title: Coastal Villages
author: Liv Kennedy
description: <b>Liv Kennedy</b>'s parents were pioneers on Quadra Island, and she was born aboard the Coast Mission ship Columbia. She grew up in logging camps and fishing villages along the coast, spending much of her time in boats, and in 1965 began a four-year trip around the world in a 37-foot cutter. She now lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, where she works as a freelance writer. Her articles and photographs appeared in <i>Pacific Yachting</i> for twenty years, she contributes regularly to <i>Boat World</i> and she is co-author of <i>Vancouver Once Upon a Time</i>.<br /><br />
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  # Captain Eli's Best Ear
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Frank Stockton
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  
  
  
  
  The little seaside village of Sponkannis lies so quietly upon a protected spot
  on our Atlantic coast that it makes no more stir in the world than would a
  pebble which, held between one's finger and thumb, should be dipped below the
  surface of a millpond and then dropped. About the post-office and the
  store—both under the same roof—the greater number of the houses cluster, as if
  they had come for their week's groceries, or were waiting for the mail, while
  toward the west the dwellings become fewer and fewer, until at last the
  village blends into a long stretch of sandy coast and scrubby pine-woods.
  Eastward the village ends abruptly at the foot of a windswept bluff, on which
  no one cares to build.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Among the last houses in the western end of the village stood two neat,
  substantial dwellings, one belonging 