Orcas Island: The Last Day

Our last day on the island… We hung around the bungalow for a good part of the morning, much as we did yesterday. Gave George a much-needed bath.


I wrote the next episode of Travels with George and got it posted, with pictures; then spent a while with Barack Obama. More on his book at a later date. In the meanwhile, Ellie busier herself once again with her chalk pastels, fully absorbed for a good two hours in the creation of another masterpiece. No, joking aside, she has a really good eye for composition and a great sense of color—the result of many years looking at art made by others. A neophyte, herself, in the making of it, she brings all that experience with her, so that even her earliest efforts are remarkably good.

Time, now, to get ourselves ready to leave. We had some laundry to do, so we headed for the laundromat at the nearby gas station complex, and ventured into the new territory of card-operated machines—with plenty of help from our more experienced neighbors. Whilst we were waiting outside with our books, clean George attracted the attention of a man who had arrived to deliver cases of wine to the wine shop next door to the laundromat—an encounter that result in the gift of a nice bottle of wine. Thanks, George! I slipped into the store while the clothes were drying, and added a couple of other bottles to our collection.

Back at the bungalow, we began the process of reorganizing and packing all our gear—no small task, but one which we got finished with time to spare for a last drive in to East Sound for a few essentials, a taco for lunch, and a stroll around the town. Stopped to admired one of the many vegetable gardens...



and an apple tree....



Otherwise, not a great deal of excitement to report…

We had booked an early table at the Ship Bay Inn—supposedly the best restaurant on the island. And what a view!





We enjoyed an excellent, leisurely dinner, sharing a gravlox salad appetizer, a pork chop with a somewhat scant portion of vegetables, and a truly delicious nectarine tart with vanilla bean ice cream. The food, though, was trumped by the sight of a brood of young bald eagles practicing their flight skills right outside the restaurant window. (Sorry, no pictures of the eaglets: our table was poorly placed for playing the photographer during dinner. But here's their playground...)


The women at the adjacent table, closer to the window, pointed out the parent, perched atop a nearby pine tree and patiently supervising the efforts of her young. The performance continued for the entire dinner hour, almost as though staged for the exclusive entertainment of the restaurant patrons—all of whom seemed as fascinated by the experience as we were. It’s always gratifying, to me, to see how humans respond to creatures of the wild. We are so urbanized, these days, that such sights come to seem extraordinary, magical.

There is something magical, I have always believed, about islands. At one time, during my academic career, that I thought about a book-length study of islands in the history of literature, and their metaphorical associations. It never got written, of course. Those were days of “publish or perish,” and I perished anyway—despite the books of poetry I had published. I still think it’s a wonderful idea—for someone else, someone with fresher literary credentials than my own. My peculiar attachment is rooted, surely, in my own island origins: being surrounded by water brings with it a certain feeling of safety and protection—during my own lifetime, despite his worst efforts and his air assaults, Hitler never managed to breach England’s island defenses during World War II—as well as a certain insularity. And many of my childhood literary delights—Enid Blyton’s “Island of Adventure,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”—must have contributed to my sense of the special quality of a small piece of land with water on all sides.

Orcas Island, anyway, has a good measure of this magic, and I shall be sad to have to return to the “real world” of the mainland. In some sense, it will seem to me like waking from a dream, and resuming the mantle of the responsible adult who has to drive on the freeway, pay the mortgage and, yes, soon, vote…

After-dinner contentment...


... and home to bed.

A Day in the Woods

A fresh fruit and granola breakfast, with freshly picked berries...



... and a visit with a doe and her two fawns...



... followed by a morning spent mostly in and around the bungalow; myself up in the garden, closer to the farm house, in order to get wireless Internet access, and Ellie working with pastels indoors, making what turned out to be a very nice abstract landscape painting.

Late morning, we decided on a hike, and took the drive down to Olga again. This time we chose to drive on, past Olga’s...



... to Obstruction Pass—a place we had not visited before on either of our trips. We were delighted to have made that choice: leaving the car at the parking lot, we opted for the .9-mile walk to the beach over the .6-mile, and found ourselves climbing fairly steeply along a trail that had that wonderful soft, spongy underfoot feel created by centuries of forest entropy.




A high canopy of greenery above, and the brilliant, mottled green of moss surrounding us, covering every boulder, every fallen tree-trunk.






The previous night’s rain, as Ellie noted, had left a dampness in the air and on the ground, so that the whole environment seemed to breathe with life. This had to count as one of the loveliest hikes we have ever taken—and we have taken many in our time. And George was thrilled with this new territory to explore. A city slicker in the wilderness…




From the high point of the trail, it wound steeply down again towards the sound...




... leading us eventually down a precipitous rocky path to a pebbly beach.


We found a couple of young families there, from the camp sites at the water’s edge, but otherwise this beautiful cove was ours to enjoy its tranquil beauty. We cast about a bit to find the trailhead for the shorter way back, but failing to find it, retraced our steps on the longer one—and found, of course, that it was much longer on the return.

Driving back to Olga, we bought coffee at the smaller of the two restaurants, where we found an outdoor table to enjoy the sandwiches we had made, along with an outsize chocolate chip cookie from the deli counter.

After this late lunch, we headed back to the bungalow, passing another doe and her young fawn at the side of the road...


... and changed into fresh clothes for a different experience: a chamber concert at the local auditorium. We knew the seats had been sold out, but had been told at the box office that we’d be more than likely to get tickets if we showed up an hour and a half before the concert’s five o’clock start, because people buy blocks that they choose not to use. We showed up, then, with books to read, at three-thirty and sat in the lobby hoping for the best. Alas, this was the premiere of the two-week concert program, and everyone showed up. At the last minute, we were offered a single ticket, with the possibility of a second after the first piece if the seats had not been claimed by then. We declined.

We could have made the trip into East Sound for dinner, but there is too much left in the refrigerator to waste, so we decided instead on a kind of Cobb salad concocted of left-overs, with a glass of wine. I’m writing these notes Thursday, the morning of our last day on the island. Tonight, a blow-out at what we have heard is the best restaurant on Orcas Island, and tomorrow an early departure for the ferry back to mainland America. This travel log may be neglected for a couple of days while we get back on the road. We’ll see what opportunities arise…

Buck Mountain, Deer Harbor, and Beyond...

It was not pouring with rain when we woke, as I had feared from the weather forecast. But it is certainly overcast and very much cooler than our first few days. No matter, we were up and about in decent time, catching up with Larry, our contractor, about the possible changes to that irksome pass-through window. We’re hoping, now, to wait for our architect to return from vacation (?) and get his first-hand input at the end of this week.

Late morning, we headed out for an adventure in the Prius. Those who follow the comments on “Travels with George” will remember one from a reader, Ron, who owns property here on the island, and who invited us to visit it. Following his directions, we found ourselves ascending a steep and narrow road on the slopes of Buck Mountain, through a landscape of dense forest and occasional lakes and tarns, to what must be one of the highest points on the island. Here's the cairn that marks the approach...


From the street, we walked up to Ron’s property—as yet undeveloped—and climbed the rocky promontory...



... to enjoy the spectacular view of the sound and the many islands of which he had justly boasted. Ron, here’s the view you treasure...


Thanks for inviting us! (I'm afraid you lost a tree...)


From Buck Mountain, we doubled back through East Sound and drove on through farmlands and meadows...


(...with a stop to pick blackberries for tomorrow's breakfast...)



to Deer Harbor...


... where we spent a few days several years ago. Still a gorgeous spot. We ate fish and chips at the end of the pier, surrounded by grizzled old geezers with grey beards and weathered faces. Surprised by the sparseness of tourists, we found out that this is indeed a slow summer: it seems that there are far fewer tourist boats coming in this year to moor—a change attributed, by at least one man we spoke to, to the cost of gas. After lunch, we took George for a walk along the moorings...



... before heading back to East Sound for the second of my healing sessions with Stacy at Ama Tara. In a generous mood at the end, and wishing to share the relaxation, I treated Ellie to a session after mine before we retraced our steps to the bungalow.

I promised myself a holiday from politics this month, but I have to admit that I have been watching developments out of the corner of an eye. I have also been reading the Obama book, “The Audacity of Hope,” and wish that every voter would do the same. The Republican attempt to paint their Democratic rival as a lightweight, inexperienced neophyte with an abundance of rhetorical skills but no substance would become transparently absurd to anyone who had read just a few pages of this extraordinary book. It is rich with historical knowledge and a breadth of vision that is frankly astounding in a man so young. It also helps one understand the strength of flexibility—too often interpreted as weakness—along with the value of respecting the views of others and the meaning of compromise. It is precisely those qualities that are mindlessly attacked by his opponents that are the source of his vision and his strength.

Too bad that we Americans have such skewed ideas about what it means to be strong. Witness the posturing of John McCain. I hear he’s floating Joe Lieberman’s name as a vice-presidential choice. I hope he chooses him. I believe it will increase his chances of losing in November. The two inflexibles. If the current occupant of the White House has not taught us anything about the illusion of strength, I fear that we will never learn.

So much for politics from the Pacific Northwest. We went to sleep again to the sound of rain, and woke again to a cool morning with low clouds and sodden ground. No matter the weather, it’s a joy to be here.

Clouds...

Awoke in our little bungalow...


... to find our friends grazing outside the kitchen window. They love the green apples...



Our first concern for the day was to resolve a problem with the construction project down in Laguna. We had received pictures from our friends Brian and Mary, and had noted what seemed to us a rather smaller than expected pass-through window, where there once was a doorway leading from the kitchen to the sitting room. We checked with Mary via email, and her return note confirmed her agreement that the window seemed narrow. A worried call to our contractor, Larry, to check with him; he offered his own opinion that it was wide enough, at two feet, and that a narrow shelf extension into the sitting room from the kitchen counter might help resolve the visual anomaly. This what I myself had suggested as a possibility, so we asked Larry to make a mock-up of some kind to send us as a jpg.

This business had to be conducted in town, of course, because our phone reception out here at the farm is intermittent. So we enjoyed a cup of coffee while we were there, and made a few necessary purchases—dog food for George from the pet shop, a fresh loaf of bread from the marvelous bakery, Rose’s, for ourselves—and then were headed back to the car when we were startled by the most extraordinary sight: a cloud formation such as I have never seen in my life before. It was a rolling, curving bank of cloud reaching for miles across the sky like a thick braid, so “unnatural” as to be quite spooky.








It's worth clicking on these, to get the larger view. But the pictures, taken in sequence because of the sheer size of the phenomenon, don’t manage to do justice to this amazing spectacle that stopped everyone in their tracks and had the whole street filled with people gazing up into the sky. It looked like a UFO trail from “Close Encounters”—you almost expected an alien spaceship to be emerging from the front end of the trail and landing at the local airstrip.

With the clouds dispersing slowly, we made our way back to the bungalow to change into something warmer: the storm had brought a cold front with it, and we were shivering in summer clothes. Then on down the sound to its southernmost point at Olga’s, where we strolled out to the end of the dock...






... and returned for lunch at the famous Olga’s Café—though not with some dispute as to whether this was the famous one, or the smaller one where I remembered eating an excellent lunch last time we were here. (We were both right: the café where we ate before was indeed more “gourmet” than this one—and had purloined the name; but it had arrived and disappeared in the space of a couple of years, while this artist-run operation has survived for a long time.)

A lovely drive, next, up Mount Constitution, through the clouds, to a height of some two thousand feet.


Once at the summit parking lot, we climbed the last few feet to enjoy the stunning view out over the islands, many of them now obscured by the slow-moving banks of cloud below us.


It was cold and blustery up there, but we climbed the stone tower that crowns the summit, George charging up the steps ahead of us in his eagerness to see what was ahead. It’s one of his most endearing qualities: he is insatiably curious. Another Curious George.

(Did I ever tell you, by the way, where George got his name? Not Curious George. Not George Washington—though that might have been appropriate for this trip. And most certainly not the current occupant of the White House, who will remain unnamed. No, George got his name from George Harrison, the Beatle, who happened to be leaving this life just as our George was arriving. He returned, we like to think, “Across the Universe.”)

We were grateful to get back to the warmth of our bungalow for a nap (for me) and reading time for Ellie. I joined her with my own book—I’ve finished the excellent Alan Furst now, and am working on Barack Obama, with growing admiration—and we spent a good part of the rest of the day engrossed in our own worlds. Late afternoon, we took the computer up to the one spot on the property where I can get wi-fi connection, and spent a while working on our plans for the return trip to Los Angeles, beginning this weekend. And were joined by our host, Mark, armed with a bottle of beer for each of us, for the “cocktail hour.” A pleasant opportunity to get to know more about him, his work as a carpenter/contractor, his wonderful family, and the island he has lived on for a number of years.

Supper at home. Left-overs. A piece of chicken, a piece of salmon, a sauté of tomatoes, onions and potatoes, and nice green salad. A glass of Oregon wine. And, later, a stupid old western movie with Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster and Jack Palance—on which I got ridiculously hooked, and got to bed too late, and couldn’t sleep for the pounding rain outside.

The Weekend...

… began with our usual cup of tea, then a drive into East Sound with George to the farmer’s market—a venue from he is usually excluded by California law. We had little to buy—just a few vegetables and some fruit—but Ellie found plenty to occupy herself with the various crafts stalls. There were many of these, a testament to the creative spirit of those who live here: jewelry, metalwork, textiles, ceramics… When interspersed with the produce, the baked goods, the sausage stands—we bought a couple to bring home for Sunday dinner—it was a gladly motley gathering, where everyone seemed mellow and grateful for a warm Saturday morning for the event. Unfortunately, though I’d had the foresight to hitch my camera bag to my belt, I was foolish enough to forget that it was there, and neglected to take a single photograph. Too bad.

I can claim that I was distracted, though, because at the market we ran into our friends Arthur and Judy from Laguna Beach, who are also up here on the island—they for two weeks, an enviable improvement on our one. We had been trying to reach other by cell phone since our arrival here, but the vagaries of connectability had prevented our meeting until this chance moment. We were delighted to see them, and more than delighted to be invited over to their place later in the day for late afternoon appetizers and dinner.

With our marketing done, we stopped by at the small theater to see if we could get tickets for the chamber concert series scheduled for next week, but discovered that they are already sold out. Cancelations are a possibility, we understand, if we wait by the ticket office to pounce before the concert. We’ll see. Back at our bungalow, we made a sandwich and spent a lazy afternoon beneath the apple trees with books until four o’clock, when we abandoned George to his own devices and drove down the road, three miles or so, to where Arthur and Judy have rented a delightful home for their stay. (We were impressed to find a fine drawing by David Ligare on the wall there—an artist Ellie showed at her gallery many years ago, and for whom I once wrote a catalogue text.)

Here’s the view from their balcony…


Arthur had grilled some excellent corn and salmon steaks, and Judy had prepared a fine, fresh salad, which we much enjoyed, along with a glass of white wine—despite the determined efforts of a squadron of yellow-jackets to spoil things for us. Good conversation, too. As a professor at UCLA, Arthur is more than well-informed about the environmental crisis that we have created for ourselves on the planet, and we learned a great deal in the course of the evening—much of it not entirely cheerful news. Mindful of George in his solitary state, we left in good time and drove home in the twilight, grateful for good friends and a lovely evening.

Sunday morning, after a light first breakfast (we have traditionally a late-morning bacon and scrambled egg breakfast on Sundays) we stopped by the gas station, where we had been told we could get a Sunday NY Times, but the papers had not yet arrived. We put our name down to hold a copy and drove on down the east side of the sound to Cascade Lake for a long hike around the perimeter.






It’s a beautiful spot, and quiet!


We met only a couple of other people on the three-mile path, until we reached the south end, where we came across a camp site and were surprised to find a delightful family with a Cavalier King Charles spaniel.


We admired their immaculate site, which looked to us a lot more comfortable than many of the motel rooms we have stayed in. George, I have to say, was his usual aloof self, but deigned to pose for a picture with Polo the dog and Chloe, a sweet little six-year old, and of course her parents. It is wonderful to have these chance encounters with genuinely friendly folk… and I always regret a little that they are so fleeting: there’s a sadness in moving on with the knowledge that we will never really get to know them.

The hike began to seem like a very long one towards the end. It felt like a lot more than the advertised mileage. And yet so refreshing to the spirit to be out in the natural world, with barely a hint of the human presence.


We paused to take pictures of late-blooming foxgloves...

... now in the their moment of entropy; and fungus growing from the roots of a felled tree.


The persistence and diversity—and the temporality—of life in all its forms.

Heading back to East Sound, we searched for a shady place to sit outside with George and at the same time hook up to the Internet in order to make changes to the plans for our return trip south. We have decided to avoid a second stop in Portland, and instead to shorten at least a couple of the driving days by adding an overnight stay in southern Washington. The Internet can prove to be a wonderfully useful tool on such occasions, and we appreciate the flexibility it affords us.

Back at the bungalow, we fried our bacon and scrambled our eggs, and sat down for a tasty breakfast followed by a quiet afternoon (under the apples trees, again!) with the NY Times and, for me, the luxury of a cigar: La Gloria Cubana. As a reformed cigarette smoker—I quit nearly twenty years ago, after too many years’ addiction to the noxious weed—I have learned to enjoy the occasional cigar on a Sunday afternoon. Cautiously, however, because I know how easily I could become addicted once again. By afternoon, the weather had begun to change: the warm sunlight and blue skies gave way to low clouds and a chill in the air. As we read the newspaper, great rolls of thunder shook the house behind us as a storm passed by, barely missing us. Fortunately, though, we had no more than a few drops of rain and I was able to complete my indulgence without getting wet.

A further indulgence: a glass of wine over the news headlines. I had read in the paper about a new British series, “Skins”—a real look, supposedly, into the lives of teenagers, which turned out to be funny for a while, but ultimately rather saddening. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, with a little anorexia thrown in for good measure. I was distressed, long before the end, to find myself chuckling at the cynical attitudes and antics of these adolescents, and switched off.

For dinner, we warmed up some good sausage, purchased at the farmers’ market yesterday, with onions, steamed squash and boiled red-skin potatoes for an excellent home-cooked meal.