<![CDATA[Richards Rental Management Services - Blog of New Avalon]]>Fri, 16 Feb 2024 16:53:05 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Reflections ~~~]]>Mon, 09 Dec 2019 15:42:28 GMThttp://beaver-island-rentals.com/blog-of-new-avalon/reflections
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Taking a deep breath... feeling that stress caused by the big push melt away... 
Once I am on the boat or plane heading to Beaver Island, I feel content. Satisfied. I have turned the page and am entering island time. What a relief. 
It is a journey -, yes. Journeys take effort - yes. Is the effort worth it - yes!
Island living is a fascinating thing. Our small island community offers much to those who choose to make this their home. A closeness and appreciation for neighbors. A realization of how we affect one another in this journey called life. A nearness to the Earth and it's beauty. 
Come. Visit. I do hope you have a wonder-filled island experience, and are able to be unhurried and aware of the vast beauty surrounding us. We would love to host you in our vacation rental homes. If not, please stop by and say "Hi!". We look forward to meeting everyone we can on this journey. Beaver Island ~ "A Hundred Thousand Welcomes"
]]><![CDATA[Trapped]]>Sat, 04 Mar 2017 13:25:06 GMThttp://beaver-island-rentals.com/blog-of-new-avalon/trappedI.
Sometimes you get stuck on Beaver Island; sometimes you get stuck on mainland United States. But I never feel trapped unless I can’t get home.

This winter has been moody. Not unlike Michigan, not unlike the island -- just...moodier. Much more so. Of the first 60 days of 2017, 22 of them have brought weather which has grounded our planes. Eight of those days were completely devoid of flights (among these, three two-day groundings). The other 14 days saw significant portions of the day flightless. The frequently-changing air masses have left the island shrouded in either fog or combination fog with miniscule icy-snow drizzlets. (There’s got to be a name for that.)
​
People keep getting caught in Charlevoix for two or three or four days, waiting for a window to the island. Or they’ve gotten caught on the island before a planned trip somewhere, lingering, hoping for a portal to “the other side”. Freight has had to wait, mail has had to wait. Arrangements have had to rearrange.
Stuck.
Waiting...
Trapped?

II.
Eight years ago, we were still living in Grand Rapids. We enjoyed our life there. The area had been our home for nearly all our lives. There was our family, there was the Y. John Ball Park Zoo, the GR Public Library, Holy Cross in Dorr. And of course, our histories, our memories, our stomping grounds.

Then I was laid off in one of the suburban districts. This was during the time when “The Great Recession” was really setting in. As I scoured West Michigan for a teaching position, a thick fog seemed to settle over our vision of the future.

That part of the state had several colleges and universities pumping out newly-trained teachers. Stories of 400, 500 applicants for job postings whispered in the fog. I expanded my search to anywhere within an hour -- let’s up it to 90 minutes -- one-way from home.

I applied to everything I was qualified for but nothing happened. Summer rushed toward its end.
Stuck waiting.
Trapped.

III.
Sheri added Mackinac and Beaver Islands to the job search list really rather spontaneously. It didn’t make any sense whatsoever, but my ordinarily conservative wife also likes to surprise me with atypical impulsivity from time to time.

More often than not in the last twenty years, these moments of hers seem to reveal themselves later as providential inspiration.

A teaching position showed up on Beaver Island mid-August. I was to learn later that the school was as surprised as I was at this sudden vacancy. I applied online the day I found the position, and Sheri, our then youngest son, Micah, and I headed up the next day to a place we had never been and were suddenly considering moving, if all went well.

It was fitting (at least!) that I had read The Hobbit for the first time in my life that summer, because on our drive up to Charlevoix, I was thinking of Bilbo Baggins.

Despite Hobbits normally being very attached to their homes and routines, something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.

IV.
Beaver Island is isolated. Occasionally, I will cross paths with someone who inquires about the island: Is there a bridge to get there? Or, Do any people commute back and forth? I usually say something like, No. It’s a real island.

Which means that some folks -- many, even -- experience moments or even bouts of longing to get off of it for a time, long or short. Some people even refer to the island as “this rock”. Sometimes tongue-in-cheek…

And some people speak of another kind of March madness…

The isolation can make for some harrowing moments, mostly associated with getting back and forth, but most of the extremity is, in my opinion, psychological. That you couldn’t necessarily leave if or when you wanted to can rattle people. Most people I know here are in love with the place, but many of them have their restless, globetrotting moments.

Me? I love to travel. Love it. But I am never eager to leave.

V.
It was a couple of years before we learned a good rhythm of anticipation and planning as Beaver Island residents. Life on the island certainly presents logistic challenges one does not experience on the mainland, but the internet makes it all much easier than it would have been just a couple of decades ago. Getting things, for example, is rarely a difficult adventure. (Making virtual returns of items to stores can be, though…)

Still, men make plans, weather laughs. Especially here.

Most often, when it is difficult to get what you want or need, it’s seasonal. More still if the weather is moody. And if what you want or need is to transport your person, well, not being able to do so can be frustrating. Maddening even.

We’ve been there. Stuck. Waiting. Denied. Feeling like we’re nowhere -- jogging seemingly without motion toward purgatorio.

But I traded in the Y, the library, the zoo, the stores -- the traffic, noise, semi engine braking, dogs barking, sirens and radios blaring -- the rush of everyone (like paramedic wannabes) -- the never-ending advertisements which make one constantly hungry for more -- for the shores and the trees, the stars and the air, the familiar and the familial.

I’ve known a few residents here who would still refer to the place they left as home. Not me. This is home.

It may stink to get stuck, and it is frustrating to wait with no end in sight, but I don’t ever feel trapped (even by moody weather) unless I am “on the other side”.
​
Even in the foggiest skies, this is where I most want to be.]]><![CDATA[Alert! Quality Air]]>Sun, 12 Jun 2016 12:00:25 GMThttp://beaver-island-rentals.com/blog-of-new-avalon/alert-quality-airThis morning, as I enjoyed my first cup of coffee and scrolled through Facebook, I saw that a friend had posted a message about an air quality alert in West Michigan. My first experience was puzzlement. So soon? 

Perhaps it is the fact that school is getting out past the high noon of June and I am not yet living in summer. Or maybe it’s because I don’t want to believe that the air quality in Michigan is getting poorer — reminding me of the air quality warnings I would hear as a child, visiting family in Los Angeles. Already, prematurely. Whether this weather comes too soon in the season or too soon in history, here is a truth about Beaver Island air:

It has only recently lost the regal scent of lilacs. (For whatever sad reason, it was this, my seventh spring on Beaver Island, that I ​finally! noticed the prevalence of lilacs here. They. Are. Everywhere.)

I got over my surprise at the air quality alert and found a sense of alarm following it. It is June 11th. There are many hot and humid days left to be had in this Great Lakes state and millions of out-of-state cars en route over the remainder of the year. Not cool.

The only air quality troubles I can recall from my youth are those which arose when a neighbor might decide to burn a mountain of leaves in the fall. Even then, there were just a few people in the neighborhood who needed to be concerned about it because of respiratory problems. Today, the neighborhood is a whole region, the neighbor is mother nature, the leaves are particulates, and we are all the asthmatics. Yikes.

Here’s another truth about Beaver Island air:

It is always fresh. I don’t know much about how weather works, but I know that Lake Michigan constantly breathes streams of clean air into the island. The leaves on those lilacs never cease to flutter and wave.

Living here full time can cause one to take the clean air for granted. After any off-island trip, the purity of the air on Beaver Island stands out again. I dare say even the sanctity of the air. Moss and cedar forests, junipers and wild blueberries, the incense of peeling birch bark, sand the scent of sun. It is a rich air — a soup of tendrils and puddles and boughs, full of their perfumes. It may seem that I am being dramatic, but if you walk the Keebler Trail, nap at Donegal Bay, listen at Miller’s Marsh, you will find that the air quality is dramatically different. The island makes it easy to describe it in this way simply because of what it is: Separate. Set aside. Reserved. Clean.

And the only air quality alert I would give you: The quaint, meandering roads will be dusty.]]><![CDATA[Full-time Characters]]>Mon, 30 May 2016 19:51:29 GMThttp://beaver-island-rentals.com/blog-of-new-avalon/full-time-charactersEveryone is interesting, in my opinion. Nay — in my belief! All that is required to find commonality, uniqueness and mystery in others is the right kind of time spent with them. 

We take interest in others quite naturally, but this is ordinarily with a small proportion of those we encounter as we go about our busy lives. After all, the supermajority of those we see in a given day fly past us on roads. They wait behind and before us in lines and make exchanges with us in the marketplace. They don distant, temporary forms over our screens. But not so on Beaver Island.

If you spend enough time on the Emerald Isle, you understand that the driver of the pick up you just passed was your cashier earlier in the day and your neighbor at The Circle M last night. The friendly face at Daddy Franks belongs to the same teen who was building a dam at Little Sand Bay on Tuesday and is now serving you a cappuccino at Paradise Bay Coffee Shop. On Beaver Island, it is easier to find yourself thinking later about the folks you encountered earlier because you
keep
seeing them.

In various settings.

Last night, Sheri and I enjoyed “The Boarding House”, put on by the Beaver Island Community Players at the Beaver Island Community Center. The play is full of characters that the playwright, Vern Harden, describes as “zany,” in a house “where life is anything but normal.” That was true. It was also quite accurate when Sheri leaned over to me and whispered, “You know, the characters are all a bit like the people playing them.” Besides the fact that a person is likely to imbue a persona they wear with a person they are, we knew enough about the post mistress, the veterinarian, and the high school senior to be able to get a special, quaint kick out of the production. We got to enjoy characters playing characters.

And Beaver Island is full of them! Sure, the island probably attracts a special sort of folk, and sure, the local culture leaves its imprint on you, but, for what its worth, here’s what I think: 

Beaver Island gives you a special — an unusual — leeway for getting to know people. While our typical interactions with people are fleeting, the island arranges for you to meet people again and again. Same guy, different scenario. Same gal, different role. And the imperfectly-cast characters we might usually assume we know become the interesting and familiar characters we know more truly.]]>