returning to Houghton, day 3

The weather gods were gentle, providing sun most of the way home today for the last, not quite 3 hour, stretch of the trip. The blue of the sky was intensified by the snow on the ground and the occasional grey cloud. The roads were icy in parts, and there was some drifting, but we are home now, remembering our bodies back into this particular configuration of daylight hours. The cat has returned to our bed from her while-we-are-away hiding place, and has also quieted from her first hours of complaint.

This afternoon I read job applications as my warm up for the New Year; there are some lovely smart people out there. And now, Shusterman's Performing Live, finishing from the plane.

returning to Houghton, day 2

When there are only 5 people in a plane that seats 30, the pilots, "for reasons of weight during takeoff and landing," have you all move to the back of the plane. The move should inspire some of that "jeez, we live in small towns" camaraderie, but because the back of the plane is where riders feel more of the movements of the plane through cloudy and windy nights, especially when the plane is light, it tends instead to inspire quiet moments of hoping that the flight is smooth. Which it was -- all 26 minutes of it from Eau Claire, WI, to Rhinelander, WI. The flight attendant pulled off a beverage service, too.

We are, now, in the Comfort Inn of Rhinelander, looking out into an inch or two of snow covering the parking lot of the Home Depot, across which front -- in this cloudy night -- there is a huge shadow of a small American flag waving in a big light and small flurries. The ingredient on Iron Chef America is lentils, and I have Richard Powers's The Echo Maker to finish, having left it in the car at the airport because it was too big to carry in my backpack.

One more time zone to go.

returning to Houghton, day 1

Ferry leaves Shaw at 10:30am and arrives at noon at Anacortes: many cormorants and big ocean gulls, some grebes, some wide rolling swells in the Strait.

Bus to airport arrives, 1pm. (We waited with two people who had grown up together on San Juan Island, one now headed back to finish his first year of college, the other back to her job in Bellingham. Before we started talking with them, they were trading memories from kindergarten; Dennis said it was like watching Dawson's Creek.)

Bus drops us at airport, 4pm.

Shuttle gets us to hotel, 4:45pm.

Indian food delivered to the room, and here we are, Uma going after Lucy in the snow, with swords.

You would think we are traveling from someplace far away to someplace far away. If all goes well, we'll be home on Monday.

why, it's raining!

And so we talk about what to make for dinner and when to wake each other up from our naps. (Dennis, Brian, and Sam did chainsaw up a tree that had blocked a neighbor's road, while I read another Australian novel, this one about being dope addled in the seventies. The required efforts seem pretty equal -- and I would have helped with the tree, had there not already been too many hands and backs. Really. I like chainsaws and the smell of cut wood, especially in the rain. Especially when it's being described in someone else's writing.)

Meanwhile, we have learned that the ferry people do not talk to the shuttle-to-the-airport people, so, while the ferry arrives at the mainland at 3 pm tomorrow, the shuttle leaves at 2:55. The next shuttle is at 6. I hope there is another novel, one I can borrow, with long thick descriptions of what it's like to sift slowly through long hot Melbourne afternoons.

oz in the pacific northwest

Because B&B lived in Australia for eight years, they would send us things we wouldn't probably otherwise know about, like Tim Winton novels and TimTams.

On their island bookshelf, now that they are back, I have been looking through the mix of here and there books, and on Monday afternoon came to Tom Kenneally's Bettany's Book. It is six-hundred pages thick, and threads together the lives of several related people a century and a half apart, first several Europeans new to Australia -- both born and transported there -- and then two sisters several generations later. Along with paralleling these generations of people writing about their lives and becoming who they are, it also involves what happened in the Sudan during the nineties, for one of the sisters goes there. It is a book of echoes, and of deepening, and I happily slurped into it and just now am washed up afterwards, and B is calling me to a new episode of CSI, the original, and I am not sure I can handle the shift.

Nor am I ready to prepare to leave here, to make -- tomorrow -- the shuttle reservations for Saturday. I would be a dreamer and a drifter, always, someone not tied to where I live, for altogether too many reasons.

I like being on the edges

Where we are now is tucked about as far into the northwest of the U.S. as you can be and still be on the map, and where we usually live is enough on the edges that it doesn't even show up on some maps. I have always lived close to water with a non-visible other side.

I am a listener from the corners at parties, unless there is champagne. But I am also pretty good at asking questions.

I was the first daughter after three sons.

Just recording some observations, after a long walk in the rain, figuring out where I want to stand in this new year, what party dress I want to wear through the season.

The New Year...

is raining and cool, good for a long walk under the drooping cedars. Bindi -- Brian and Buni's round terrier -- walked with us but did not want to stay on one side of the road or the other, and we did not know her particular words for making her stay on one side or the other -- which gave us the pleasure of meeting Barney and Joyce, who live down the hill on the little isthmus out to Broken Point. Until we turned off the road to come home, Barney and Joyce drove their old pickup behind Bindi at Bindi's pace, which is also a good pace for a little conversation with people walking alongside. Barney had said, with a cheering smile, "I do not think it's a good idea to start the New Year by running over a dog."

The air is moist and full of cedar and pine smells, and we have progressed from not knowing what time of day it is to not knowing what day of the week it is. Brian has made bread and pizza (for last night's warm conversation and celebration at Gwen and Eric's glowing house right on the sound, with the red ravens), Dennis is now stuffing a chicken, I made a huge pot of soup from the Christmas turkey, and we have all been reading. And napping.

How good it is to be far away, on this island.