Editor’s Note

Life in Door County

By Madeline Johnson, Editor

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about time and just how fast it goes. I came across a short article in The Week magazine recently, titled “Taming those gazillions,” which casually pointed out that while a million seconds is about 11.5 days, a billion seconds is nearly 32 years (which, incidentally, is how old I am).
This little tidbit of information sent me down quite a path of pondering about my life in Door County. I did the math and discovered that my first summer here began just over 4,000 days ago. That first summer, like the first summers of many of my friends, is more vivid to me than all of them since. I can effortlessly recall first meetings with our local characters; the taste of a “Norzwich;” the wonderful smell of fieldstone (from the lobby of Fish Creek’s branch of Baylake Bank, of all places – a smell which for some reason I never encountered prior to my time in Door County); bonfires on various Baileys Harbor shores; and, above all, the old Monday Night Sailing group, a now-disbanded crew of friends that ushered out the last golden age of sailing on Eagle Harbor’s high seas. That first summer I worked straight through, single and double shifts, without a day off. It would be inconceivable to me now to work without rest, but the plain fact is that I loved all 7.8 million seconds of those days.
While thinking of these things is sometimes heartrending (how many of the 4,000 sunsets have I missed – or worse, simply forgotten?), it also makes me feel hopeful. I look at the Silent Sports group featured in this issue, for example, and I think about just how much could be accomplished in a million seconds. By the end of next week, they could help just one kid with a bike discover Peninsula State Park, and perhaps that kid will make it her lifelong goal to preserve the experience forever. And, it is my hope that in a billion seconds the second golden age of sailing will be long underway.