caretaking

‘Tis the season

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Every year as Christmas approaches I start making projects, lots of them. I think I knit 40 hats, scarves, cowls and sweaters. Most have been distributed.

This is my current tour de force. A drop shoulder fair isle sweater I designed and knit on a machine. It’s being stretched on my new woolly board from the Wool Brokers in Scotland.

I made this pullover from a simple pattern written up in the 1980’s. The body is cashmere, sleeves are alpaca silk and sock yarn. My granddaughter thought it was soft enough to keep.

Star Wars was my theme this year.

When I wasn’t knitting, I baked, lots of different cookies. These buche noel cookies were a hit with me!

These stained glass window cookies were fun to make. The centers were a surprise though. They looked like chewy candy but were actually melted lifesavers and hard. I won’t be making these again.

Decorations were kept to a minimum. I pulled out two candle chimes and a star.

We kept the lights on an evergreen from last year, plugged it in and voila!

Then we hit the road, to Christmas celebration in Kittery, Maine, and skiing at Killington, Vermont in spring conditions.

Complete with a rainbow.

The Champlain Bridge, on our way home, was picture perfect.

A few more days at home and then we are headed back out. We will be caretakers at Mcgraw Ranch in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Can you say ROAD TRIP?!

The many faces of Seguin

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All beautiful. Seguin always delivers. A little rain, fog, the foghorn, great trails, monarch migration, some visitors but then a week without another person (except Tim of course), nightly cricket invasions, clouds, sunsets, waves, the view of Mt. Washington, ships, near and far, lighthouses along the shore, rocks, spider webs, good food, at least one mink this year, bald eagles, the prism rainbow, but no rainbows this trip, the weather was too nice. Feeling on top of the world.

Mt Washington in the distance

All in a day

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Never too old to learn new tricks. We have a problem with the tractor engine, please don’t ask, and it was decided we should remove it from the tractor snd take it off island. We, meaning the Royal We.

I was up to my elbows in grease – no wonder all those you tube mechanics wear black vinyl gloves – when Tim came down to the Whistle House, to check my progress.

So I stopped for the day, cleaned up a little and made salmon cakes.

Yesterday, I went back at it and set it free. The task itself was straightforward, but access to nuts and bolts was ridiculously hard. Now we just have to figure out how to get it down the quarter mile hill, onto the beach, into the dinghy for its ride home.

After I finished, I made a batch of scones and a loaf of bread with somewhat clean hands.

Tomorrow is closing day, our last day on island, which will be a flurry of activity, after no visitors for a week due to windy, wonderful lighthouse weather.

And while here, I finished knitting a baby bonnet in silk/wool, which I spun while at Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, a pair of mittens and started a hat. All in a day’s work.

Flotsam and jetsom

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It’s been windy here on this offshore island. Seas are big, waves are crashing in the cove and we had a super, high tide, with the full moon and a north wind.

Bottom line, no visitors for a few days and lots of debris and seaweed in the cove.

We had to haul the dinghy up to higher ground. Our next few dinghy trips should be interesting. Not today though. Small craft warning persists.

Land snails seem happy enough, until I hear one accidentally crunch underfoot.

Nothing can keep a beautiful sunset down.

Not even a seagull photobombing me.

“W” is for whirlwind

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It has been a crazy couple of weeks. First we went camping to evade a music festival in town.

We worked out a kayak lift system that didn’t break us. We hitched our kayaks to a horse drawn carriage and were transported in comfort to the shore of a beautiful lake.

We loaded up the boats and headed to our favorite campsite, complete with Adirondack chairs.

It was sunny but cool. I swam my final letter in the alphabet, “W”, and sunned myself on a rock to stave off hypothermia. Tim swam longer than me and had a harder time warming up.

Not my best but it’s too cold to keep swimming.

We found a great tent site, where a tree had already fallen. Nature won’t strike twice in the same place, would she?

We sat and looked at the water and clouds for hours on end.

We returned home Sunday, I worked Monday, we went out to dinner for our 18th anniversary, then packed again.

We are back on Seguin Island! This will be about our 14th fall. We spent summer 2008 ad season caretakers and have returned most years since then to help close up the island in the fall.

We packed enough food and water for as long as we will be here. Luckily the Wednesday Warriors were here and they were a big help hauling our gear from the boat to the beach and then up the hill.

We were soon joined by one set of kids and grand kiddos. What a blast. Naturally we ate lobster and corn, found beach glass, hiked trails, gave tours of the tower, flew airplanes, cracked crab claws, watched sunsets, ate delicious meals, hunted crickets in the kitchen, and played lots of cards.

That’s them at the sunset bench we built in 2008.

Great memories are made here.

Summer squeeze

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So much to do before the end of summer: finish swimming my gps alphabet; canoe camping at Great Camp Santanoni; train to climb a big hill with stuff.

The hill starts today. We’re hiking Rooster Comb, with friends but no gear. I will hopefully get to swim an “R and S” after our hike.

We’re getting ready to return to Seguin Island for a few weeks to help tuck it in for winter.

This is truly one of my favorite places in the world. We’ve helped out almost every year since 2008. I may know the 64 acre island better than my own little piece of paradise.

But to get there, we have to take a boat, then a dinghy to the beach, offload everything, then climb up another couple hundred feet to the top of the island, where the lighthouse is perched. I have knots in my stomach already even though Tim does most of the hauling while I unpack in the kitchen. I and/or some our stuff usually take a dunking as well.

Next weekend there are big goings in in our little town and we like to high tail it out of here. Tim arranged a horse drawn carriage to bring our kayaks four miles in to the great camp, where we will look for a nice camping spot- another of our favorite places.

Are these the dog days?

From the frying pan into the fire

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We decided, just in time, that this was not our ideal gig. Just in time, because two planes were already scheduled to fly in, before the weather turned, with 12 barrels of fuel. It snowed a little the day before the planes were due.

Our replacement arrived on the first plane, and we left the next day on the second one.

He was already familiar with the property, is a big ice fisherman, and brought his own augur, ice fishing tent, and heater!

We spent 24 hours together reviewing the systems, the back up systems, and enjoying a few meals together.

Then we flew off – to what we learned is the most dangerous city in Canada: Thompson, Manitoba. The primary employer, a nickel mine, closed in 2017, which created a lot of poverty in the region. Gangs formed, drugs arrived, violent crimes occur frequently, sometimes by “machete kids”. Our replacement never left his hotel for these reasons.

But all the hotels were sold out. So we booked an overnight bus to Winnipeg. When we told the pilot we needed a place to wait until the bus station opened for our 10 pm bus, he said he would drive us and find a safe place to wait.

We did and were fine. Since it was a late night bus, many people were in “good spirits”. But there was a strict bag check policy, and for good reason.

The week before, in the same bus, two guys tried to get on with loaded guns and drugs. They escaped. Even worse, in 2009, a passenger BEHEADED another passenger! Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore. Bring back the bears !!

Our trip was uneventful except the bus had no heat and it was 20 degrees !! We survived. Luckily I was still in lots of layers.

We arrived in time for balmy autumn weather in the Adirondacks. Then we headed south to summer weather in Washington, DC to congratulate my daughter and her fiancé on their engagement.

There’s no place like home.

Did you see it?

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I get excited by nature’s wonders. Yesterday, we got to see a portion of the annular eclipse in the morning. First I made my pinhole camera.

Then I headed outside to wait and watch. The last time I experienced a solar eclipse, we were on Protection Island in the Strait of Juan de Luca. My technique was a little different this time. I used two separate pieces of cardboard.

And it worked. Photographing it with one hand was little tricky.

Then I tried to get a little creative.

When I returned to the cabin, I took another look a half hour later and it had changed to this.

It transitioned from an Apple computer apple to a heart. What a day!

We have come to realize there is no need to rush at anything we do because we don’t have anything else to do. So we can take our time and enjoy. Already, the nights are colder and frost covers everything until late morning.

The days are quickly growing shorter. The sun rose today at 8:22 am and will set at 6:40 pm. This is already 2 hours shorter than when we first arrived in late September.

I thought it was quiet at home, but here the only sounds we hear are made by us, the birds and the squirrels, since there is no one else within hundreds of miles. We got hear a wolf howl one night. I have already begun talking to the birds with a call and response. The other day I had nice chat with a Greater Yellowleg. We are sure to become great friends. The Canada Jays follow us around. And I never realized how versatile a Raven’s call could be. You’re never too old to learn a new language.

What do you have to do to get a glass of water around here?

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Well it’s a long story, made more complicated by the fact the lake level is so low. 2 weeks ago, we were able to back a Polaris on a jetty right to the water. But not anymore.

Now we are using this long dock. First we hand pushed a trailer with an empty water barrel on it to the end. Then I guided Tim as he backed the quad bike to the trailer. He had some real trust issues here.

We kept a sharp lookout but made so much noise, it really wasn’t an issue.

Then we set up a gas pump to draw water from the lake to the barrel. Tim was much more confident in his forward facing trip off the dock.

Last, back to the cabin where we used the water pump to transfer it to three indoor cisterns. From there, we have an electric pump that sends water to the faucets. We have an indoor filter and a Brita jug for the final filter.

I need a glass after all this.