What's next: Views beneath the surface
A 240 acre, private island between Orcas Island on the north at Pole Pass and Shaw Island on the south across Wasp Passage
Thursday 2010 10 21 Dawn light gathered to reveal – not much of anything. Overnight fog had crept north from the Straight of Juan de Fuca through Cattle Pass and into San Juan Channel, between Lopez and San Juan Islands. Orcas wasn’t visible, nor Bell Island; morning with a 100′ depth of field. No matter; … Read more Foggy Dawn
Eleven-acre Yellow Island lies south of Spring Point on southwest Orcas Island and west of Crane Island. In 1979 The Nature Conservancy acquired the island and administers it as a kind of laboratory to study the invasion of grassland by woody plants and how to resist or reverse it. So, for instance, the group does … Read more May Flowers on Yellow Island
Wednesday 2010 10 20 Cloudy, misty, water tank at 10 feet. More than a year ago a winter wind pushed over a 60′ double trunked Douglas fir, the shorter, dead trunk jamming itself into a big, ill-formed alder, with the longer, living, trunk and crown nearly hitting the roof of well house #2, but distracted … Read more Perfect Windfall
Tuesday 2010 10 19 For more than a year I had my eye on a pile of tree trunks near well house #1 on Crane Island common area. With our F-150 pickup temporarily on the island, it made sense to consider cutting them into 16″ sections and bringing them back to the house, about ¼ … Read more Scavenging Firewood
Ballard, July 2019 Our return feels different Something was different this time going to Orcas and Crane Islands: we felt like tourists more than former residents; less connected, with warm memories of course, and dear friends but we were no longer island people. We had become city people. In February 2014 we had moved from … Read more Return to the Islands: An Introduction