You’ve stocked up on good olive oil, gochujang, and several jars of Duke’s Mayonnaise. You changed the oil in your car. You’ve forwarded your mail and have pre-addressed packages ready to go with your prescriptions. Over the last few weeks, you’ve been provisioning and preparing yourself for June 5th, the start of your extended stay on Orcas Island and the property you purchased last August.  “Purchased” is a stretch; you paid money to secure a loan on a deed to a piece of land which, at best, if everything works out, you will have exclusive rights. Apart from the fact that 90% of your belongings have been there since August 15th, 2024, it doesn’t quite feel like “yours."

The shortest version of how you came to this property is this: after thirty years living in Portland, Oregon and more than a decade of dreaming of finding some rural property with which to build some kind of retreat/refuge/residency-type concept, your then-boyfriend sent you a listing to a foreclosure on Orcas Island, where he was living at the time. In a gesture of blind faith, you bid on the property with the backing of the money that your mother left you when she died in 2022. You really didn’t expect the bid to get accepted, but it was. With a feeling of urgency to get out of Portland and the chaotic cocktail of perimenopause and love, you plunged forward. Everything you wanted your life to contain was in sight. However, the very weighty baggage of the property’s history and the very intractable mental illness of your boyfriend conspired to ensnare your life dream into a nightmare catch-22. Only 4 days after closing, you were alone on a strange piece of land, on an island, with no water, apart from the view. You couldn’t make sense of what happened or what to do next, so you decided to give it the winter. The fires in LA brought you the opportunity to offer refuge to someone who needed it, and he in turn has brought new life to the property while you were down in Portland, recalibrating.

You have a ferry reservation from Anacortes to Orcas Island on June 5th, and your return is scheduled for September 2nd. The Golf is filled with dog food, paper towels, and everything else that you can buy in Oregon without the sales tax and island pricing. The summer has loomed in front of you for so long that it became hypothetical. What will you accomplish? What will you learn? What's the worst that can happen? You've come this far making plenty of errors in judgement, without many regrets. And you've never been afraid of doing the hard thing, but admitting defeat is different, and difficult. If you've learned anything from the last year, it's to let go of certainty or an attachment to outcome. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and stock up on your favorite mayonnaise.