The San Juan Islands Winery on San Juan Island is a popular stop near the town of Friday Harbor, the county seat of the islands. The islands are mostly forested but do have large, grassy plains or valleys, where early farmers were and are able to make a living. The San Juans are far from the Columbia River about which I have been blogging more often. Indeed, the San Juan Island group lie between Bellingham WA on the mainland and Victoria BC on Vancouver Island in an arm of the North Pacific Ocean, really. The Columbia runs down the eastern side of mountain ranges that go north and south (more or less) of eastern BC and Washington.
I just returned from a cabin on one of the islands that my family has enjoyed for more than 40 years. It was sunny and warm, so warm that a group of guys celebrating their college graduation actually went swimming VERY briefly in the 59-degree waters of the Salish Sea (as Puget Sound is recently named by scientists). The islands lie in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains that form a barrier between them and the open ocean and enjoy only 20-24 inches of rain annually, almost all of it in fall-winter, and a spring and summer temperatures daily of about 60-75 degrees. (My educated estimates as a part-time resident.)
My children have grown up wandering this one island, swimming in a deep water lake at about 1,000 feet elevation there, and roaming the old logging roads that date back to 1900 and earlier. No dangerous wild animals inhabit the islands. I guess they just did not want to swim there from the mainland. Just raccoons and deer abound and, on some islands, squirrels. No snakes other than garter snakes near ponds sometimes. Such an ideal place. It is said to be similar to northern France.
I must share a personal story about the garter snakes. A Los Angeles friend of my son who was visiting said the pet shops in LA would pay good money for such snakes to be sold as pets. My son and the boy (both about 12 years old) caught about 20 of them before the visitor returned home. With his mother's permission and stern warning about the matter the boy personally had them in a sturdy container on the plane while flying home. Can you imagine the chaos if the snakes had gotten out, regardless of how small and harmless they are!
Next weekend I must talk to a group on Lummi Island, not officially one of the San Juans but considered one. It is accessible from Bellingham area's mainland by a small ferry for a 10 minute trip. I must speak about the last 75-100 years of the San Juan Islands, based on my 2011 book about them published by Caxton Press, which also published The Columbia River and Stevens Pass that I wrote.
Getting to the islands and getting marketable products off the islands has always been a problem, since most of them lie a few miles from any mainland access. Ferries and steamers of the past have been the only access, no bridges. Today the Washington State Ferry system stops at only four of the larger islands; others use private or commuter boats, fly small planes, or hire one of the barge companies to take vehicles or large items to and from the islands. The islands had just one doctor in 1950, who would care for his patients day or night by reaching them on a small boat, later a small plane for some.
In the book I write about the changes from raising cattle to alpacas or from grains to lavender, about the resident pods of black-and-white orcas (once called killer whales), tourism and summer home building, very active conservation efforts by almost all residents, the beauty of the madrona trees and lush flowers, and the benign living afforded residents and visitors by these stunningly lovely islands.
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