Plastic drifts onto the Island

Well, not exactly. We brought it on. Deliberately. The days are getting shorter, and there are a few projects we need to button up before winter.

There are three structures on the island: the shed, the shack, and the outhouse. And then there's the woodpile. Every week we find yet another piece of the shed and/or shack on the ground and relegate it to the wood pile. The shed is actually pulling away from the shack, to which it's attached. Or is it vice-versa? We don't know if one is actually holding up the other, or which one, or if they're co-dependent, but they're doing a pretty bad job of it in any case. And since all our tools, gadgets and gizmos are stored in one of those two, we have to "do something about it", as Steve would say.

So in the interest of time, last night we bought a Rubbermaid garden shed plus other wood stuff needed to stand it on, piled it all on the pontoon boat (work boat, party boat, barge, deck, or dining room, depending on what we're using it for) and hauled it out to the island to assemble.

It should be done tomorrow. I'm so ashamed, so very ashamed...

Stix & Stones

We have two major problems on the island (well, three if you count the always present logistical problem of getting anything on or off it ) erosion of the shoreline on three sides from the waves caused by boats' wakes', and the large piles of wood & other debris with no place to put it. The biggest pile actually has the demolished old outhouse, complete with toilet seat, various hand towel dispensers and other detritus.

So this weekend was spent putting a dent in both problems. We figured out that, if I started hoisting rocks from the lake bed up on the edge of the shoreline, eventually it would become a smaller version of those old stone jetties we had on the beaches when I was a kid. (Probably now those same jetties would be politically incorrect, and I'm betting those that haven't been boardwalked over now have, besides the Danger signs, maybe a rubber coating on the sharp edges, and soft playground sand to land on if, in the unlikely occurence of a kid actually fishing or playing on them, he should slip -- oops! is "he" too gender specific?). Ow, these run-on sentences and digressions are giving me a headache!

Anyway, I spent two blissful days hauling and heaving rocks. Along the way, I re-learned a science fact I had long forgotten: rocks weigh less in water. At the same time it disproved "no pain, no gain". Lots of rocks, a pretty good start to our erosion plan, and no pain. And I stayed cool in the knee-high water, to boot.

Steven decided to burn the wood. Not knowing if woodburning was "allowed", we decided to call it a campfire, and practiced our mea culpas in case we should need them. By the end of the weekend, most of the outhouse was gone.

But the best part about owning an island is that there's very little government, policing or regulating going on in practice -- it's too hard for them to get there. Might just elect ourselves King and Queen, maybe secede from the Union...

The Accidental Tree Hugger

The hubs had been whining about having a place on the water for ages. (He would call it "pining" not "whining", but that's why it's my blog.) A place where he could just hang out, not have to take care of a house or anything, maybe just a lot with a garage, a place to park his car & put a small boat in.

Now when it comes to the environment, admittedly, I'm a little slow on the uptake. Until last year, I didn't even bother to recycle or return bottles. Sometimes I'd leave returnables in the alley for someone else to pick up if they wanted, but mostly I thought that 5c deposit paid for the haul-away.

So last fall, when I picked up a monthly throwaway & saw an ad for an island in the middle of Kinderhook Lake, I never noticed my life was about to change. No bells clanged, no firecrackers went off, and the little exclamation point never showed up in a balloon over my head. I called the Realtor, got some pics, and told Steve about it, but he sort of grunted and ignored me because he was busy. Finally, on Christmas Day, when we had no other obligations, I made him take a ride out to the lake. By this time the lake level was lowered, as is done every fall, and there was no way to get on the island. So we drove around the lake so we could view thru binoculars from different angles, and I called the broker. Somewhere in the dead of winter we closed on a property we had never come more than 200' near, and waited for the lake association to raise the water levels in spring.

What we envisioned in February as a kick-back place where we had no maintenance, in June is becoming a lesson on micro-environmental systems, interdependency, and recycling, all pretty much born of necessity, because there isn't an easy way to get stuff on or off the island.

It should be an interesting summer.