Summer, Slugs, and Cell Phones

I’m not one of those lucky people who grew up in one place with familiar faces all around them. If that was your experience, I truly envy you. My family moved many times, and I continued that pattern as an adult – with one exception. When my parents were young and nearly penniless, they joined with two other families to purchase a tiny summer cabin on an island in Maine. My family still gathers there almost every summer, and that’s how I get to appreciate what time does to a familiar place.

When I was little, the entire island had exactly one telephone. It's still there, right next to the Community Hall, down near the public wharf. 

As a teenager, I spent hours on that phone with my college boyfriend, fending off mosquitoes and pesky interlopers who wanted their turn on the phone. These days, everyone has landlines and cell phones, but some things don’t change. Cell service comes and goes out there, and communication with the outside world is still blessedly sketchy.

When I was little, the woods at the north end of the island were thick and daunting. The paths were hard to find and if I ever had to walk through them at night—say, after a cookout on the beach--I would cling to an adult’s hand the entire time. I will never forget the terror I felt stepping into the world of those dark, looming evergreens. These days, there’s a sign post for the path. A sign post!

And if I need some light, I use the flashlight app on my iPhone.

What else? In our little cottage, the only toilet was in the basement where the slugs and spiders lived. When you had to pee at night, you had a choice between the dreaded trek downstairs and a chamber pot. Every night I held a long, agonized internal debate about which was better, or at least less horrid. We had no shower, so we ran around all day long with ocean salt drying on our skin. Occasionally my mother would heat water on the stove and stick us in a washtub. The only means we had of cleaning our clothes involved an old tin washboard and lots of scrubbing. These days? Over the protests of the younger generation, the elders put in an actual bathroom with tub, shower, and laundry. I’ve never seen a single slug in there. Peeing has become a drama-free experience.

It’s amazing how things change even in timeless places like Cliff Island, and how some things don’t.

We have Internet access now. The island has a Facebook page and a website for renting cottages. Washing machines are common, but we still hang our clothes out to dry in the sun. The kids of today are offered organized activities—soccer games and sandcastle contests—while we had nothing but bikes, swimsuits and lots of free time. But some things never change.

On a sunny day, if the tide is right, kids still spend all day at “the cove,” then skip down to the wharf for an ice cream cone.

I wouldn’t trade my tech-challenged, slug-infested memories for anything. On the other hand, you won’t catch me complaining about WiFi and hot showers. And those flashlight apps – they’re fantastic.

Is there a place you return to every year, or maybe where you've been living since childhood? I'd love to hear about it!

xoxo
Jennifer

Summer Postcard from Homer

Time for a postcard from beautiful Homer, Alaska, otherwise known as the "quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem." It's finally starting to warm up here and we've been inundated with RV's trundling through town. Homer is known as the "End of the Road," because, well, you can probably figure it out. Only one highway heads south from Anchorage -- we call it Highway 1 -- and it runs out of pavement when it gets to Homer. Tourists come for the halibut fishing, the stunning views of glaciers right across Kachemak Bay, and for glimpses of the Time Bandit, which you may know from The Deadliest Catch.

Many of the RV's wind up on the Homer Spit, a long finger of mud that stretches toward the majestic mountains across the bay. Here you can park your traveling home, camp, eat everything from pizza to king crab, and bask in the alpenglow. The Spit is kind of like the Atlantic City Boardwalk, Alaska style. Instead of fried clams, we have fried halibut. The Salty Dawg Saloon tends to be more popular than the ice cream shop, simply because there's often a knife-cold wind blowing in from the ocean. The "Better Sweater" shop is always busy. It's hard to foresee just how cold it's going to be when you're visiting from Nashville or Florida. A cruise ship docks in Homer every two weeks, spilling out passengers who hop onto shuttles when they want to venture into the rest of town. Homer goes out of its way to offer visitors a good experience. Even the extra-clean public bathrooms feature bald eagles scenically perched on the lampposts outside.

But just for you, here's a sight-seeing tip few tourists know: the best eagle viewing in town is at the dump. Best in terms of numbers, but maybe not photo ops. The same bird that looks so majestic soaring through the air can look pretty scraggly when its scoping out the landfill for food scraps. Our visiting cousins seemed to take this phenomenon very personally. Should the symbol of America really be poking around the dump competing with seagulls and crows? I guess a bird's got to do what a bird's got to do. In Alaska, no matter the season, it's all about survival.

Scavenger eagles aside, if you're looking from a respite from the sweltering heat in the rest of the country, you're welcome to bundle up, head into the wind, and bask in our twenty-hour a day, mildly warm sunshine. The days may not get very hot, but at least they last a long time. And make sure you stop by the dump on the way into town!

Have you been to Alaska? If not, is it on your bucket list?

Coming at you from the land of the midnight sun,

Jennifer