How to Be an Islander

摘要

It was the summer of the birds. In late June, my two kids and I took the ferry from Seattle to a small, remote patch of land in the San Juan Islands, where our family's A-frame cabin sits on an empty stretch of beach. Late winter and spring had been warmer than usual, and many eggs had hatched early. The day we arrived, we found a swallow's nest in the center of an inner tube on the deck. Raven fledglings squawked from the forest. The baby owls screeched at night as if they were hunted prey.