always a little melancholy- parting from the world outside is such sweet sorrow. A kitchen does offer its comforts, though. I completed the last of the evening's tasks, re-sending the report that did not, in fact, go through, returning a phone call from the uptown man. He was hoping I would find my way off the island sometime soon; I want nothing more than to stay put. Perhaps over Christmas break when I have to be off island. Or some Saturday, when the Dark has receded, I can show the Uptowner why I am so elusive, why I never want to leave. A day's hike should suffice.

My head in the clouds, my top-rated list playing on iTunes, I finally got down to dealing with my leeks. Soups, I have been told, are the key to sensible cooking for the single person. You make a sizable batch, freeze the bulk of it in small portions, and after a few scattered evenings with a large pot, you have a treasure trove of easy meals. Always sounded good in theory. After years of living by myself, I have finally made baby steps, and now have both chili and potato leek soup standing by. Maybe (if tonight doesn't include any company or outings), I will add some onion soup to the inventory. At any rate, rocking out and preparing for future culinary laziness is not a bad way to spend a Friday night on the island.

Saturday was about the continuation of curtains. The Dark headed off-island to run errands, though he promised to be back in time for a hike, and this left me with seven hours of chores-y goodness. By eight I had taken out the trash and compost, and was well into burning the paper waste to Christmas tunes. Fires are festive. My mother called to set up an evening mailboat drop-off of Christmas decorations, bless her, bless her, bless her. Meanwhile, the island was well into receiving its first dusting of snow: the flakes having settled and stayed, the gold of the long grass was no longer in competition with remnant green. Under the eastern light of morning, the world was tinted a distinctive sepia.

At nine, I booted and buttoned up for the journey to the post office. If I send out netflix on Monday, I will have the new DVDs in by Saturday, in time to commit whatever craftiness I have planned for the weekend. The walk was just as delicious as one might expect of a walk through the first Saturday morning snow, so squeaky underfoot. My world, as bounded by the horizon, shared only common landmarks with the world of sixteen hours earlier. And one other pleasant parallel; as I neared the post office, a slender figure in a black hooded pull-over raised a hand in greeting as he headed up the steep incline of his driveway. Seeing him anywhere other than the landing, when he works with me at school, or at the home of our mutual friends is like spotting a coyote. Fairly rare, and somewhat fascinating.

The day continued to unfold in a pleasant fashion. I worked with pins, needles, and hot iron in front of the television. At noon I had lunch; at three I met the mailboat and picked up two boxes and a storage tote, which (when stacked up) exactly spanned the distance between my down-stretched arms and my chin (when tilted toward the treeline). Christmas frieght safely stowed in my car, I stopped at the crowded store and purchased beer and ice cream: the perfect selection for the school's Health teacher. As I stood over the ice cream freezer, the Dark sidled up, and we nonchalantly formalized the assignation to hike. We'd only had the opportunity for eye contact at the landing. How lucky am I to be in a position to set up a date through the corner of my mouth while I choose between Ben and Jerry's and Hagen Daz? Life is pretty damned good.

Once home, I had the time to paw through the boxes of Christmas goodies before he came knocking at my door. With her awesome sense of timing my mother called shortly after he arrived, so I got a chance to thank her and ascertain that yes, she had glimpsed the Dark at the dock in Stonington. And she got to ascertain that yes, I was currently in his company. Again with the nonchalantly coded conversation. This has been the winter of a-million-and-one tiny intrigues. Or perhaps that is simply the gist of island life.

Before it got completely dark on us, the Dark and I headed up to Black Dinah, taking a road that goes up behind two trap shops and across the forlorn homestead of the former park ranger (now in indefinite exile), before turning into an old footpath. Black Dinah is an easy hike, and a rewarding view. We watched the boats steaming full throttle back to Stonington, and further out, the boats heading into Matinicus. Matinicus Rock Light blazed intermittantly at the edge of the world, its white light a contrast to the quiet red beacon of our Robinson's Point. It is a pleasant thing to climb up a hill on a chilly evening: it is even more pleasant when you climb with someone you can lean up against for heat; when kissing is an allowable liberty. Soon however, the cold creeps from the boulder to your buttocks- and dinner seems somehow more urgent than dalliance. We went home before any of the ships made it to port.

And now? It is past noon, the world is whitening at a steady clip, and I have students to meet, and chroeography to create. Yes, this weekend has smacked of the subtlely sweet- maybe I will find time tonight to make some molasses-rich gingerbread in honor of a putterer's favorite ingredient.