With A Little Help From My Friends

If you want to read a feel good story, here is one that is sure to brighten your day.

NY couple, trucker help injured butterfly migrate
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAKE LUZERNE, N.Y. -- A monarch butterfly has a chance at completing its species' famed migration to central Mexico thanks to some tiny cardboard splints, a bit of contact cement and a trucker from Alabama.

The insect's broken wing was painstakingly splinted by an upstate New York couple who then helped it hitch a ride south after the weather in the southern Adirondacks turned cold.

To read more, click here.

On the Virtues of Wandering

Wandering has advantages. We started off heading for the Woods Coffee House located along the Bellingham Bay waterfront in Boulevard Park. But we were hungry for something more substantial, so we ended up at the Old Town Cafe instead, and enjoyed a delightful late lunch. Since we were already near the docks, after lunch we decided to try to find gate 9 at Squalicum Harbor. That's where nautical suspense writer Clyde Ford, whom we both enjoy reading, just might have his boat moored. We didn't find his boat, but we came across the Marine Life Center where we spent a pleasant half hour talking with the curator about their rather wonderful Giant Pacific octopus, a sick sea perch, assorted tide pool critters, and the destructive effects of the sonar used by the U.S. Navy. We left the Bellingham marina headquarters parking lot and headed to Boulevard Park. So, with a few hours of sunlight left we have finally wandered into Woods Coffee House and are sitting in front of their stone fireplace enjoying fresh coffee and a warming fire. Lots of small sailboats are out on the Bay taking advantage of light winds and a chill, but sunny afternoon. Maybe we’ll make one more stop before going home. Seeing the sailboats makes me think of nautical charts. I think I remember a marine supply store we passed on our way here…

… Bob

A Day in the Mountains

It wasn’t raining when we got up last Sunday morning. In fact there were patches of blue sky that showed promise for the day. “We should do something today,” Bob said, “Should we drive down the coast or into the mountains?” I opted for the mountains. I threw a couple of apples and a chocolate bar into a pack along with my birding binoculars and a camera. We left I-5 at the Mount Baker Highway exit, and headed east toward the northern Cascades.

It had been three years since we’d traveled this road, even before our move to Canada. We’d rented snowshoes at REI and planned a weekend of snowshoeing at Mount Baker. Now we watched for familiar sights along the 57-mile National Forest Scenic Byway that runs through the Nooksack Indian Reservation, past Christmas tree farms and horse-boarding ranches, and parallels the Nooksack River, a well-known salmon river. I can’t say that any of it looked familiar until we got to the little community of Glacier – population under one hundred. There’s the ski shop where I bought my wool knit cap. And there’s the grocery store owned by that young couple. And… there’s that old restaurant with the mahogany bar brought around the Horn and the huge wood-burning stove in the center of the room. So of course we decided to stop for lunch there.

Graham’s Restaurant is located in an old building that originally began as a general store in 1902. When we walk in the waitress says, “Grab a menu there next to the door and sit anywhere you want.” No problem with seating in the middle of the afternoon during the off-season. Their menus are unique… I mean the physical menu. It looks like a small town newspaper. There are headlines, historic photos, articles such as: “Sasquatch: Mysterious, Elusive, and Protected by Law,” “So You’ve Never Worked in a Restaurant Before,” and “People of the Ferns.” Printed boldly on the top right hand side of the front page… “Cash, and Canadian currency accepted.” (Some of you may not know how remarkable that statement is – we have been forced to use a credit card numerous times because neither cash nor Canadian currency, or even a debit card was accepted!!) Pages three through six contained the menu.

They have fun here. Under “Starters” is this: Wedgies Our well-trained, highly motivated, courteous staff will personally cook your potato wedgies in our well-equipped, massive kitchen. You can doctor up your wedgies with ketchup, sriracha, ranch or peanut butter (peanut butter is our least popular). The walls of the restaurant are decorated with miscellaneous antiques, old movie posters for the 1935 film “Call of the Wild,” and photos of Clark Gable and Loretta Young who starred in that film. Mount Baker was one of the filming locations. There is even a photo of Loretta Young warming her hands over the very same wood stove that warms the room where we sat to eat lunch.

We continued the drive, twisting up hairpin curves to the Mount Baker ski area. The ski lifts looked pretty lonely, hanging immobile over bare pavement and ground. Skiing by Thanksgiving may be an iffy proposition. But the 1998-99 snowfall season at Mt. Baker set a new record for the most snowfall ever measured in the United States in a single season - 1,140 inches.

We returned to Bellingham, promising ourselves that we would go back to Mount Baker and Glacier when the snow flies. We have our own snowshoes now, well used through two winters in northern B.C. On Monday, we heard from our friend Richard in Kitwanga, “Its been snowing for a good part of the night, we now have 6 inches of fresh heavy snow and still coming down like crazy.”

Photos: Mount Shuksan from Mount Baker, and Graham’s Restaurant

... PLM

Shedding Old Identities

On the subject of identities… it is a familiar one to me, losing old ones, finding new ones. I think the greatest upheaval in my life came with my divorce. Everyone expected me to remain in my Victorian home, puttering in the garden and devoting my life to charitable good works, with a little travel thrown in… perhaps Elderhostel. Instead, I fell in love again, learned to sail, and headed north… in winter.

Our Winter Passage continues…

After the purchase of twenty-acres on Middle Rendezvous Island, I had little time for reflection over the next two months. I decided it was time to sell my home in Oregon, which required my traveling there to prepare the house for sale. My 1892 Victorian house had been the culmination of a long-held dream. I thought I would grow old in the house on the corner of Fifth and Adams. Now I found myself leaving it without a backward glance.

I had no second thoughts, or regrets, but I became aware that another aspect of my “self” was being stripped away …that of pride. The gracious Queen Anne house and surrounding gardens had given me that. It had set me apart from others, given me an identity of my own. Before then, society saw me through my husband. How many times had I been introduced as the “lovely wife” of so and so? More often than I care to remember. It was that pride, that ‘identity,’ which I now found hardest to part with – the recognition that went along with having restored and owned a landmark house. It was a double-edged sword, an ego booster that too rigidly defined who I was, even as “wife and mother” had previously defined me. In people’s minds, the house and I were inseparable. It became who I was.

Living on a sailboat a thousand nautical miles north solved that. No one in British Columbia knew or cared that I owned a National Register home, and that was okay. It was yet another identity that I had outgrown, like a snake shedding its skin. Life does have a way of stirring the pot just when you think you’ve got it all figured out. I remember sitting in my car outside the Social Security Office soon after my divorce was final. I looked at the newly reissued S.S. card, at the name MORNINGSTAR… my name. I began to cry… When I returned home from the Social Security office, I wrote in my journal:

(March 1996) Who could have known that there would be such significance in a name? Today I drove to the local Social Security Office to have my social security card reissued in my maiden name. I was not prepared for the sense of retrieval that came from this small act. Leaving the office, I thought, “I am no longer someone’s possession. I am my own person again.”

I still recall the feelings I experienced during the divorce, the fear of losing my identity. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was not a wife, a couple, or part of a mother/father team. I began to lose my sense of self when I gave up my own name thirty-five years ago. The “I” became “we” and as with so many other women of my generation, the self became submerged into the lives of others. With my divorce I have lost those roles, but I have gained the freedom to create my own identity. I guess that’s called growth.

“If you don't get lost, there's a chance you may never be found.” ~Author Unknown

... PLM

Identity Crisis

This blog started out as a travelogue. It chronicled our journey across the continent and back with our Jeep and 16-foot travel trailer… looking for hope. We traveled 14,730 miles over a two-month period. When we returned, we continued to blog, expanding its exposure through the Seattle P-I Reader’s Blog under the title “Living Simply.” We wrote about life off the grid in northern B.C. We wrote about nature and wildlife, and efforts to simplify our lives. We wrote about our concerns for America; worldwide environmental degradation; the loss of bio-diversity; and global climate change. Then our world changed… advanced stage lung cancer… and a move to a small U.S. city with a power grid, telephone lines, garbage pick-up, shopping malls, freeways, and traffic. And yes, convenient modern medical facilities where I receive leading edge cancer treatment.

The point of this rambling discussion is that the blog is facing an identity crisis. I could focus on cancer, but I write what I live and I don’t want cancer to consume the rest of my life. With the future in question, I find myself looking backwards. That is what I have been doing lately… rereading old journals and trying to record life’s memorable moments… the equivalent to painting my name on a rock – “Morningstar Was Here.” But perhaps those stories are of no interest to anyone but me. So I ask the visitors of this blog: What brings you back again? What do we write about that you find interesting? Looking back at old adventures? Living with cancer? Every day thoughts and experiences? We really want to know.

... PLM

Our First Days

Morningstar’s reflections on our first days at Middle Rendezvous Island…

Overnight, clouds have blown in to cover the stars and the moon. Another weather system will soon be upon us. It will bring rain, and our idyllic two days of discovery at Middle Rendezvous will be only a memory... but memories so rich they will last a lifetime. It has been a time to be young and lighthearted again. Heedless of slippery seaweed and rocks that give way, we explored the exposed cove at low tide; mounds of purple starfish filled a rocky crevice, orange basket stars, sea urchins, and oysters so plentiful that we had to hold back in our enthusiasm to take only a dozen. A bucket and garden trowel were all we needed to gather enough little neck and butter clams for dinner. I raked through the gravel, going deeper each time; with each stroke one of us would holler “There’s one!” Bob or I would pluck it out, rinse it off and throw it into our pink plastic bucket. Pink? What can I say? It was the only one we had.

An excursion just to find eagle feathers - does this sound like an acceptable pastime for two mature, rational adults? No, but it should be. We clambered over rocky cliffs and mossy bluffs, whacked our way through waist-high salal, looking up at snags, and under them for the tell-tale signs of eagle feasting - a fishtail, rodent skull, feathers, small bones. We didn’t find an eagle’s nest or perch tree, but we did find one beautiful eagle feather.

It was a time for love. Arms wrapped around each other, we stood looking out over the channel to the snow-covered mountains north and west of us, and to neighboring islands of Read, Maurelle, Raza, and Upper Rendezvous. Behind us the forest was alive with bird song; a woodpecker tap-tap-tapped against a decaying snag. Somewhere the deer slept or browsed, for everywhere we walked there was evidence that we were following in their tracks. We stood on a verdant carpet of moss, lichen, and succulents, as beautiful as any Oriental rug, their colors intermingled in shades of green, cream and gray; soft underfoot, it invited us to lie on our backs, close our eyes and bask in the warmth of afternoon sunlight. “Can this be real? Is this really ours?” Incredulous we reach for each other – clasping hands to reassure ourselves that at least we are real.

First Nation Peoples’ myths tell of a “Great Flood” and they call these islands “Drowned Mountains.” In fact the islands are ancient mountaintops surrounded by the sea. Even so, we explore our island as if it were all shiny new, virginal. We feel like explorers, the first to set foot upon the shoreline outcroppings and fern-filled forest floor. But when we look closely, we can see the truncated stumps of giant trees that once stood here before the crosscut saw and chainsaw brought them down early in this century. Nature persists though, and the old scars are already hidden by new growth… new life.

We too feel the healing powers of nature as we nap together cradled on the moss-cushioned ledge of granite. Bob, looking for a way down a rocky bluff, suddenly realizes his fear of heights is gone. He goes over the edge, hands grasping a limb or salal bush, feet seeking a foothold in the rocky face, cautiously - but with no fear - that was gone!

And laughter comes easily. (March 1998)

... PLM

Middle Rendezvous Island

We are moored in Refuge Cove when the realtor notifies us that our offer on 20+ acres of Middle Rendezvous Island has been accepted. He arrives by chartered boat with papers for us to sign. We are elated. Two days later, with frost covering our deck, we leave Refuge Cove. The air is cold but sunny as Chiron sails up Lewis Channel. Everywhere we look there are beautiful snow-capped mountains. We use one as our bearing to take us to Calm Channel, the Rendezvous Islands …and our new island home.

Let me tell you about Middle Rendezvous Island… The Rendezvous Islands consist of North, Middle, and South Rendezvous. They were originally named the Tres Marias (Three Marias) until 1792 when British Captain George Vancouver and Spanish explorer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, agreed to meet there in the course of their separate explorations of the Pacific Northwest coast. From that point on, they have been known as the Rendezvous Islands. They are located in Calm Channel on the western edge of Desolation Sound, and are part of a larger group of islands formally known as the Discovery Islands, and informally as the ‘outer islands.’

Middle Rendezvous (pictured above) was Crown Land until 1917, when it was sold to a private owner. There is no ferry service, telephone or other utilities on Middle Rendezvous Island. Transportation is by boat or float plane. Like everyone else out here, we will need to provide our own power and water. Grocery shopping will be done by boat and a trip to the store will depend upon weather and sea conditions. We join a small community scattered over a large area of separate islands… inter-dependence born of necessity. (March 1998)