On Island Time By: Hilary Stewart

Author: Hilary Stewart

When writer and illustrator Hilary Stewart retired, she fulfilled a dream that many of us share by moving to a small island. Her story begins with the odd circumstances of how she came to buy three acres on Quadra Island and her attempts to find an architect to design the perfect island house. But above all, Hilary Stewart shares her delight in exploring the island’s natural world of seashore and forest, gathering mushrooms, berries, plants, and seaweed; working on her garden and woods, sowing wild seeds, and rearranging the vegetation; and her alternately humorous, exasperating, and poignant encounters with deer, bats, raccoons, frogs, birds, and other wildlife.She also offers glimpses of some of the people and events that make up island life. There’s the dowser who figures out where her well should be drilled, the man with the excavator who brings enormous boulders to her property, the island naturalist with helpful answers to every question, and others. She tells of learning island ways, attending First Nations ceremonies, ferry episodes, reading bucolic notices on the community bulletin board, camping on a tiny island, canoeing on Quadra’s lakes, shopping at the Saturday farmers’ market, circumnavigating the island on a boat, discovering unknown petroglyphs, taking part in the Christmas eagle count — and drumming up the full moon.As Hilary Stewart relates her tales, she reveals a life lived on island time, a life not always dictated by a clock but based on natural rhythms such as the tides and seasons, vagaries such as the weather and the state of the roads, and the freedom to explore and photograph the beaches, forests, and waters of her island paradise or to simply sit onher deck with coffee, watching where the sun falls during the course of the day — or to pause on the way to the ferry to gather wild apples to feed the deer that wander through her garden.On Island Time is an absorbing, delightful peek into Hilary Stewart’s island life, sparked by her lively curiosity and her respect for all things bright and beautiful in the natural world around her.