Playing Norwegian cribbage
Snettisham
2016 - 6: Card Table
August 21-24
The
day was bright, the forecast for partly cloudy skies and strong
north winds. With the failure of August trips fresh in my mind, I took
the cautionary approach and borrowed the Kathy M. We fueled up at
Tesoro's, then sped south, my vague shame at taking the larger boat
assuaged as we encountered heady swells and white caps coming round the
back side of Douglas. In the Kathy M they were hardly more than
gentle hills, but we'd have been wet and uneasy in the Ronquil, if we'd
continued at all. I was concerned about the falling tide when we
arrived, but it was
still high enough to make offloading easy with little risk of
grounding. Ezra held the boat off while I took a load up to the lodge
and grabbed a kayak, leaving 
Cailey
on shore while I anchored the boat.
As I started the systems, the propane on the stove barely lit and then
quickly went out, so I changed the tank and then showed Ezra around the
property. It was already on in the evening, so we had 
a snack
dinner,
chatted, and then moved to the porch as the stars came out to watch the
moon rise over the mountain across the inlet. We sat in lawn chairs on
the edge of the deck, watching the glow from the moon for an impossibly
long time before it finally peered over the alpine. We agreed it was
waning gibbous. Fast moving, black and gray clouds swept around the
moon, and I saw an endless parade of creatures and objects in the sky
to Ezra's bafflement. As someone who rarely sees shapes in clouds, I
was delighted. I was also delighted by the bat who flew
across our vision periodically. He swept through the porch a few times,
touching the window twice (I think), and a few times I thought he
stopped
flying while he was up there. Once, I was peering up in the dark with
the crazy idea
that he was resting under the eaves and a small splat confirmed
it! The next day I found it on the lower deck, so he'd hung under the
very outer edge of the overhang.
I was
up early the next morning and headed to the lodge ahead of
Ezra where he found me reading on the porch. He took a short walk to
read and then
we chatted a little and went for a walk at low tide, encountering
some translucent and semi-translucent jellyfish along the way and
some areas where eagles had torn up the sand for all their walking (or
maybe other critters had). I was at first playfully alarmed at the boot
tracks I
encountered until I realized that they were Rory's tracks alongside
mine from more than a month prior! I
made
quesadillas for lunch and then we set up a card table
in the sunshine on the deck and played a board game he'd brought and
then a round of Norwegian cribbage. The day was warm and wonderful;
wrens
bopped in
the arbors made by bending ferns in the berry bushes and eagles and
herons
passed over the flats. I then cozied up on the couch inside for an
hour, perhaps
sleeping for 20
minutes of that, before walking to my cabin and then to the rocky point
in the
sunshine where I lingered for a bit. While there I found a large oval
of scat (or a huge pellet?) primarily
consisting of shells, with one good sized claw in it! On my way back, I
encountered Ezra emerging from his
cabin after a nap of his own. We then went for a short kayak in the
evening.
 Moon over the river |
 We walk the river at low tide |
 Small jelly |
 Bat scat! |
 Cailey hunts |
 View from the point |
 Scat with claw on the point |
 Spider and fly prey |
That
night I made chowder for dinner, which we ate outside on the card table
on the upper deck. A spider was feasting on a fly in the middle of it!
I unfortunately scared him off trying to determine if he was alive.
Afterwards I tried to get online but failed, and for some reason was
unwilling to let Ezra help me, despite his expertise in that area.
I slept
in a little the next morning, coming over to the lodge around 9:00 and
finding Ezra on the couch already. That
day we took the
Kathy M and cruised over to Fanny Island where we walked through the
fox farm ruins and into the woods, a thoroughly wet endeavor,
analyzing the many misshapen and leaning trees on the east side of
the island and considering the different kinds of blueberries. When
we
got back, I made pasta for dinner which we ate on the upper deck
outside again.
The
next morning I had a cup of jasmine tea and we hung out until I agreed
to
have Ezra
check the boat around 11:00 to see if it was floating (it was
surrounded by water, but not clear whether it was aground or not) for a
quick departure. By the time
he was at the edge of the water I could see that it was beginning to
tilt to one side. I did some cleaning chores while he was out, then we
went for another walk upriver before finishing packing and heading out
to the boat while it was still aground. The water was pleasant on the
ride back; we ran out of gas at Sandy Beach and I put another five
gallons in to make it to the harbor. The tachometer after that seemed
to be malfunctioning, reading maximum rpms (over 7000) as we finished
the ride, which could hardly have been accurate. Probably time to
service the boat.
