Binocular Bathing!

Hi Everyone!

It’s been a while since I last updated, so I’ll try to give you a quick biographical sketch of my life to date. So far, the month of June has held 6 days of sunlight and a high temperature of 82 degrees. Fog tends to just hang out on the islands and I cannot get a tan on this island if my life depended on it, and believe me I have tried…

Last Tuesday was sunny and I decided to kayak over to another island to do some fieldwork. I came ashore on one of the vacant sandy beaches and didn’t think much of where I was. After completing my work, I went back to where my kayak was and decided to go for my monthly “dip.” Well, I happened to be wearing cotton clothing which doesn’t fare well when cold and wet, so I decided to just strip down and do a quick plunge. The water was about 50 degrees, a far cry from the 36 degree March water and it was actually semi-pleasant, so I stayed in for a minute or two complementing myself on my new found cold tolerance… and then I saw her. The house on the beach, previously thought by me to be vacated, was not. Mrs. Bryet, a shockingly still alive 92 year old woman, was standing on the beach- cane in the left hand, binoculars in the right- looking straight at me. As I ran out of the water, the binoculars followed. I wasn’t sure whether I should cover my face in fear of being identified, or cover the other indecencies. In a Maine court case a couple years back, a few women were arrested for streaking- charged with public nudity and indecent exposure. Turns out, most women under Maine law are exempt from public nudity and indecent exposure due to the fact that genitalia cannot actually be seen. Yeah, I covered my face. Anyways, I rushed to get my clothes on, shoved off in my kayak before Mrs. Bryet could identify any of my moles in a line-up, and paddled home…

Having written that whole paragraph above, I’d like to go ahead and announce that I ate sea urchin gonads at 6am this morning…while looking for baby lobsters under small boulders at low tide. They were salty and quite delicious, though they could have benefited from a cracker or a piece of sushi. People often ask me what I do for fun on the island and when I say things like this, they give me a look as if I’m a total basket case who will never emerge from the deep end. My sister, for example, once proclaimed in annoyance: “Eliza, I just don’t know how to talk to you anymore!” The longer I live on this island, the more I believe that the people who live here year-round are here because they have lost the ability to function on the Mainland, or the Muggle World. So this island life I live, a life where squirrels and open container laws do not exist, yet fairy houses and 25 year old lobstermen constables do, is gaining on me. You’ll just have to come and visit to get the full effect!

Love,

Eliza