We opened the Hostel for the season a month ago, on Memorial Day weekend. We’re off, we’re going, we’re on a roll. It’s happening. There were no bells or whistles, no fireworks, no standing ovations. Merely an acknowledgment that if anyone would call we would have to be ready to take them in.
A few people called. Someone dropped in. Someone even came by for a tour. A slow start, but that was all fine with me as I know from experience that before the season is over just about everyone I can handle will call, drop by or want a tour.
Summer on Deer Isle is for me closely connected to swimming in the pond. For all the pretty coves and hidden beaches there are along the ocean, the freshwater pond is my first pick for summer soaks. Honestly, more than once I’ve thought, if not for the pond, I could go without summer. It’s otherwise too warm, too buggy and there’s too much traffic.
But if the water is warm enough to swim in, I can take the rest. Even at other times of the year I find myself visiting the oblong body of water. With its shiny ice in the winter and its bare trees in spring. It’s a great place, year round, to sit down and gather my thoughts.
The pond is still too cold to swim in, but it lingers in my thoughts — both because I long for the magical morning swims and because the image of submerging is what comes to mind as the island switches over to summer mode.
From here on, everything will pick up its pace. The local businesses pick up, lobster boats set out each day and the carnival of out-of-state vehicles swings into motion.
In my mind I see us all — Dennis and I, our friends, neighbors and community members, those we have spent the winter with and all of us who rely on the summer season for our winter needs. I see us all in union waving bye-bye to each other and with a deep breath plunging fearlessly into the Deer Isle summer. We swim and swim under the surface of all this, and air bubbles rise as we try to breathe slowly through our snorkels, one breath at a time, without choking.
At the other end of this four-month swim we appear again and shake hands. “Good job,” we tell each other. “Well swum.” Ahead of Dennis and me lies another hostel season, full of guests and tours and phone calls, communal dinners, bonfires, morning coffees and check-ins and check-outs. One day, at the other end, we will sit here alone again and look back at it all wondering how it passed by so quickly.
Anneli Carter-Sundqvist is owner of Deer Isle Hostel. A version of this piece first appeared in Mother Earth News. It is also available in her book, “A Homesteader’s Year on Deer Isle.”