Holiday in Green and Blue

There are reasons why we regularly return to the Salish Sea: family, friends, and familiar haunts. But the one reason that is powerfully attractive is obvious. It is the magnificent, life-nurturing beauty of its green and blue.

The green is the grass, bushes, and trees. The blue is the pale blue of a clear summer sky and its reflection over the deep blue of the Sea.

Nowhere do Shari and I enjoy the stunning beauty of Lower Alaska's short summers than on Whidbey Island. The realization strikes us as we take in the view overlooking Holmes Harbor, the Cascade Mountains and its volcanos in the distance, or walk its quiet, forested residential streets, or drive through tunnels of giant hemlock, fir and cedar trees. We smell sweet, moist, cool air, admittedly with a hint of decomposition. We come here to absorb the nurturing mix of water, sunshine and earth. We come to Whidbey for a vacation.

South Whidbey on the Salish Sea isn't the congestion and noise of Seattle. No wonder the ferry lines are excruciatingly long in the summers. Most of the license plates are Washington and the cars wear Seahawks paraphernalia. I reckon they are local South Alaskans taking a vacation from the man-made environments that congest I-5 and I-405.

The grey, damp cold of when we lived here is forgotten. We are no longer concerned about mowing lawns, moss on the roof, power-washing walkways, or fighting back stinging nettles and blackberry canes with their flesh-tearing thorns. We can sit on the deck, enjoy the view, stroll through green, and graze on the abundant blackberries —just like the abundant deer. We are visitors. We are tourists.

The madrona trees remind me of the singular, striking beauty of the Sonoran Desert where every shape embodies a unique history. The huge fir, hemlock and cedar trees, even the alders, all adopt a standard shape: large, straight trunks with radiating branches. In dense stands, they are like a super-sized lawn. But the madrona trees twist and turn in their growth, adorned with carefully arranged clumps of leaves, like a banzai contrived to look natural. The madrona's peeling, vibrant red bark creates another one-of-a-kind pattern of shape and color. Each madrona is unique.

The forecast for Lower Alaska is more warm sunshine. Heck, we are tourists in our old stomping grounds. It could be cloudy and raining and we'd still enjoy the place — as long as the rain is warm.