The Idle Ides of August

One of the best fishing laws in this state is the one that disallows lobstering on Sundays in June, July, and August. One. Blessed. Day.

We went to bed on Saturday night, delighted at the prospect of sleeping late: we did in fact revel in our dream time, until the cats woke us up extra early. I myself passed the hours from 4am to 7am pondering town politics, the logistics of getting bags of compost from Barter's Lumber in Deer Isle to my garden, thought about what sort of house design (not mansard-roofed) could carry off a cupola and still suit its surroundings, among sundry other things. A small percent of the time was spent jockeying with Dave about who should be getting who coffee.

Predictably, we waited until 7:30, when we could stumble out of the house, across the yard, and into our neighbor's cafe. The win/win solution is to have Kate (or Steve) make the coffee. Pepe, who had been launched outdoors sometime earlier, immediately joined us on the trip next door- though being furry and prone to curiosity that manifests in surface climbing, he is not allowed into the cafe. So he settled in on the steps outside the sliding screen door.

The magic of Sundays on Isle au Haut is this: the whole time frame of the day is shifted forward by two hours. Locals crawl out of bed at seven instead of five: summer people stir at nine, not seven. This allows for a window at the cafe, from 7:30 to 9:00am, when we can congregate and actually spare some time for talking to one another, rather then just shooting sympathetic glances. Today was a particularly nice gathering, as it was the first wedding anniversary of one of the island's long-standing couples.

Conversation meandered, like it does but its core was very current- the seasonal topic is seasonal visitors. We dissected their pedestrian patterns, their mooring habits, their fascinating expectations about what amenities will be on an island that is generally advertised as amenity free.  Of course, summer people (of every category- day tripper to six monther) come in all of the same stripes as locals- some are gems, some are jerks.  Now's just the time when we're facing a density of them, and some are more dense than others, which makes for good stories.