I was supposed to go back to the island this weekend for the hotel’s first-ever juniper festival, a “let’s all whitewash the fence” kind of deal in which participants forage for wild juniper berries, for later (ostensible) use in Death’s Door gin. But I just couldn’t get it together. It looked to be cold and sleety; I can’t afford to rent a car; is a 12-hour drive (roundtrip) really useful for 36 hours of island time? All good reasons. But, I think I’m also just not ready. Right now the summer feels preserved in the amber of August sunsets. So sue me if I want to keep a little bit of it safe in my imagination; it’s getting nasty down here and those cracks in the casements haven’t magically fixed themselves.

However, if anyone’s interested (or, reading), Death’s Door will be in Chicago next weekend, for the annual Family Farmed Expo. Brian Ellison’s doing a panel on “locavore drinking” with Goose Island‘s Greg Hall, Wild Blossom Meadery‘s Greg Fischer (who I wrote a bit about here), and superstar mixologist Adam Seger, and I’m assuming they’ll have a booth in the exhibits hall as well.