Three days on Orcas

Islands, by their remoteness, by the water barrier, have a tidal draw for the curious and those who seek a sense of protection. For me, they are an antidote to the overwhelm of cities. Or maybe what I’m really seeking are boundaries to help me order my thoughts.

I made only a short visit to Orcas, and because island stays always end by crossing water—in this case with a stop at smaller, less-populous and more mysterious Shaw Island—and mostly because of my strong feelings of sadness at leaving, I have clear memory of the sound of the ferry motor, and the sight of the wake and the landing in the distance. And my thoughts that would have been left there had I not jotted notes on paper and, during my walks, on my phone.

Memory moves back across the water to the great stands of alders, the piebald fawn at the roadside, the old hay meadows cut out of the evergreens. At a particular crossing on my morning walk I passed a small pond, where one day distant balls of light gradually became swallows, and another day a duck in the road stopped traffic.

Orcas, being remote but not overly so, had the familiar pieces that I, with only a little shame, hope for: the local-foods grocer, the locally owned bookstore, perfectly kept trails, a clean church open to those with shaky belief. This is where I look for connection, where I ask questions (on the surface, about the best local bread, and without words, whether the residents might like me).

Our home was a little house—1950s built-ins intact—set next to our host’s on their acreage. They had bought the place almost 30 years before from a couple in their nineties and lived in the little house, raised three kids there, as they fixed up the larger, older house and a shed, which they’d turned into a place to listen to vinyl albums and remember the days when the music was new. We ate at a wooden table under moss-covered apple trees where chickadees and nuthatches hunted, where hummingbirds hovered at the irises.

In the log cabin museum next to the Eastsound village green, I learned that just over a century ago, at least half the island people had Native heritage, but nearly everyone I saw was fair-skinned like me, and the fields that fed the humanely raised sheep held the cool-season grasses of New England.

Everywhere were signs for the vote for honorary mayor of Eastsound—always someone’s pet—and for the summer solstice parade on the following Saturday.

We drove nearly every public road on the island and didn’t hike enough. We found North Beach for the solstice sunset and saw Mount Baker to the east. The next day, from a turnout on Mount Constitution—a real mountain 2,400 feet high on this small island—we sat long and watched the distant silent crawling ferries and small boats among the islands.

I’ve found I want a little distance from the ocean. I like being near it, but like the city it speaks constantly and insistently. Before coming to the island, we had spent time at a friend’s old beach cabin, and I was glad for the quiet nights, with the beach a mile away. But as we left Orcas and Shaw and the hundred other tips of land in the San Juans, I was sorry, as I always am, that I had had to travel so far to get to the sea.