Classics Unbound

In the 1980s when we cruised through the San Juan Islands with our young family on a big green and white Washington State ferry, I wondered what it would be like to live in this beautiful place of mountains, forests, islands, and boats. And then we did.

From October 19, 2010, through October 18, 2011, I kept a daily journal of our life on Crane Island, a private island at the south end of Deer Harbor on Orcas Island and north of Shaw Island, across Wasp Passage. This is that journal, Haust(Autumn), the first of four volumes - followed by Vetur, Vor, and Sumar, (winter, spring, and summer in Old Norse).

Meet island people: odd, generous, insular, cosmopolitan, self-reliant, skeptical, devout. Follow resident otters, mink, raccoons, deer, voles, owls, ravens, eagles - all living sometimes reluctantly but creatively with us recent colonizers. See sunrises, wind-driven rain, king tides, opaque fog, starry skies, and hot tub sleet. Participate in wood cutting, daily boating and an occasional blown engine, a rock and roll choir, gardening club, food bank, men’s group, ferry culture, hiking, crabbing, IKEA kitchen remodel, community politics, farmers market, northwest gardening, publishing business development, community projects, holiday potlucks, water system, and docks management, religious congregation, garage sales and exchanges, parties, music, horse training, and the surprising richness of a small population. Experience coping, planning, cooperation, elation, joy, frustration, disappointment, success, friendship, betrayal, peace, love, the numinous, and gossip.

This is a memoir of a sort, what one person saw, reacted to, acted on, and wrote down, but it’s mostly about daily life on small, beautiful, private island, a marriage, a family, and a community.

And it’s a report of specifics, specimen days, short on generalization and advice, with hundreds of examples that can be unpacked in different ways. And finally, it’s not a travel book. It’s what you see and experience if you live on Crane Island or in Deer Harbor, or on Orcas Island, but what you can’t see passing through no matter how hard you look.

Yvonne and I loved our life on Crane; it was precious, surprising, and deeply satisfying. But it was also difficult and eventually too challenging for aging boomers - so we decamped to an easier life, RV travel, and now city life. But we’ll never forget our golden time on Crane.

John Ashenhurst