Salt Spring Island Redux

When Diane and I went to Salt Spring Island last month, we were with our dear friends Cathy and Jerry Zimmerman.

I described our experience in an earlier post. Now it is Cathy's turn. Cathy is a wonderful writer and editor for the Longview Daily News in Longview, Washington, where, an eon ago, I joyfully worked at what was, at the time, one of the last family-owned newspapers in the land.

Cathy shared her version of our Salt Spring Island experience with her readers recently. Here it is with some more of photos I took of this enchanted refuge off the east shore of Vancouver Island.

"Listen to the quiet'

By Cathy Zimmerman
The Longview Daily News

SALT SPRING ISLAND, British Columbia — I almost hate to write this story. The temptation is to keep a recent vacation discovery secret. But there's also the urge to rhapsodize about it, and then of course the word is out at a gallop.

The word is this: In addition to its sleepy, unspoiled pleasures, Salt Spring Island percolates with variety and surprise.

mainland and Vancouver Island, Salt Spring offers rustic resorts, charming B&Bs and anThe largest of the Gulf Islands nestled in the Strait or Georgia between British Columbia's elegant inn. We enjoyed hiking at a coastal park, canoeing on a pristine lake, strolling and snacking in a harbor village with cool shops and restaurants, and visiting the rural studios of some of the dozens of island artisans.

Salt Spring — nicknamed the Banana Belt because it's in a rain shadow — is dotted with sheep farms and has 10 designated bicycle routes. Its Saturday market has inspired magazine articles.

And history buffs will want to read about the 3,000-year presence of First Nation peoples, the freed slaves from the United States who settled in the mid 1800s, and Japanese and Hawaiian pioneers who contributed their chapters to island life.

In short, it's a natural, recreational and cultural gem.

* * *

My husband and I and another couple, Rick Seifert and Diane Moskowitz of Portland, stayed at the Cusheon Lake Resort, in a log cabin overlooking the lake. We split the week's rental of about $1,200.

Fourteen cedar cabins and two chalets share the use of several docks, each with Adirondack chairs, as well as an open area with a big brick fireplace for outdoor cooking, a volleyball area and a small fleet of canoes and rowboats.

Our cabin had two good-sized bedrooms, a bathroom and a big living area with a fireplace and a well-equipped kitchen. A high deck across the front of the cabin overlooked the lake.

The resort's slogan is "Listen to the quiet," and we did.

The family-friendly cabins have no televisions, and visitors are asked to keep any music turned down. No motorized boats are allowed on the lake, and swimming is fine in the warmed-up waters of summer.

Twice, a deer and her two fawns fed on grass 20 feet from our deck. A bald eagle took a lazy turn around the lake. And one evening we saw the resident beaver chugging through the water.

Salt Spring has several other lakes, most of them smaller than Cusheon. St. Mary Lake, at least three times the size of Cusheon, has its own resort on the north end of the island. Aside from the resorts, there are numerous single homes for rent and a surprising number of B&Bs: 33 at last count.

Hastings House, a luxury country estate on 22 acres overlooking Ganges Harbor (again, see photo), has an 11th century Sussex-style manor house, restaurant and spa. Patricia Schulz includes Hastings House in her book, "1,000 Places to See Before You Die." With rooms and suites from $360 to $795 a night and cottages from $625 to $910 a night, we saw but did not stay.

More than 10,000 permanent residents live on Salt Spring, but the narrow roads were never busy. Ganges, the island's central town, felt lively but not overrun.

* * *

Books, samba and creme freche

The peace and quiet of Salt Spring made me feel so relaxed I joked that I felt drugged.

We did rouse ourselves for some hiking and a couple of trips into town. We stocked up on groceries at an unpretentious emporium packed with deli treats and gourmet items, from fresh fish to creme freche.

One evening, we listened to live Latin music at the Tree House Cafe in Ganges, where trios and bands were booked for outdoor concerts every night the first week of July. The cafe serves delicious, innovative meals in its tiny historic building and at outdoor tables tucked under the generous canopy of a tree. We also had good food at Calvin's Bistro and the Tide's Inn.

Three independent book stores in Ganges are distinctly different; we spent time in all of them. Almost everything is independent on Salt Spring, including clothing stores, bakeries, a shoe store and a big toy shop.

Thanks to a local ordinance, we saw no fast food outlets or chains. The only brand name we saw was "Sears," on a small catalog outlet in Ganges.

Several locals were stumped about where the town's name came from, but I discovered on the Web that Ganges was named for a British naval ship built in Bombay, India, of Malabar teak, which visited Salt Spring Island in the 1850s.

The town makes for a fun couple of hours. But if you're seriously interested in shopping, you'll have to hit the back roads — not to find a mall, but to visit dozens of art galleries off the beaten track.

* * *

Art among the trees and hills

Salt Spring makes it easy to find its artisans. Free maps show the locations of 32 galleries, offering pottery, wine, goat cheese, fine wood turning, folk art, baskets, photography, French linens, hand-sewn toys, wool, glass art and jewelry.

We visited Salt Spring Island Cheese, a working goat farm. On the charming, immaculate grounds, we sampled cheeses and crackers, took a short walk around the outside of the cheese-making rooms to watch the process, and sat on a terrace.

At French Country Fabric Creations (pictured here), proprietors have built a country house that is right out of Provence, complete with expansive rows of lavender in front. A separate shop with a loft displays bolts of cotton from Provence and table linens sewn by the owner.

One more foray took us to Blue Horse Folk Art, a stunning gallery on the edge of a country pond. Blue Horse sells paintings, Raku vases, lamps and carvings of birds. An outdoor coffee garden is shaded by towering red-limbed madronas.

* * *

One island, many peoples

I was interested in Salt Spring history, so we visited the graveyard (photo below) near Vesuvius Bay Road where some of the African-American and Japanese pioneers are buried.

We were surprised to not find many signs of the original inhabitants, however, aside from a pictograph on a boulder near Fulford Harbor.

According to "Salt Spring: The Story of an Island," by Charles Kahn, aboriginal peoples of Salt Spring go back 3,000 years. Salish groups frequented the salt springs on the north end and planted fields of sweet camas root. Today, little remains of their villages.

According to Kahn, the sites were abandoned for several reasons. A smallpox epidemic spread by infected Europeans in 1769 "killed so many aboriginal people that not enough remained to maintain villages," he writes. Another factor were fierce wars between the Salish and Kwagulths that drove some Salt Spring natives to the mainland, where descendents now reside as Lummis near Bellingham.

The First Peoples who were still there in the 1800s clashed with newcomers, according to the Heritage Map of Salt Spring Island.

"About half of the first settlers were African-Americans from San Francisco who had come to Victoria in 1858 seeking a place to live where they had the same rights as everyone else," the Heritage material says.

By 1895, an Anglican minister listed a diverse population of 450, including "160 English, 50 Scotch, 20 Irish, 22 Portuguese, 13 Swedes, 4 Germans, 34 Americans, 90 Halfbreeds, 40 Colored or partly colored, 6 Sandwich Islanders, 10 Japanese, also 1 Egyptian, 2 Greeks, 1 Patagonian."

* * *

The Bull Whisperer

Our study of history involved plenty of mental exercise. For a physical workout, we chose a hike at Ruckle Provincial Park.

Winding in and out of forest to beautiful coastal views, the trail was sometimes hard to follow, and we ran into German tourists who were lost. After comparing maps and heading them off in the best direction, we kept going. In a wooded spot along a bordering farm, we ran into four or five shaggy cattle. One with long horns sat right in the middle of the path. Our friend Rick approached the bull and told him calmly that we needed to pass.

The animal stared, stirred, heaved himself up and lumbered off.

The remainder of our stay, Rick got the title of Bull Whisperer.

Salt Spring fed so many of our needs. It's only a day's drive/ferry ride from Longview, but the island lifted us out of space and time. Among the lakeside reeds, we watched dragonflies dart and sparkle. Roadside stands offered lemonade and cookies and trusted us to leave payment in a jar. At the end of a hot day's hike, we sipped chilled Chardonnay at a picnic table in our bare feet.

Go back? In a heartbeat

Two items, late in the day

It's late. I need to think more before writing about the district attorney's refusal to prosecute a case in which signs were illegally posted on utility poles. See this story in today's Oregonian. The ordinance prohibiting such postings may be unconstitutional, saith the DA.

I tear down these signs all the time. Ripped down about eight (an employment agency pitch) this very day and called the number on the sign to tell one "Alice," who answered, that I had done so. My defense is the self-same ordinance.

And the DA won't prosecute? Am I now the one who is guilty for removing Alice's signs?

I have consulted one of the best and most convenient legal minds I know about this matter and will report my findings tomorrow. I may also put in a call to Michael Schrunk, the DA himself. I may want to post my own signs on the utility poles in front of his house. "Prosecute this! Mr. Schrunk."

This could get weird. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, there are two items late in this bizarre weather day to be considered. Neither has to do with the weather, even with thunder and lightning outside my window.

The first is this statement from "Time and the Art of Living" by Robert Grudin. That's a book I've referred to before and recommend highly for bursts of mind stretching.

The statement: "The mind is as limited by what it rebels against as it is by what it accepts."

Item two is how Michael Thomas Ponder figured out where I was last week. Here, in his own words, is his explanation.

"It was an open book test right? Using the power of Google I searched
for Blue Horse using island & WA as key words since it looked like a San
Juan island setting. Restaurant & lodging listings popped up and once I
saw Ganges Rd, I figured I was on the right path with your Indian
clue...."

To see the clues, visit the original post. The answer, lest you have forgotten or didn't care or weren't here for the explication, was Salt Spring Island and its Ganges Harbor in British Columbia.

Ponder me this, O Canada

So it was Canada. It was British Columbia (but, yes, anonymous, it did feel a bit like Wisconsin, Door County to be exact).

And indeed it was Salt Spring Island and Ganges Harbor.

Which means that the "Where-was-Rick" puzzle winner of an always-useful TV-B-Gone is none other than Hillsdale’s own Michael Thomas Ponder (MTP).

See what you can do with a Stanford education? But never mind.

I’m still not able to capture the feeling I had crossing the Peace Arch-ed border at Blaine into Canada.

Part relief knowing that I was no longer under the jurisdiction of the Bushman, part curiosity about whether things would really be that different north of the border. I mean if things are different in Oregon, how much more different can you get?

Short answer: A LOT!

One of the first things I noticed was that it was independence day and not the Fourth of July. Sunday, the First of July, was Canada Day. Happy 140 years, Canada! Three days later, our Fourth of July would be gloriously serene from the deck of our neo-rustic log cabin overlooking placid little Cusheon Lake.

Our itinerary required two ferry rides to get to the island. Ferries are wondrous transitional places. But for the marine air, the steady forward motion, the low hum of engine, ferries are calming entries like those to Japanese gardens and temples.

The island itself is 29 kilometers by 14 kilometers at its widest. I’ll let you do the conversion. The metric system is good for the mind and soul, and a relatively painless way for Americans to get with the rest of the world.

Saltspring Island (yes, it is spelled both ways), is a coastal island that harbors on the east side of Vancouver Island. It has been home to all sorts of folks. The “First Nations peoples” as they are called in Canada, Spanish and English explorers, Hawaiian field hands, Japanese fishermen and farmers, African-American-Canadians (who came here in the 1850s after buying their way out of American slavery), hippies, artists, second- and third-home owners.

Now, in the summer, the place sees a lot of folks like us, tourists, but mostly Canadians.

Ganges, the harbor town, is as much a harbor for tourists as boats. It’s a four-bookstore place with pubs, parking lots, restaurants, parking lots, endless gift shops, parking lots and more parking lots.

At night the town shuts down except for intimate concerts at the outdoor Tree House Cafe. In the cool of the evening under a giant oak, we sipped lattés and nibbled on carrot cake as a trio serenaded us with jazz-inflected sambas.

The island’s signage is a mess; getting lost is easy. A hike took us into a pasture run by bulls protective of their cows. To the amazement of friends, I negotiated us through one tense bull encounter and earned the sobriquet “The Bull Whisperer.” Exiting the pasture, we noticed a sign facing the opposite direction, warning hikers of bulls. There had been no sign at our entrance to the pasture.

The exchange rate still favors the US dollar but only by a nickel. The Canadians have been quick to call it a wash. “One of ours for one of yours.” I didn’t argue. What’s a nickel between friends? Or call it a behemoth-guilt tax.

We read the Toronto Globe and Mail most days. Canada’s major newspaper doesn’t seem to give a rip about the USA. The only US story to make the front page all week was Bushman’s commutation of Scooterman’s sentence. And that story was told with a kind of “What did you expect?” shrug.

The best parts of our time were the long, languid, northern-latitude days and a vague feeling of escape from the responsibility of being citizens of “The Mightiest Nation on Earth.” My vacation mood fit that of Canada, a nation that mostly wants to be left alone.

Laissez Faire.

For all that, it’s good to be back, if only for the challenge of it all. Being an American is tough work, but someone has to do it.

And, yes, there were 240 e-mails in my in-box. And yes it has taken me three days to dispense with them.

And yes, upon a little reflection, it makes perfect sense that Michael Thomas Ponder, who has accompanied me to strange places (literally and figuratively), would ferret out where on earth I was last week.

P.S. For another experience of Saltspring Island and better photos than mine, visit John Harvey’s site. I don’t know John. I just discovered his work Saltspring surfing.