The pace in August was full speed ahead as we experienced one of the most beautiful summers we have seen in a long time. It was easy to forget that Labor Day was just around the corner when people spent afternoons on the Islesford Sand Beach. A heat wave accompanied the first days of September, and reality was suspended as people, who had not though of ocean swimming for years, cooled off in the 65-degree water. (Some for as long as 20 minutes at a time!) But behind the hot haze a hurricane was brewing and it looked like it was headed our way. Lobster fishermen quickly lengthened the rope of their inshore traps, and moved them out into deeper water. A move that usually takes place over the month of September was accomplished in two days. Sailboats and small motor boats were hauled out of the water at record speed to dry out at their winter resting spots, abruptly ending the summer sailing season.
It turned out that Hurricane Earl took a 200-mile detour to the east. All we got was a half day of rain followed by cool, breezy weather, but the seasons had suddenly changed overnight.
The mass exodus of people around Labor Day leaves Little Cranberry Island eerily quiet on Tuesday. Children assemble in the schoolyard for the first day of school, and it has become an informal ritual for adults to gather, to watch the students arrive and take photographs. Grownups outnumber the students by at least two to one. It is a time to catch up with each other, asking about how the summer went, commenting on how cool the weather has become, and mentioning the near miss of the hurricane. Once the students have filed into the building the adults wander off with a “now what?” expression on their faces. After a summer of constant activity, we look forward to the slow down, but it takes a while to adjust.
I attended the gathering of the first day of school, and then went to have tea with my sister-in-law. I had not taken the time to do this enough over the summer. Her brother stopped in long enough to say that Labor Day had been an awful day for him: “I did nothing. I took two naps and I got nothing done!” When you spend the summer keeping a calendar in your head, keeping track of when everyone arrives and leaves, and what you need to do during the two weeks they are here, the sudden gift of free time can feel like a burden. We forget what to do with an unplanned day. The feeling is hard to put into words, but almost everyone who lives here knows what I’m talking about. The suddenness of change does not bring instant relief. It takes a little time to adjust. The Cranberry Isles have just gone from populations of up to 350, to populations ranging from 70 to 100. In just a day it seems that the number of houses with lights on at night has dwindled by two-thirds. The boat schedules have changed from six trips to four, and the last trip home is at 4:30 p.m. The restaurant closed before Labor Day because most of their crew headed back to high school or college. It will be a long wait until we can walk down the road again for a restaurant meal on a night when we don’t feel like cooking. I Googled “summer to fall transition” hoping to find some inspiring quotes from poets about this time of year. Mostly I found fashion advice, but this quote by the American poet John Vance Cheney comes close to saying what I want to describe: “A breath, whence no man knows, Swaying the grating weeds, it blows; It comes, it grieves, it goes. Once it rocked the summer rose.”
I know from 34 years of living here that this transition is temporary; a doorway to whatever comes next. All we have to do is walk through the passage to reach the other side of this exquisite melancholy. In the words of Stanley Horowitz: “Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.” The mosaic we can now create includes predictable schedules, nights that are cool enough to enjoy the weight of blankets, a renewed wardrobe of wool sweaters and heavier slacks, quiet, Wolf River apples, watching the progress of knitting projects by passengers on the mail boat, leaves falling off trees making even more stars visible at night, pumpkins, planting spring bulbs, the migration of confusing fall warblers and the stories of their stops to rest on lobster boats at sea, the incredible angle of sunlight, reacquainting ourselves with the students and their projects at the Islesford School, and at last some time to spend with our friends of whom we have seen too little this summer. We just made it through the fall and it is now time to dust ourselves off and enjoy Autumn.
– September 15, 2010, Islesford