Situation Normal
The situation is marginal, actually. That’s nothing new.
“Island life is relaxing,” they say, visiting this storied isle to idle away a rental week. “It’s so peaceful, there’s no stress—we’re on island time!”
Bah. You know what “island time” really means? Island time is all that time we waste—ahem—spend, pacing back and forth in front of the telephone, waiting for the air service to call, checking various weather forecasts every ten seconds, and getting no useful work done in the meantime. We “hurry up and wait.”
I needed to be at the bus station in Portland on a Thursday morning. That meant I needed to be on the mainland before dark on Wednesday. Uncertainty, especially in travel and transportation, has always been the norm here, but having lived with that for nearly four decades does not make it one bit more convenient.
Most planned trips to the mainland take on a sort of “mission creep.” You say to yourself, “Well, if I need to go to the dentist, then that’ll be a good day to also get the car inspected, and a haircut, and I really should visit Old Auntie Jane, and I want another gallon of blue paint…” A Thursday morning appointment on the mainland probably means a Wednesday trip off the island. Wednesday soon fills up with commitments, as one tries to be efficient with one’s time, and so it is now necessary to get across the water on Tuesday. Tuesday is forecast to be “marginal,” and maybe they won’t fly (or if you have your own boat, the sea state will be nasty,) so that means we think seriously about Monday.
Did I mention that this time of year there are no boats?
And sure, some of the neighbors quietly judge you for leaving too often. They are keeping a sort of authenticity score chalked in tally-marks on some basement wall somewhere--and no, there is no privacy about any islander’s travel. People think it’s a sort of neighborly responsibility to pay attention to who come and goes, and to count noses; after all, we might want to know who is around at any given moment, should there be a forest fire or a pot-luck supper. No privacy whatsoever.
“Marginal” is a designation offered by some aviation weather sites indicating that conditions are technically still within “visual flight rules” parameters but just barely, and probably not for long. I swear they made that up just for Penobscot Bay and just to make us lose our minds.
As I was pulling together my recent trip, talking to the air service in hopes they had a crystal ball on their front desk, rather suddenly somebody shook the snow globe. I wouldn’t call it a squall because there was no wind associated with this micro-snowstorm (pilot Kevin Waters taught me the difference between a “snow squall” and a “snow shower” years ago, and I remember his words, because it makes a difference to pilots. One is dangerous.) We had snow in earnest on Matinicus for maybe twenty minutes.
I could not find any snow in our area on the weather radar.
I turned on the noontime TV news weather just because yes, I wanted yet another take on the day’s forecast, but in the middle of the broadcast just as the weatherman started talking, the telephone rang. Susan from the air service had news: the cloud deck does in fact appear to be lowering sooner than expected, and they recommend going soon. No more waiting until the end of the day. Drop everything; the plane would be here in about 20 minutes.
A few minutes later, we were headed out the door when we heard the pilot on the aviation radio i(n our living room). “What did he say?” I asked my husband. Sounded like he told another pilot, a young guy who was practicing power-off emergency landings in the Knox County airport traffic pattern, that he would be joining the pattern and returning to Rockland. “Huh?”
I checked the ADS-B (the tracking app) and saw the arc of his flight path, out over the water from Owls Head, and then circling back.
But then, he turned again and headed our way. Whatever had discouraged him from thinking he could get here was evidently just a small blob of weather, avoidable, transient. Back to loading up to go. We drove the one mile from our house to the island airstrip listening for the familiar sound of the Cessna 206.
The next morning, as it happens, the flying weather was just fine. Lovely, in fact. VFR conditions, perfectly flyable, at least for the first few hours of the workday. Not even a little bit marginal. I rolled my eyes; I had again scrambled needlessly.
That’s normal.