First there is the September Regret, when you realize you can’t do everything you wanted and maybe you just started doing some things you just learned you really should have done all along!

And the commensurate phase that follows is where you say “Maybe we’ll run into each other when..”

Plans.

It’s like when you leave college for the summer. The question starts in late April/early May: “What are you doing this summer?” “Oh I’m working for Student Life in Florida. What about you?” “I’m going home.” “I’m going to work for a repertory company in North Carolina.” “I’m going to study abroad in Spain.”

We’ve survived the season (most of us) and we will set sail for our respective new normals.

Plans that pluck heartstrings, others buoyant with hope, some weighted with dread. We’ll all leave like the orcas seeking out inviting waters in some other current. The salmon have run, spawned and simultaneously stunk up the place. Let’s get outta heeyah.

The seasonals start reporting on our respective new normals and keeping tabs on who’s going where. Some of us have had our next step established since before Ketchikan (Me- Peace Corps, Colleen and Julie- New Zealand), some plans fell in place mid-season (Ria- New Zealand, Claire- road trip through California and east to Minnesota) and others are still trickling in. The last ship day is September 30th, there is time.

Joe and Suzanne bought their ferry tickets in August, their plan is to leave October 6th but their ferry ride got postponed a week. They will take their bird with their green jeep on the Ketchikan to Bellingham ferry, then drive down to Sacramento and visit family there. They store the car in Sacramento and fly home to Florida. They’ve been doing this for 13 years now. They call Alaska home.

The brawny locals stay in town all season and absorb the liquid sunshine, the sideways rain. I have been lucky enough to befriend some of the stick-arounders. They hunker down and stay busy in the community, lots of opportunities for art here. Others work on boats while their homes remain in Ketchikan.

In some cases, though, there is a twinkle of light in our eyes and it’s a funny thing called “When We See Each Other Again.” To my thinking, it’s largely an illusion we brandish to comfort ourselves in the throttle of goodbye. “You can come see me in Guatemala!” “I will see you again.” “If you’re ever in LA…”

But Claire told me that she has already planned to be in Madison, WI for Halloween. She and her friends have plans.

Claire has never had a shortage of friends, friends and plans.

She met a beautiful, muscular man at the bar who will also be in Wisconsin on Halloween.
He said to her: “If you are going to be in Madison for Halloween, I am coming to Madison.”

It’s promises like these that shrink this island even smaller as we knit ourselves together, plan by plan, before we rip the seams.

When you take the ferry to the airport, you instantly strain the temporary connections from the steadfast. If you’re lucky, you leave this island with one lifelong friend. Hell, if you’re lucky, you find a handful of lifelong friends period. But I don’t want the transience of many of these friendships to damper the genuine shared connections that happened here in Ketchikan. Just because it can’t last forever doesn’t mean it wasn’t perfectly what it needed to be. And memory can sustain the bond you feel to people, a place, an island.

I’m heartbroken at the thought of my favorite people getting older, retiring, moving on and moving out. I don’t want Ketchikan to be anything other than 2016 Ketchikan. But Ketchikan didn’t ask me and the tidal rotation is far too severe to let the island remain as it is.

So, as a next best option, I say “Until we meet again, hug their necks, maybe cry, and pack them up in my suitcase heart.”

Since Joe and Suzanne live in Florida, there is the tangible possibility that I’ll be there some family reunion and could drive to see them. I mentioned that to her and her eyes lit up, the same way mine did at the thought. It’s not often I go to Florida, and it’s always often that I hate going, but a visit with Suzanne and Joe? Now that’s a different story.

Perhaps there will be Halloweens in Madison.