All the best wishes for a great 4th of July, to those of you who celebrate the day. (And I am one of them.) May your barbeque be bountiful and your pets brave in the face of the coming explosions, and may you finish the day with the same number of fingers and toes that you started with.

After the whole shebang is over, in the hard, early light of Monday morning, the first of us fly out for Wrangell, Alaska, to start this year’s South Kuiu Cleanup. A couple days in Wrangell to get things organized and pull together last-minute supplies and then we’ll catch the jet boat out to the lighthouse. Once we’re out of sight of Wrangell, we will also be out of range, and communication will be drastically reduced. Connectivity isn’t part of the lighthouse experience – not yet, anyway – and quite honestly, I don’t mind. It’s good to unplug once in a while and being up there makes it easy.