Paddles with eagles/dances with light

So there I was, two weeks back feeling oh! soooo good to be back home on the salt water, surrounded by unimaginably tall trees and more eagles that a girl can count in a day.

It was a long drive over North Cascades Highway, and then a long ferry ride to get to San Juan Island (documented in no less than 9 posts earlier this month) but so worth it.

I borrow a friend's cabin on San Juan island (with mice) and discover that the library in Friday Harbour has  wifi and lovely benches out front for after hours wifi-ers. 

Blackberries are blooming and berrying along the byways and roadsides of the island, along with lace flowers and a beautiful sky blue wildflower. Living over on the east side of the state, I have forgotten about the abundance of blackberries. While I don't miss the choking thorny plants, I do enjoy picking fresh, sweet berries before my first day's paddle.

Before I was able to launch from San Juan County Park I had to pay a small fee and watch a 15 minute training video all about what to do when paddling with whales and other sea creatures found in these parts. In exchange I received a pink tag to attach to my kayak. I managed to really mangle the sticky part but tied it along with my tobacco and cedar. I somehow suspect that rangers were not going to forget me in a hurry.  

This boat launch permit is only required between May and September - the time when the Orca (Killer) whales are about. My motive was not necessarily to paddle with whales but rather reconnection with the salt water, but I knew I was going to have to go through the "training" anyway. It did mean I  had to wait until a park ranger was in the office to administer my training on the first paddle day. Launching on this island can be a bit costly with all the private ownership of waterfront and I had decided that paying for a permit and going through boating with wildlife training was the most worthy cause for my paddle tithe. I found a listing of boat launch sites and their costs here.

I did not meet any whales really close enough to need to employ any of the whale avoidance tactics described in the video, but I did meet a lot of eagles and dancing light on water enough to fill my well. 

There was a great sense of calm on the water in spite of the buzzing moter boats and whale watch vessels. The whales were at peace. It was enough for Merlin kayak and myself to be in the same salt water as these milling Orcas.

The Werner Shuna paddle has a salt water initiation and might just become my paddle of choice.

I harvested bladderwrack and kelp snacks from the abundant kelp beds along the way, rocking gently on the swell, scanning for sign of whales. The water seems so clean and clear here, it feels safe to eat the sea vegetables thus.

Circumnavigating the island I find beaches all my own for breaks. I am on the most beautiful and unpopulated edge of the world at these beaches.

There are several tour operators who do guided whale watching and sunset  kayak paddles out of San Juan county park. It can get crowded around the launch cove at certain times of day in mid-summer at peak whale watching season.

The water showed me so many moods that first day - all of them benign, gentle. The moon was new, the sky cloudless, the day windless.

I find a tinkling musical beach where the gentle swell washing back and forth has the pebbles chiming, bell-like and the sunlight sparkles cut crystal in the water.

Another eagle dined on a promontory.

Swallows swooped and darted, leading me to a cave, where I rested up a bit in the shade of overhanging trees, sheltering from the hot afternoon sun. This water is cold and northern, even in summer. Tropical it isn't, but salty, yes. I get to thinking how sometimes the most peaceful way is solo.

Go simple, go solo, go now said the grande dame of solo adventuring, Audrey Sutherland, still paddling solo in her eighties.

So I did. 

Blue moonrise

 Sunset in the Gulch is almost African. Once in a blue moon.

Raven Ridge revelations: a sweet San Juan cabin

A salt water paddle was on my to-do list for late summer this year. My plan was to do this after Summer Reading in the library was over, when I was liberated, a little, from the bondage of gainful employment and earning the right to pay the social security taxes to support all the retired in the country. Take it as the carrot I held out to my donkey self for working like an ass through the play-outside season.

I was thinking to paddle Bowman Bay or thereabouts, camp in Deception Pass State Park. A North Cascades Highway road trip would put me nicely at the salt water at this point. I needed to refresh my relationship with that highway anyway.

Back up a week or two. I am in a local coffeeshop on a Saturday morning waiting to meet with a colleague who had gotten tied up vacuuming a uHaul (don't ask) so didn't ever show before I had to get to work. Steven, the coffeshop-caretaker of the day, just happened to mention he was putting his San Juan island cabin for sale on craigslist. I say "Oh I am going there next week." He says: "You can stay in it if you want."

My plans change from a Deception Pass paddle to a San Juan island salt water paddle.

When I eventually find the cabin, I discover a tiny, lovingly constructed cedar structure set in the familiar forests of the Pacific Northwest coast, my first environment on this continent. An atmosphere of meditation and contemplation surrounds. Deer step delicately out of the clearing. Woodpeckers rat a tat a tat in the woods.  Crows call in the canopy. Sword ferns sway gently brushing my thighs. Oh! big fems and big trees! I have missed you so!

The cabin has been empty a bit. Spiders have taken charge, but I can see that this place was designed with love and vision, by someone planning to be around a lot.

There are beautiful rugs on the walls and the floors, a lovely solid wood stove, and an indoor composting toilet which I do not warm to.

The outside long drop which opens with double doors like those little travelling altars, is adorned with jingly dollar store Mardi Gras beads and is much more to my liking. Closer examination reveals some of these strings are also little peace signs. Again it crops up. Peace.

There is electricity, a hot shower. I use my own camping gas stove to boil water for some puerh tea. After looking around a bit, I decide I will sleep almost outside, on the couch on the screened in porch.

Steven is an artist, a sculptor in stone. A number of his works are dotted around the property. It is the dry season so the stone bowls hold no water, but, given what I know of this damp dripping tap climate, I can see them filling in other seasons. I am visiting in August, the only truly sunny month.

While I am waiting for my tea to cool, I sit outside on driftwood benches, absorbing the tranquility, giving thanks for the shelter provided me.

I look down. In a clover patch at my feet I discover a somewhat battered and weathered four leaf clover:  right there, between my bare feet. A few inches over either way and I would have been stepping all over it.

So let's get this straight: I haven't even been on the property 30 minutes and I have been given yet another peace sign (well countless sparkly strings of them) and a four leaf clover. Talk about being showered with gifts and messages!

I stand in the clearing, barefoot and wild crone haired, experiencing that incredible feeling: the certainty of perfection.  I am in the right place at the right time. Here is exactly where I should be. There can be no other way.

After this quiet epiphany, I go inside the cabin, where I find yet another peace sign hanging together with a halibut (flounder or sole).  Hmmmm. Sole peace. Peaceful soul.

That weaver has been busy with the stage set and the props.

In the morning, wandering at first light amongst Steven's outdoor sculptures, I happen to glance up. The rising sun is balanced between the horns of one of the pieces.

When I photograph it, even stranger things happen.

Luckily these kinds of things do not weird me out. Not like that compositing toilet. Oh no.

So anyone looking to invest in a little sanctuary set about by cedars on an island in Pacific Northwest, I can vouch for the fact that magic happens here. Must like numinosity.

And there's ample wood already chopped and stacked for winter.

Nightmares and solace: saved by a library

After being disgorged from the ferry at Friday Harbor, I experience some moments of panic and confusion. I have never been to this island before. In the excitement of leaving for a road trip I failed to do adequate planning for the arrival at the end point part. I did not get the detailed map quest directions, which I had every intention of doing.

All I have is some scribbled telephone conversation notes on how to find a cabin in the woods on an island in the northern Pacific Ocean

The city of Friday Harbor with its concrete and tarmac, traffic crowded streets filled with milling pedestrians, looks nothing like the world the notes seem to describe nor the island getaway of my imagination, all woods, beaches and water.

Trapped and caged mermaids and winged creatures in wire bondage struggle out of the architecture at me, menacing and tormented

It begins to feel like a nightmare. My eyes are scratchy. I have been on the road and awake a looooong time now. The emotional rollercoaster, which revisiting the salt water is for me, is heading for low point. I drive around in circles a bit feeling very alone and foreign in a scary unfamiliar place where I know absolutely no one.

A library looms out of the chaos and confusion. The direction to drive past public library appears in my notes! I am on the right road! Later, once I have found the cabin, just six miles out of town and gotten my bearings a bit, I return to the San Juan Island library for an internet fix.

It is a lovely library, this one which has rescued me from a little bit of a breakdown, with pleasant, mostly native plantings surrounding, a beautiful sculptural stone birdbath out front(a memorial I think) and several strategically positioned benches for wifi users such as myself. I admire the salmon coloured beauty of rose hips, wondering if they are edible.

To one side of the front door is the Friends of the Library shop, displaying recent titles and some jewelry  for sale in the front window. There's evidence of community support, engagement, involvement. And I am at home. Outside a library. Connecting, tweaking at the ties which bind. This library is a peaceful place. I think of the signs sprinkled along the route which brought me here:  on the stubby nose of a Volkswagen bus in the Okanogan, on the ferryboat. Peace signs.

I take a drive around the island and find a vantage point over Roche Harbour from whence to watch a gently opalescent sunset. On the morrow I paddle. This night: peace.