Orcas island

Given 1 year to live, 48 year old shipbuilder and former mayor,  Robert Moran left Seattle to orcas island in 1905. Today, his mansion (and grounds developed by Olmstead, the designer of Central Park) has been turned into a resort. The Olmsted paths exhibited the same freeness and branching as Central Park, except at the border between resort and wilderness, the paths just bled into the landscape. Moran eventually lived till 83 years old. The indigenous Lummi Indians on which land  his mansion was built on, credited the Indian healing properties of the site as the reason for moran’s healing and longevity. After a couple weeks of intense work, I felt rejuvenated there too. 

The hiking in moran state park was very quiet. We hardly saw other people on the trails, we walked through redwoods, moss, and cool damp air through the hilly mountains and lakes by the sea. 

Kayaking gave us another perspective of the island.The waters are relatively calm because of all the islands in the bay. The islands sit in the rain shadow of Olympic national forest to the southwest, so the weather is sunnier than the typical Seattle overcast skies. At the northern point  of orcas island is a ferrry to sucia island.. a horseshoe shaped spit of land the result of a geological subduction event that pushed ocean floor sedimentary rocks to form the island. With the waves rolling  strong, making turns at the unprotected extremities of the islands was a little rough. 2 times we unexpectedly had to portage through narrow necks of land to continue the adventure in another bay. The first portage occurred near the arrival dock. A couple camp sites had Jimi Hendrix music blasting. Jimi hailed from Seattle. I noted to the kayak guide, that unlike nyc radio which never plays Metallica, nirvana or hendrix, i had heard them multiple times the past day on Seattle radio. There is something in this land that values that encourages this type of music apparently.  The second portage happened by a set of caves that Chinese smugglers used in the late 1800s to hide illegal Chinese immigrants from the authorities. The sedimentary rock eroded to form niches for hiding people at one point.

The water in the Pacific Ocean is green, whereas the water in the Atlantic around Boston and New York is blue. Peculiar orange trunked madrona trees sprung out of the soil as bald eagles flew overhead, and seals popped their curious heads out of the water. I learned that the geese Americans call ‘Canadian geese’ are called ‘American geese’ by he Canadians. Apparently both cultures label the messy annoying ‘defecate everywhere’ geese  on the other bordering nation. The water is unusually deep due to glacial advances. Apparently orcas (killer whales) live year round in the waters. Some types of  orcas feed on seals, others  feed on salmon.