Haust (Autumn): A Memoir of a Remarkable Daily Life on a Small Island in the Salish Sea (Crane Island Journal: Part One) [B1920]

2024 PB in nice clean condition. "In the 80s when we cruised through the San Juan Islands with our young family on a big green and white Washington State ferry, I wondered what it would be like to live in this beautiful place of mountains, forests, islands, and boats. And then we did. From October 19, 2010, through October 18, 2011, I kept a daily journal of our life on Crane Island, a private island at the south end of Deer Harbor on Orcas Island and north of Shaw Island, across Wasp Passage. This is that journal, Haust (Autumn), the first of four volumes - followed by Vetur, Vor, and Sumar, (winter, spring, and summer in Old Norse). Meet island people: odd, generous, insular, cosmopolitan, self-reliant, skeptical, devout. Follow resident otters, mink, raccoons, deer, voles, owls, ravens, eagles - all living sometimes reluctantly but creatively with us recent colonizers. See sunrises, wind-driven rain, king tides, opaque fog, starry skies, and hot tub sleet. Participate in wood cutting, daily boating and an occasional blown engine, a rock and roll choir, gardening club, food bank, men's group, ferry culture, hiking, crabbing, IKEA kitchen remodel, community politics, farmers market, northwest gardening, publishing business development, community projects, holiday potlucks, water system, and docks management, religious congregation, garage sales and exchanges, parties, music, horse training, and the surprising richness of a small population. Experience coping, planning, cooperation, elation, joy, frustration, disappointment, success, friendship, betrayal, peace, love, the numinous, and gossip. This is a memoir of a sort, what one person saw, reacted to, acted on, and wrote down, but it's mostly about daily life on small, beautiful, private island, a marriage, a family, and a community. And it's a report of specifics, specimen days, short on generalization and advice, with hundreds of examples that can be unpacked in different ways. And finally, it's not a travel book. It's what you see and experience if you live on Crane Island or in Deer Harbor, or on Orcas Island, but what you can't see passing through no matter how hard you look. Yvonne and I loved our life on Crane; it was precious, surprising, and deeply satisfying. But it was also difficult and eventually too challenging for aging boomers - so we decamped to an easier life, RV travel, and now city life. But we'll never forget our golden time on Crane."--John Ashenhurst

From the Amazon review (so far): "This story takes place on tiny Crane Island, just off of the larger Orcas Island, which has a ferry back to the mainland. Crane Island does not. It also has a population of about 20 and the people who live there have to maintain the water system, the dock, the land if there has been a storm and the social system. If they want to get to the larger island to get to a store they have to take a small boat to get there. They know what they are getting into but there are many surprises. Thank you John Ashenhurst for the great read and for introducing your great friends, family and fulfilling way of life."; ""; ""