The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got a friend who just bought property a quarter mile down the road, up a dead end gravel road past some recent clearcuts, cars parked along the road, mobile homes hauled in, a small community of fellow South Enders perched on their plots in Paradise.  She has a small cabin with an extension cord for power off the neighbor’s grid, an outhouse,  a hose for water from the shared well and 5 acres with a few nice cedars and firs encroached upon by nettles and blackberries.  For now, summer time, the place is more than livable, it’s sunny and private, a refuge from the island’s gridlock and gated communities.

It puts me in mind of my arrival at my own shack some 45 years ago, all agog and wearing thick rose colored glasses, ready for a new start, anxious to leave behind all the baggage of my previous life.  Helping my friend move a shed back toward the woods the other day, all I could think about was the excitement I felt when I came here, my own woods, my own house, my new garden, the joy of going back to the land, planting fruit trees, shrubs, vegetables, learning to build sheds, remodel that shack, fix the well pump, all that pioneer stuff.  No doubt some would scoff and shake their heads, the dumb kid bought a pig’s ear, a logged off acreage mostly nettled and primitive and no damn wonder it cost next to nothing.

Beauty, so they say, is in the eye of the myopic.  Or something like that.  I remember the look my old man gave the place first time he set foot on the property.  Shack leaning into the mud, blackberries taking over, salmonberry jungles and nettle barriers, a son who should have known better than to move to the end of an island at the end of civilization, no job prospects, no homesteader skills, no damn sense.  What was the boy thinking?  He saw a shabby life ahead of me where I saw a new start.  I guess we were both right.

My friend is starting over.  She’s a bit older than I was and no doubt a helluva lot wiser.  She’s gonna do fine up there.  She’s already remodeling the cabin, got PUD coming today to hook up the power, water lines next and indoor plumbing.  She can see the future from her front porch steps.  And it’s wide open, an unlimited horizon.  I envy her, I really do, but for now I’m enjoying the nostalgia.  You go, girl!

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