August. We inflate our paddleboards, strap down dry bags, and launch off the pebble beach at Southworth. Mirror water, a 1.7-mile paddle over to our campsite on Blake Island. Normally we would sail here, bringing our house with us; this time we decided to pare down to the essentials. The added friction pulls back the island's elastic separation from the mainland.
Friends arrive by kayak and we set up camp; cashew ramen for dinner. In the mad dash for the ferry, last hopes of provisioning at Southworth yielded no vegetables, and we settle for what we brought.
Tune out from the channel of wanting.
Deer roam without any fear of humans. Dozens of swallows dip. A husky the colours of an orca keeps watch over our neighbours' camp.
In the morning we walk the loop trail around the island. We notice, forage, gather what we find: little gifts of the forest, compositions of fern, shell, feather and stone with lichen. It seems the forest is experiencing several seasons at once, living and dying, each piece an instant of change that holds a vast complexity of relationships and instructions. Blake Island, once a traditional summer camp of the Suquamish; logged for cedar and fir; then privately owned; then a tourist attraction, Tillicum Village, never Indigenous-owned, with an easy ferry; now a half-wild state park with beach campsites for the boaters who can find their way.
We recompose the compositions, with sunlight printing and watercolours, bringing together what each of us found. The island itself reminds us of a sundial, some parts in the sun and some in the shade, ever changing. To keep in the shade we must circumnavigate the campsite as the afternoon turns.
We come across a display case of found island treasures, jumbled together like a neglected jewellery box. To return our findings to the island, we collage the sundial of island time: the cues of light, the change of seasons. And my thirty-eighth passage around the sun.
We wait for slack tide and push off.
From the solid foothold of peace, to floating over the contiguous liquid of dreams and nightmares, as inseparable as light from shadow.
Island Lab is a practice in coastal resilience: experiments in bringing people, places and ideas together, on ships we charter and on our members' own boats. This was the first gathering of the season, six of us by invitation; the next ones, and how to come, are at islandlab.dev/gatherings.