In the Grey, Good News

So it's fall, and the grocery store is kind of emptied out and the weekend walkers are spare on the side streets, but enough to keep the Sheriff's three large black dogs barking on a regular basis.  A fellow resident, at the end of his first summer here, once told me how astonished he was when the tourists all cleared out, and how quiet it seemed.  Pleasantly so and then some, he thought.  I would imagine we could stop worrying about all those traffic dangers for awhile at least.  Although I believe the Sheriff is still making his laying-in-wait sorties, out to get the people doing 35 in a 30 mph zone.

And the rain has returned, along with the grey skies.  That 10-12 week summer we get here with all that sun inevitably makes me forget that it rains here.  Perhaps that is because I spent my life in either a high or a low desert: that is, I basically assume that there won't be rain because there never was.  Left in the sun, I expect it to continue to be sunny.  But it is not.  There have been many days of heavy rain and the back yard has reverted to its vaguely marshland feel.  The thousands of plums that fell from the tree and never made it into anyone's mouth (not for lack of my trying to accomplish that feat) have dissolved into the grounds and into the wet ground and it is purple and slippery with plums when I walk between houses.

I'll get used to the rain again; at least I have every year in the last couple of decades.  And I'll also remember that I'm used to the threats of big developments in Point Roberts that never quite make it to fruition.  The Point Roberts Lily Point Beach Club has now sunk bank into the dream world from which it came. After a springtime of agitation about what could be done to stop it from happening, life stopped it.  It turned out that the people who were making all those plans last spring actually weren't paying the mortgage on the property and the bank decided to foreclose and sell it at auction.  Which it did, and at the auction the winning bidder was an art gallery owner in Vancouver who already owns a place in the near vicinity of the property.

He says he might build a house on the property some time, but has no immediate plans to do so, and that he bought it to keep it from turning into a development.  That is, to conserve it, in the best sense of conservatism.  So that is a bright light shining here in the fall.  If we can just remember that, the next time somebody decides to announce they want to put a racetrack on Tyee, or a Wikkininish-type resort on the beach, or five radio towers on Tyee.  Probably not going to happen.