On two sequential nights, in two separate cities, I met the same two girls because we were staying in the same two houses with different friends. During a party at the second house, they told me they lived in a park on an island and said that if I wanted to go back with them I could crash in the park bunkhouse for a bit. This sort of thing was more or less normal for me at the time. The next day we woke up early, did some light cleaning, and left for Orcas Island where I was immediately offered a job teaching at an outdoors camp for local schools.
If Montreal had psychedelic undertones, Orcas was like stepping straight into a dream. The park encompasses a mountain, several lakes, and is home to swaths of old growth, the eldest of which are upwards of 1,000 years old and 300 feet tall. In their undergrowth, foot long green and brown banana slugs turn dead leaves and wood back into soil, leaving a slimy trail in their wake that is rumored to numb the tongue if licked. In the ancient canopies nested eagles, formidable raptors that stood about three feet tall with a wingspan more than double that. At the peak of the mountain was a four story stone tower and if you climbed up to the top there would often be eagles passing remarkably close by. While exploring I would often come upon small clearings of rocks from old collapses or slides that were completely covered in six to twelve inches of the softest moss. The island was small enough that you could watch the sun both rise and set over an ocean full of sea otters, seals, and all manner of strange tidal creatures and detritus. My dreams there were so vivid, complete with recurring characters and storylines, that I started to journal them.
My coworkers were all decent sorts and we had good times with the kids, leading hikes, searching for weird water bugs, playing games, leading campfire songs. I got to learn and teach cool skills, like how to break the spines of a nettle so that you can eat the leaves raw without being stung, and how to kayak. Since we were fairly isolated and lived together we often hung out in our off time too. Excursions into the quaint little town. Kayaking across the ocean to camp on a deserted island. Visiting the Historic Rosario Hotel to witness Christopher Peacock (or, as one member of our group familiarly referred to him, Chris Peacock) demonstrate his considerable skills on the organ. Or more often, swimming in the lake, making a fire by the lake and getting in trouble the next day for being too loud. We also all purposely flipped our kayaks over in a lake that still had ice on parts of it, although that was actually required by work.
When they left I stayed on to work park maintenance with a small summer crew. Even with the natural beauty and three day weekends to enjoy it, by the end the isolation was getting to me in an unhealthy way. Perhaps it was the primal power of the ancient wilderness, the intense dreams, or the fact that my primary cultural input at the time was Murakami, LeGuin, and Lynch, three artists known for their strange, often dark, outsider takes on reality. Personally, I think it was that the ocean is too powerful for me to ever feel comfortable having it so close to me on all sides. Towards the end of my time there I was told that a local tribe had a story about how a powerful vision was given to a seeker praying at the lake that I was camped next to and how after that it was acknowledged by the tribe that the island was not a place to settle permanently but to visit for spiritual cleansing and guidance. I knew then that it was time to go.
*As previously mentioned, most of the art I made on the road was ritually burned but i did save this poem about my time on the island
the sight of first light
hitting tree tops
with mountain lake backdrop
makes me stop
in awe of what i saw
i draw art with sea stones
'till i'm too tired to bother
then watch the sunset reflect
off receding sea water
walk through ancient forests
or run around without shoes
drink and sing songs
until we're drunk enough to steal canoes
or sit out by the lake
and listen to the frogs
smoke cigarettes with sage
and dedicate them to dead gods
watch otters eat fish
watch deer eat grass
sit by the fire
'till the logs turn to ash
and when the fires gone
and the last embers die
we'll fall asleep on the lawn
looking up at the sky