While we are waiting to see if we have a home in Lander, or when to start trekking back, we have been able to have our traditional summer on Orcas, the most consistent home our kids know. Orcas has been a part of my life for many years now, and my kids don't remember life without it. So, some stories of the strange, out-of-the-way, magical place that is Orcas seems like a good idea.
In 1992, Grandpa John called my dad in Moscow and said, "I've found you a piece of property to buy" and my dad trusted the word of his step-father so much that he bought the Nina Lane beach-front property without seeing it.
Grandpa John was a Texan who ran away from his home at sixteen in some prehistoric time, when there were still territory sheriffs. He left his father, Sheriff Ames, who lay on his bed after a couple of whiskeys in the hot afternoons and shot flies off the screen, and who probably wore his boots to bed and at all times and maybe even had a wooden leg or a metal plate in his head. I can imagine all kinds of things. After running away, Grandpa John made money gathering bounty money on donkey heads and by joining the army. He was on the last ride of the American calvary across the Golden Gate Bridge, and was well-traveled, and smarter than a whip. He told me, "If I were a young man, I'd immigrate to New Zealand." That was the wisdom that made my dad trust him with buying a property he'd never seen, and I thought of Grandpa John's wisdom a lot when in New Zealand. I could see his new-world, adventure wisdom.
I asked my grandmother once if she'd met Grandpa John's mother. I'd imagine Mama Ames to have been, of course, in contrast to the brutal Texas sheriff shooting innocent flies, a sweet Texas rose who wept on the porch in front of the destroyed screen door, both to wave young Grandpa John goodbye and also to shield him from any stray bullets. However, my poetic vision was destroyed when Grandma said, "She was one mean woman."
Oh. No wonder he left home--and that says something about the man I grew up with as Grandpa, my Grandpa Ken having died of a heart attack when I was only one. Grandpa John, I remember, knew how to keep my brave but sometimes relentlessly, powerfully anxious Grandma in line, and he was a huge barrel of a man (the donkeys didn't stand a chance). "Marthy," he'd say, "putta led on't." And Grandma would huff, purse her lips and attend to the chicken and peas, feeling better.
I loved him--but then again, I didn't have to live with him. Mercifully over the phone, he always guessed how many boyfriends I had, and to my consternation, he was usually right. He seemed to have laser aim at exactly what would embarrass you the most, like, "How many pounds are ya now, girl?" and so at about twelve, I started dishing it back: "Less than you." After that, I was his favorite.
So, in 1992 or so, thanks to Grandpa John, we all came up to Orcas for the first time, and he showed us, matter-of-factly, the ocean front property that has a view all the way to Vancouver, BC, with Patos and Sucia Islands in view, and the Canadian San Juans off to the left horizon. We sat there with our mouths open, and then Grandpa John told us to 'shut yer traps' and started us clearing brush.
It would be ten years before my dad started building on the land, and Grandpa John did not live to see the house. But some part of our joy here is always due to his foresight. He knew a good thing when he saw it. Like my Grandma.
Orcas is an island off the coast of Washington, in Puget Sound. We can see the great cargo ships heading down the Haro Strait to the open Pacific, and the islands are mostly covered in fern and moss pine forests, rolling farmland, and hedges of salmonberry, blackberry, and wild rose.
Our Beach has a life of its own, a little Totleigh Toweresque society that has developed over many years. Before we came, and our property was a kind of meadow and forest, the Gerards on the right and the Caleys on the left had been neighbors for almost forty years. Like goats in a pen getting used to the new one over time, they have become part of our life, as we have theirs; both sides have the same generational turnover, so all of us forty-somethings are slowly realizing that someday, God willing we all last that long, we will be working out fence lines and beach problems together, and I think we're beginning to wonder about each other. Most of them are super people, down-to-earth fellow lovers of Orcas, and like us, grateful every time our respective parents let us hang out.
But the current generation is still, thankfully, around. I can't imagine Orcas without Ben Caley, or Don and Marian Gerard. Don Gerard is an Orcas native, and that means something special. He's almost a legend here; everyone on the island seems to know him and he seems to have a finger in many places all around the island. He lived here long before it was a boutique-posh getaway and was still a pirate-woodsman-survivalist place. Don is a typical Washingtonian: there's good-naturedness that has a hint of some hard-working farmer way back in the roots, an equanimity with eating spam as well as steak; a kind of crafted, comfortable way of life that enables one to be out in the rain without an umbrella. My grandmother, a third-generation Washingtonian used to say, "What do you need an umbrella for?"
I, a snooty Californian, would just smirk and watch more MTV if it was raining. I'm sure she wondered what on earth would become of me if we didn't get up here to realistic Washington. Now I am here, and I get it, Grandma.
Don's wife, Marian, has fought a thirty-year war for her flowers with the in-bred, brazen and psychotic deer that live in droves on Orcas. Don kept building her more and more complicated deer fences with lights and buzzers and who knows what else, but of course he couldn't build down into the beach water--and the nutcase deer swim in the 40 F water. It was fated to end badly for the flowers.
(Once Lucy chased a deer about a half mile out to sea, for example. The deer won and we had to fish her out with the Zodiac. The whole Beach came out to see that one.)
On the left are the Caleys. Ben's second wife, Fay, whom everyone loved, died about five years ago of MS. I remember her only briefly, a still figure in a wheelchair, lit up by the sunset light, out on their porch. Ben now is with Diane, a lovely person, who will row the boys, Dallas (her grandson) and TJ all the way down past the Ditch (the marina) and back. She's stronger than me, both physically and mentally. She tells a story of playing the harp for the Bishop, when she had a bad cut on one of her fingers. As she played, the blood pressure built up and suddenly burst out of her finger, all over the harp--and the Bishop.
One of the neighbors hates Momo, one of our dogs, and Momo hates him. I am not sure where the hate started. I think it was Momo being Screw-Loose Momo. So that will be that for the dogs out here. Lucy did once almost destroy someone's screen door in an attempt to eat their cat, so I can see why the Beach hates the dogs. I used to hear a compressed-lip silence emanating from the houses as I walked them on the beach. We Kozinskis can't even get hold of our kids, much less an ADD drama queen dog and one with a serious, dark-horse screw loose.
Ben, and his son Calvin, who is my age, have lots of great stories of old Orcas lore. The San Juans, including Orcas, were, at one time, smuggler's havens. At one time it was pirate ships with Spanish gold and rum, and now it has deteriorated to Zodiacs with smugglers in Addidas tracksuits and meth. But I think, over the last fifteen years, even they are gone and the only smugglers are retired people in yachts taking corn chips and champagne across the Canadian border, which is two miles off Orcas.
Ben told us about how the airport, which lies only about five hundred yards past the Gerard's, was built. Apparently, a ship captain made a bet with someone in Australia that he could land a plane on a dock. So he came back home to Orcas and built the airport, bought a plane, and practiced. When he returned to Australia, he landed the plane on the dock and came home with his prize: a kangaroo. The kangaroo had been trained to dance to music, and the sea captain let the kangaroo roam around the island, and when he wanted it to come home, he'd play music. The end of the kangaroo was a poetic one: One night, at the Music Hall in Eastsound, there was a concert, and the kangaroo happened to be in the neighborhood. Hearing the music, he rushed into town, went across a road without looking and well, that was it. I now can imagine the kangaroo as our Australian experience getting run over, and somehow, the pieces fit and I feel a certain satisfied revenge. That's not nice and I'm hopeful that I'll get past it. The captain's old home is now The Kangaroo House, and functions as a high-end B and B. That is the way of things.
One fixture at the airport is Magic the freaking bi-plane. At first you think it is cute and then over time, you get annoyed because the pilot charges so much money for a ride. He did let the kids, when they were toddlers, ride in his toy planes, though, so I can't be too annoyed with the cutesy-deceptive expensive rides. A better deal is to simply fly down to Seattle on San Juan air, for less money, or better yet, take the sea plane from Rosario's and land on Lake Union in Seattle...unless you didn't want to go that far.
So our Beach has the airport, the Ditch, the Gerards, the Caleys, and further down, next to the Purple Starfish Point, was where Ed Lavender lived. Next time, I'll tell you about Ed...and magical Patos, and The Light on the Island, ageing hippies and neo-ones, the candy-level joyful St. Francis Church, majestic Rosario's, the weird merry-go-round of checkers at Island Market, and pathetic but kind of cute Orcas parades.
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