Report From Dorothy Nahanee

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We also inherited a small orchard when we moved onto our island and we've since supplemented it with additional fruit trees, canes, vines, and plants that we've both bought and scrounged. We expect a good crop of raspberries and strawberries this year and even our grapes have proven that they can bear well out here on our little speck of land in the ocean. (The grapes, we'll admit, have been a special case: The prevailing west winds that blow all summer would—if left untempered—excessively dry the vines' leaves and, as a result, stunt the plants' growth. So we beachcombed all the necessary wood and protected our tiny vineyard with a stake windbreak.)

ELECTRICITY ISN'T EVERYTHING

As you might have suspected, no power company services our island with electricity, As a result—although we do intend, eventually, to experiment with a wind-powered generator—we've learned to adjust to kerosene lamps and a battery radio.

Our washing machine is a five-gallon honey pail and an "armstrong" plunger ... and the west wind (which gives us softer, fresher clothes than any commercially manufactured machine) is our dryer. For cooking and heating, we rely on a prized 1903 Great Majestic kitchen stove which we fuel with wood that floats in on the tide. (We've been told that the salt in this driftwood will eventually "eat out" our range's firebox ... but it's hard to pass up free fuel.)

We planned to buy an indoor composting toilet until we learned that it operates on electricity and costs $700. So we settled, instead, for a primitive outdoor privy which, to be sure, has its own not-to-be-denied compensations: a spectacular view from its door and the melodious singing of birds in nearby trees. I have yet—even on the rainiest days—to long for the tiled bathroom in the house that we sold when we moved here.

A SMALL CASH INCOME IS STILL IMPORTANT

A garden, fresh venison, ducks for the hunting, oysters, clams, crabs, prawns, salmon ... and a plentiful supply of driftwood to cook our meals over. That all sounds as if we live the epitome of a self-sufficient life, doesn't it?

Well that's not quite true. We still find that we can use a few dollars from time to time to make our island existence more pleasant. We've never mastered the traditional canoe, for instance, and the boat we do use needs fuel and fuel costs money. So, to earn the cash we want in as enjoyable a way as possible, we've taken up the business of salvaging logs.

This little enterprise consists, simply, of retrieving—from the beach and from the water—logs which slip out of the big lumber companies' log booms as the giant rafts of timbers are floated to the mills. We sell the logs we find to a salvage station which, in turn, returns them to their owners. We think this is a good way to earn our living since it also [1] helps clean up the water in our area and [2] means that, for every "stray" we find, one less tree has to be cut.

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