Day 94, Saturday, September 17

A little back ground on Lasquetti Island. It has been in the past and to some extent today continues to be an island of hippies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that in a negative tone at all! The island is charming and beautiful. Life here just goes a bit slower than else where in the outside world. Slower and much more relaxed. I ‘d heard Michael mention several times yesterday that in order to get to the main harbor where the ferry docks, you walk down a long path out to the road, past "the cookie stand" and then turn right. Coming from Chicago, I was having problems envisioning what "the cookie stand" was. The only place I’ve seen "cookie stands" is as stores in malls. Turns out that the cookie stand is just that. A stand something like you’d expect to see young kids using to sell lemonade in an episode of the Little Rascals. It’s not even manned! The guy bakes cookies and harvests veggies from his garden then leaves them in the stand along with a price list and a small radio playing songs to keep away raccoons. People simply drive by, drop their change in the bucket and grab a cookie. Can you imagine this concept being attempted in Chicago or any other non-Lasquitian city? All of the produce plus the money in the bucket would be gone by the end of the day. Yet it works quite well here on Lasquiti. According to Michael, people often will go by and grab a cookie without paying several times but then realize they’ve not paid for the last few visits and just guess some amount to toss in the till. Apparently the guy actually comes out ahead with this system most of the time. Again, very cool!
Michael’s got two types of water in his house there. The water coming out of the tap is actually drained from a swamp further up his land. It’s got a very earthy smell and taste and generally isn’t good to drink. The drinking water there gets collected in a pickle barrel and is siphoned from a standing pool of water just inside the mouth of an abandoned gold mine there on his property. This water also has an orangish tint and earthy taste but is apparently good and clean. Sort of reminds me of us pulling water out of the spring at Happy Hollow when we tent camped on our land there.
I’m not sure I’d be thrilled to live on Lasquiti at my current stage of life but I can see that it’d be a wonderful place to grow up as a young kid! No poison Ivy, no fierce animals to worry about, and LOTS and LOTS of woods and shoreline to play in and on. Heaven for a kid!