Provincial Providence

It was late as I stood on the ferry gazing into the onyx water of Puget Sound by night. The water was nearly motionless except for the ripple made by the quiet passing of a nearby Bayliner.

Of the many crossings I'd taken on this ferry, most were routine. Once, however, I crossed in a gale. The boat heaved fearfully and, my car being at the bow, was washed with salty waves crashing over my car and covering the windshield again and again. That was the last crossing that day before the officials closed down the ferry due to the weather and the last time I will ever cross in a near hurricane.

I've crossed the water watching rain hopelessly try to fill the Sound to overflowing. I've crossed watching Snow dissolve softly in the deep. I've crossed the Sound as it dazzled in a million sparks of sunlight. I've seen orcas, seals & too many jellyfish to count. But this night, I wasn't thinking about the weather or the aquatic life. This night I was pondering the darkness of the Island I was headed to.

Vashon Island sat dead ahead. Its 37-square mile mass filling in the last 60 degrees of a full circle. Being that I was at the south end of the Isle so that I couldn't see where Puget Sound opened to the North, the Island appeared surrounded by water in the inner circle and nearly surrounded by land on the outer. The outer ring of land was a blaze of light. I could clearly make out the skyline from Gig Harbor and Tacoma in the South past Federal Way and up to Seattle in the North. It was Friday night and I could only imagine the goings on under the millions of lights in that broad swath of high energy.

And then there was Vashon. Smack dab in the middle of the modern metropolis, it stood dark and immense with only a smattering of lights to mark a few beach houses along the shore and the chain of lights leading up from the ferry landing and then disappearing into the caliginous tree line. According to Wikipedia, Vashon "is approximately 60 percent larger in area than Manhatten, but with 1/150 of the population."

There are bumperstickers found on many salt-washed cars on the Island that say, "Keep Vashon Wierd." Among other things, I think that means to keep the Island a sleeping giant in the middle of modernity.

Where in all of Seattle and its suburbs could you put up a vegetable stand unattended and know that people will just put the money in for the produce and leave the can and its contents for the owner? Where in all of Tacoma would you ever, even once, leave your car or your home unlocked while unattended?

But it gets "wierder" than that. The wierdness of Vashon includes the fact that I can let my hair go silver in my 30's and no one even flinches and I can wear knee-high rubber boots (if I owned them) and every one would just assume I'd been clamming -- or not. It just doesn't matter. At least, it doesn't matter until you cross back over the water to the where the world has kept moving. If I were to show up at Truman's gymnastics class in Gig Harbor in knee-high rubber boots and an old T-shirt and jeans I'm certain none of the mom's would sit and chat with me. To those moms with their latest fashions, $170 hair, painted toes and fancy jewlery I'm just a frumpy bumpkin without a clue--in the dark, as it were.

I went to the mall with the kids the other day in Seattle and it's like taking them to Tokyo. They gawk and gape at the people, the fashions, the stuff, and the hugeness of it all. I have to say things like, "That is JC Penny. They sell clothing. That is Starbucks; they sell coffee." They assimilate it like you do when you visit a foreign country and not like you do when you just live in it everyday and absorb it. And to think it's all just a 15-minute ferry ride away....

The realization that I used to live in the electrifying, fast-paced world and that I have changed so dramatically over the past 9 years of Island life came slowly. As I stood looking at the darkness of Vashon in that circle of light I realized just how much Jon and I have both changed since we moved there. How the shackles of status and station have slowly dropped from our list of cares. How building a family instead of building a fortune has become our focus. And I realized most of all how much we value having such a simple, slow-paced lifestyle that enables us to be together.

And so it is that I have come to conclude that perhaps there really is light in all that darkness. Indeed, the longer I live on that dark Island, the more light I seem to enjoy. By the way, you should see the stars at night from the Island. You can see the Heavens so much more clearly when you live in the dark.