Seattle, WA - On Island Time

Living on island time.

Living on island time.

Just take it on down, a couple of levels,

you'll be living on island time.

                                                                                                 Peter J

Usually Gary and I are moving pretty fast, driving to a new campsite, visiting a new town, seeing new things. We type A’s seldom rest. But, for the last few days, we’ve slowed it down and have been living on Island Time. It began several years ago when we were in Mesa in a resort called Val Vista and right next to Kathy and Steve. Now, we’ve parked next to a lot of people in the time we’ve been RV’ing and most of them are great: fun to talk with, a joy to be with and you just know you’ll miss them when you, or they, move on. This year we met Kathy and Steve and had a great time next to them. I’ve written about them before and, if you’ve read this blog for a while, you might remember my picture of them in their Halloween party costumes.

Yep, Little Bo Peep and the Sheep. You can tell they’re going to be fun. The first time we met them, they told us that they lived on Whidbey Island. Heavenly days, what’s a Whidbey Island? I sure didn’t know but I sure looked it up on the map when I got back to the RV. It’s smack dab in the middle of Puget Sound. Second largest island in the US - after Long Island. You actually need to take a ferry to get there. OK, so now I know.

But, they live in a most unique spot on the island, on Brighton Boardwalk. Brighton Boardwalk is where Brighton Boulevard ends. When you get to the end of the Boulevard, you park your car and walk down the boardwalk, between the beach and the homes, chatting with the neighbors you pass until you reach your home. If you’ve got a large load, you use your dock cart to carry it all. When we arrived, Steve met us with their dock cart and toted our luggage down the Boardwalk to their home. This might look like an ordinary sidewalk but, in truth, it is Brighton Boulevard.

Let me digress a bit here. I remember back when I was in elementary school and we lived on a corner in Fort Dodge, Ia. Across the street were the Kelleher’s and the Van Gundy’s. There were 7 kids in the Kelleher family, 3 in the Van Gundy family, 2 in ours, and there were the Higgins with 2 kids around the corner and Keith who lived on the block and other kids in the neighborhood also. We were all ages but we would play hide and seek over 2 blocks and could play all day soft ball games in the vacant lot next door. We rushed to get our flags up on the flag days before the others got theirs up. We all had big porches on the front of our houses and everyone’s garage was in back on the alley. Neighborhoods were communities. People saw each other daily, the mothers had coffee every morning, the fathers chatted over mowing on the weekends. Now, we all have decks in back and garages in front. Who sees their neighbors every day? I don’t think that the sense of community is as strong now as it was when I was growing up.

Well, here on Whidbey Island, on Brighton Boardwalk they still have a strong sense of community. They see each other every day, they talk to each other as they sit out on their front decks, they join each other as they walk the beach. Everyone sees everyone else as they walk by on the Boardwalk. And, that’s where we’ve been for the last two days. We’ve been living on Island Time. You know:

        long walks on the beach and down a narrow beach access road

        overlooking the Sound as we eat lunch in a local restaurant

        Dutch babies with strawberries and coffee for breakfast

        watching the eagles ‘fishing’ in the sound and eating their lunch on the pier

        watching the seagulls drop clam shells on the beach to break them for dinner

        stopping to chat with neighbors as they walk by on the Boardwalk

        sitting on lawn chairs and just watching the activity on the Sound

        looking for Mt Baker across the water

        seeing the sun set behind the cliffs

        watching the tide roll in and roll back out

Island time is slower time, it’s relaxed time and it’s neighbor time. And, we had a great time.

Now we’re back on the mainland and listening to the cars whiz by on the freeway. We’ve obviously left Island Time.