Leaving Orcas

An early start. The two fawns stopped by without their mother, and I worried that she might have had an encounter with one of those speeding cars, out on the street. I hope not. They twins had disappeared by the time I took George out, at dawn with George, for his morning pee, and the sky was by now a gorgeous blend of pink and blue.


The omnipresent clouds from the past few days have dissipated into wisps. Back in the bungalow, I put in a good few minutes meditation before making tea and waking Ellie to get ready for our departure for the ferry. We had been told to arrive in line at least an hour before the 9:20 departure, and planned to leave an hour and a half.

We were well ahead with the packing chores, and managed to get out of the house and on the road before seven-thirty, driving through the village of East Sound and back through the lovely landscape of the island for the last time with a lot of sadness to be leaving after what seems like so short a visit. I was writing yesterday about the magical quality of islands; this morning, before starting this entry, the thought came to me in my brief meditation session that the experience of being in meditation has something of that quality. It’s the pleasurable sensation of being totally alone, and sufficient unto oneself; an invitation to serenity and insulation from the cares of the world.

I wrote those words yesterday on the blog as we sat on the terrace outside the dockside hotel with George. We had parked the car, well to the front in the first lane of the ferry line, and had stopped by for a generous breakfast at a table overlooking the sound with its archipelago of islands.



By nine, the ferry had arrived...



... and we returned to the car to join the long parade of vehicles driving down the ramp. The capacity of these ferries is astounding...


... as is the traffic that moves between the mainland and the islands every day.



An uneventful crossing. As before, we had to stay down on the vehicle deck because of George: we could have left him alone in the car, of course, but chose not to, and used the time to catch up with our reading. Once off the boat, we joined another long line of traffic to get to Anacortes, where we made a Starbucks stop to pick up an old friend we have missed for the past week: the New York Times. Then twenty miles inland to get to Interstate 5, and a turn south for the long, long drive through Seattle (a slow drive) to our next convenience stop in Kelso, Washington, for the night.

Having heard from my cousin, Sam, that his daughter now lives in Olympia...


... we had debated the possibility of stopping for a visit. We have not seen Clara for many years, and it would have been a pleasure to visit with her. But the distance traveled, along with some uncertainty about the distance still to go, persuaded me that we should keep going. We decided at least to call the number Sam had emailed me and took a detour from the freeway in order to make the call. I kicked myself later for my reluctance. We had a lovely conversation with Clara, in the process of which we got completely lost in the streets of the state capital. In the time it took to find our way back to the 5, we could just have well made the visit. The lesson: never pass up on the chance to connect with family. I drove on south regretting the lost opportunity, and feeling very stupid for my petty concern with making up time which we lost anyway.

Arriving in Kelso only an hour or so later, we found our hotel with ease and were soon installed in a comfortable room. Unpacking the minimum, we set out for a walk recommended by the front desk clerk, starting in the nearby Tom O’Shanter Park and following a long, curving watercourse—a river? A canal?—along the raised dike beside it. Below us to the left, picnic sites with dogs and children playing in the warmth of the late afternoon, a huge RV site; and to the right, the slow-moving water with a myriad reflections of the gently sloping lawns and trees of the homes on the far side. Ahead of us, the forested hill-sides and above, a clear blue sky. A lovely walk. (We forgot the camera, sorry, no pictures of this delightful site!)

We made a last stop at the Safeway next to the hotel, where Ellie bought our utilitarian dinner: a couple of microwavable soups and pre-packaged salads—along with the inevitable bottle of white wine, a New Zealand sauvignon blanc from the Marlborough vineyards, which turned out to be a realy good wine at a more than reasonable price. We consumed all this in our hotel room, and I took George out for his final pee walk before turning in.