Solstice Notes

Despite the lack of running water or plumbing, the daily mouse dropping patrol in the kitchen, and the fact that opening and closing two cattle gates to come and go from the property has lost some of its charm, I am settling in and, I think, settling well. I joined the Orcas Island Fitness Center for my showers and sauna. My wonderful neighbors Hilary and Hank gave me romaine lettuce from their garden and laundry privileges. I joined the Orcas Food Co-Op, found an excellent bakery, and attended not one but two community events! 

Last Saturday, millions of people participated in the No Kings protest across hundreds of towns and cities, Eastsound Washington being one of them. I was eager to go, after missed the Hands Up rally in April due to lack of childcare for my geriatric dog…and a touch of agoraphobia.  But it’s hard to shake that “new kid” feeling, walking around the village green like you’re in the high school cafeteria looking for a friendly table to join, even when the majority of your new classmates are over 70. The median age in San Juan County is 56.7, which means I am considered young. Such a breath of fresh air coming from the advertising industry, where you referencing The Goonies is a liability. The choice between desperately trying to convince people under 40 that I was once cool and reading protest signs aloud to an 83 year old woman in leggings who looks like my mom is, for me, an easy one. 

If the property and house aren’t yet taking shape under my watch, I feel something closer to settled than I did a week ago.  Sarge does too, for better or worse. As I write this, he is wading through the clover in front of my office window. His bright red bandana and plump butt bouncing across the field fills me with oxytocin. But I soon realize that his wandering has a purpose, for he is in search of fresh deer shit, and it looks like he’s found it. I thought keeping him out of the garbage was hard, but preventing him from eating cow and deer shit is a sisyphean endeavor. 

Speaking of Sisyphus, I've been spending most of my time outdoors trying to get ahead of the tansy ragwort metastasizing across the property and the neighbor’s cattle ranch on either side. There are other invasive species to worry about, like the Himalayan and cutleaf blackberry, gorse, thistle, Scotch broom, hawthorn, and of course our steadfast friend, bamboo. But the ragwort is my personal nemesis and I can already tell that I am not going to be happy until every last rosette, stem, and flower is gone, which will probably be never. Tansy Ragwort is a Class B noxious weed, toxic to cattle and humans. It has a sinister look and a more sinister smell.  Colloquially, it’s known as ‘stinking willie’ and ‘mare’s fart’ and I can already feel the scent imprinting on me. What lilac is to spring in New England, tansy ragwort is the exact opposite to summer in Washington.

Every day, for 1-4 hours, I hunch across the property with my trusty my Grampa’s Weeder. Weeding is the perfect meditative activity for my ADHD brain, and an opportunity to feel like you have control in a moment where there is so very little. Every root tendril yanked from the ground is one tiny victory for the native and non-invasive plants, the soil and the water table, and me, the inept homesteader. I AM making a difference! Every -less feeling, helpless, hopeless, powerless, can be temporarily alleviated with a little bit of weeding. The tendons in my right arm and the scalines in my neck have a different opinion about this, but we’re taking it up with an acupuncturist next week.

Here at the solstice, we’ve reached a crossroads. The grass is too high, the ground too hard, the tansy too mature and too prolific to focus only on the roots. The moment calls for new tactics. Though it’s not the ideal solution, I am now taking out the tansy from the top down.  It won’t kill the plants and it may encourage them to spread laterally, but I’m fixated on my mission that no ragwort inflorescence will bloom on my watch (I can feel one opening just to spite me).  After a week of focusing on different parts of the property, I think I’m at the stage where I patrol the entire parcel every day, looking for those swollen buds edging towards yellow, deadhead, then go back later to pull out the roots. If I find flowers, they must get bagged, then burned in the fall. After casing from the top, I go back to the Grampa’s Weeder and work on the new rosettes forming on the lawn. If I’m successful, maybe there will be 20-30% less ragwort at this time next year?  It’s just a guess. Meanwhile, the Himalayan blackberry blossoms are exploding everywhere. Gardening is a metaphor for everything. 

The summer solstice was Saturday. It rained for the first time since I’ve been here, and learned the lesson about leaving all your outdoor shoes outside. Despite the heat waves in the rest of the country, it’s cool here, so I warmed up with a fire in the wood stove and then headed into Eastsound for the annual Summer Solstice parade.

This may come as a shock, but I am not a parade person. I guess I missed the formative window when parades symbolized joy and community, or I spent too many years living in Portland watching people lock their lawn chairs to street posts, and trying to find viable ways in and out of Downtown in June. And marching bands stress me out. But the solstice parade is touted as “Quintessentially Orcas Island” and what’s the point of trying on a new life if you’re going to be so cynical? So I pulled Sarge away from the bucket of dog food he had somehow found a way into, and we drove into town. The parade was short, maybe 20 minutes. The theme was…pollination? The theme was “The Sweetest Place To Bee Alive,” and it began with a battalion of bees and ended with a flourish of flowers (including a small marching band that didn’t raise my cortisol levels). Sarge, dehydrated from all the kibble he ransacked right before we left, drank out of every sidewalk puddle he could find and I didn’t stop him.

Something strange happened at both the No Kings rally on the village green and the solstice parade. In the midst of all the activity around me, I found myself overcome with emotion and barely able to hold back tears. It wasn't grief, but it wasn't joy. It wasn't the feeling of finally feeling I am where I should be, nor the feeling that I don’t belong here. Maybe it was just the contrast of isolation and community? My (swear to god actual) fantasy of being a caretaker of a hotel in the off season has finally come true. I’ve spent the last 2+ weeks tending to three dogs, and obsessing about weeds. Coming to these events as a lone bystander is like being an alien who got lucky enough to land on Orcas Island to observe humanity. Only this alien has way too many emotions and came by crash landing.

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