Renaissance Beach, accessible only by boat, is famous for its hand-fed flamingoes. But at $125 for a 10-minute boat ride, the price feels steep—especially for this Pacific Northwest ferry-taking girl who’s used to a much cheaper ticket. If it had been on my bucket list, maybe the extravagance would have been justified, but since it’s not, I’ll take the free hikes at the Ayo and Casibari rock formations instead.
As you may have noticed, I’m busy planning our Aruba vacation!
A five-out-of-five-star storm blew through at dawn, whipping rain all over into tornado-like swells. As my blurry eyes adjusted, my feet shuffled onto our covered porch and uncovered skin reacted to the watery blasts, I noticed something missing. Our pool float, once bobbing in the water, was gone. The Oz-like winds had tossed it to the outer edge of the property, where it stood upright against a bank of trees—thankfully not into thorns, or across the road in a herd of cow pies or, worse, featured on the local social media page with a caption: “Who the heck’s is this?”
All day I’ve been submerged in North Woods by Daniel Mason, a book that reminds me of Hatchet but with sharper, more sinister twists through history. It grips me with its mix of human pleasures and tragedies, each story unfolding from the same cabin over centuries.
Meanwhile, another kind of storm—this one political—has me questioning my American pride. After watching JD Vance’s speech in Munich, I felt my patriotism fizzle to nothing. I even Googled the process of renouncing citizenship, but the practical barriers—my business, travel freedoms, and other rights—were too big of cons.
Still, what if I did what the characters in my book did? What if I pulled a Thoreau, removed myself from society’s hysteria, and went back to the basics? Just a few hours off my phone, reading, playing board games, listening to music, and writing today, and I already feel calmer. The characters in the book—trudging through orchards and hillsides, their hats lifted by tree limbs—pull me into their world, and I let them.
Outside my window, a large, drooping tree limb had been catching my eye, its unnatural downward making me uneasy. So, tightening a saw blade to the end of our limb trimmer, Dave and I took turns pulling it back and forth, wood shavings lightly dusting our heads and falling into our eyes. A small thing, but satisfying. A little clearing, a little space —one unnecessary weight, now gone.
I plan to dive back into the book, into a seance where a psychic will dispel the old, whispering ghosts inhabiting the cabin.
Take care.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 