Brett's Bread and Local Grown: Coupeville, WA

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.

  Intimacy happens, obviously, with time, but also as a result of shared experience. This means sharing experience with this island, baring myself to all of its elements—including winter winds that push waves up and over each other, bringing down houses foolheartedly lined up on pencil thin lines of sand, and leaving piles of 40 foot long beheaded tree trunks in the middle of West Beach Rd— as I have to the deserts and mountains of Utah, can only get me closer to the intimacy I need. Knowing the tide charts of each beach, finding out when the salmon will run, experiencing what winter winds feel like and what it’s like to see rain on water every day for a week, learning the smell of cedar forests in the morning and in the afternoon and at night; this will help me. I’m not interested in the postcards of the island. I am interested in her matter, in what has shaped her. The landscape I love most at home has all been made by water and wind—sinuous slickrock sculptures billions of years old. This process is happening now, in front of me on these cliffs. The connection also helps me.

  

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 1^st. 

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:

Brett's Bread606 N. Main Street, Coupeville, WA.
(360) 861-6466 Local Grown

26 Front St
Coupeville, WA 98239

(360) 678-3648
Rating out of 5:
Raspberry Rolls    4/5Coffee  5/5
You  May Want to Visit Brett's and Local Grown if you are:
* Whale watching on any number of the islands between Seatte and Vancouver, B.C.* Circumnavigating Whidbey Island in a sea kayak*  Attending the Penn Cove Water Festival* Cycling from Deception Pass to the Clinton Ferry* Flying Kites in the Coupeville Prairie Reserve* Playing with your dog at Ebey's Landing!