Transition
Its two hours past high tide. The beach in front of me is pebbely;
irregular, sometimes bone shaped rocks glisten in flesh tones, rose, slate,
jade, apricot. Their water heightened color makes me want to take them all
home, but I know they won’t look the same, won’t maintain their luster lined
out on my desk. The beach is
occasionally littered with piles of sea vegetables; mucus colored oblong blobs
that look as though they should be squishy, but instead are thick and fibrous. About 10 feet back from the water, a
continuous line of driftwood piles against the hill and cliffs. Three boys, a
dad and 3 dogs dig into the scatter, building a fort. For the most part though,
Ebey’s Landing is open. A long beach, at 4 miles maybe the longest on the
island, curving to the North beneath golden grass covered hills and to the South
beneath sandy cliffs, tufted topped by cedars and thatches of thick green turf.
There’s a wind advisory on today; gales coming from the
South/South East. Right now, wavelets a few inches high press busily against
the shore, slopping and sloshing and teasing Verbena with the 3-foot-long
branch I chucked out there for her. It
washes in close to her, she grabs at it with her mouth wide open, it washes
back out to sea just as she lunges, she wades in a little deeper and tries
again. Droplets of water collect on her chin hairs and catch the light as she
leans forward. In a few hours, waves reaching 10 and 13 feet will toss small
crafts around and push against the cliffs to the south, eroding the island,
bringing more and more of it down into the sea. Even as I watch, the wind
gestures and sandy walls respond by sieving off slivers of themselves to be
swept away.
Everyone who finds out that I’ve just moved here, now, so
deep into Winter, makes cracks about my timing and assures me that Summer is
really nice here and I’m sure to like it if I can just tough it out. But so
far, I see nothing to complain about in the weather. These people clearly know
nothing about inversion. They have no idea that right now in Salt Lake its 8
degrees in the valley, the air so thick and utterly unbreathable, you can’t see
across the street.
The thing I do
find hard, the thing I miss most about my life in Utah, is intimacy. Intimacy
of person and place. I miss skin. I miss being hugged by people who love me. I
wish someone would rub oil into the spot between my shoulder blades where I can’t
reach without massive contortion and possibly double-jointedness.
I miss the deep knowing I have of the land there. I know
just what the light will do on the Little Black Mountain trail at 11 in the
morning in January. I know which trails to hike if I want to see sandstone or
granite or quartzite or trees or a view. I know where to walk when I can’t bear
the sound of cars. I know what canyons
to hike when it rains and which roads may wash out. I know the temperatures
needed to make a claret cup cactus bloom as compared to a prickly pear. I know
where I can go to feel warm, smooth sandstone fit perfectly against my back.
A New Flavor
In order to live here with any sense of happiness, I need to
get the flavor of particular places—and I mean that both figuratively and
literally. The belly is home. Which brings me to this wintery, windy, 4 mile
long, farmed by Skagit natives as early as 1300 AD, reclaimed by General Ebey
and so of course named after him, beach. To a stripped down log (what kind of
tree is this? I’d like to know…), two feet across and 20 feet long, the grain
shining out like the swirls of finger prints in red rivulets, a couple miles
West of Historic Downtown Coupeville, with a 12 oz cappuccino (dry, decaf) and
a raspberry roll.
Settled in 1852, Coupeville is the second oldest town in the
state of Washington (settled by whities that is). Many of the buildings are original to the
town, built in architectural styles with names like, “Queen Anne” and, “Salt
Box” and painted bright—though now slightly faded by wind and rain—and unusual
colors like aquamarine and purple. About 1200 people live here, only about 500 in
the actual town and the rest scattered across the prairie and tucked into the
woods.
The raspberry roll comes from Brett’s Bread; a small bakery
in a yellow and blue Victorian looking house on the main street of town. Brett
is the baker. Previously a stay at home dad, he originally made bread and
bready things out of his family’s house (24 dozen rolls at Thanksgiving).
Unable to keep up with demand and generally needing more space, he opened up in
this new location on December 1st.
Brett makes one kind of bread and makes it good. It’s eggy and sweet and pretty and although
he sticks to this one special recipe, he manages to do all manner of creative
things with it. Today, and every
Saturday up till now and for one more after this, its Raspberry Rolls. Imagine
a cinnamon roll (he makes those too), but instead of buttery, cinnamony
filling, the roll is dripping with jewel-toned raspberries. The raspberries
come from a farm down the road—Mile Post 19 Farm—and they are almost gone for
the year (sad, sad, day). I am comforted however, knowing that after this, come
Blueberry Rolls.
The coffee comes from Local Grown Coffee, a café located in
the big- red- barn- looking- building at the end of Coopeville pier. In
addition to coffee, the shop is filled with all kinds of locally made stuff:
wine, tinned locally caught fish, pickled veggies and relishes, framed
watercolors and pictures of gardens. The
ceilings of the shop are tall and the windows ubiquitous, so even on a cloudy
day the place is filled with light. Through the windows, I can see the shores
of Camano Island—the slightly hoity-toytier island where wealthy natives lived
in the 1100s, sending over to Whidbey for slaves.
Most mornings, the café is filled with retirees, sipping
coffee and talking about gardening. On Wednesdays, groups of hopeful authors
gather around butcherblock tables with their guru, a retired editor and literary
agent from Seattle. The proprietor leans
casually against his bar (topped with gluten free cookies and muffins), reading
the New Yorker and looking like
nothing so much as a hobbit; small, tidy, a little hairy, clearly fond of comfort,
ease and multiple meals. The coffee here is thick and dark and just bitter
enough to balance out my sweet roll, but not pucker-bitter.
Verbena jumps at my face, trying to get the roll out of my
hand as it makes its precarious way to my mouth. Terrible beggar. Totally my
fault. Then she runs around to my side,
sniffing at the coffee (the last thing she needs). Raspberries drip down my hands and she licks
at the air in their direction. I lean
over, attempting to throw her a rock to chase with one hand, while raising the remains
of the roll over my head and out of her reach with the other. She is not fooled and continues lapping at
the air and darting at me until the last bite is gone.
Region:
Far North West, almost Canada
Contact Info:
26 Front St
Coupeville, WA 98239 (360) 678-3648
