Alone on an Island

It was the kind of sunset that God intended for tourists, full of startling reds and pastel pinks, all laced with shades of gold.

Seen from the veranda of a century-old hotel, the colors set the Strait of Juan de Fuca afire, so brilliant was their reflection on the water.

We were on Orcas Island, which is part of the San Juan group, in a finger of the ocean that separates Washington state from Canada.

A ferryboat moving out from the slip below cut a lazy trail through the inlet, adding movement to the stationary grandeur of the scene.

My wife, Cinelli, was taking pictures and I was basking in the sunset, thinking how lucky to be so far from the pandemonium of L.A. in a beauty almost beyond description. Suddenly the guy next to me sighed heavily and said, appropos to nothing, “What a lot of crapola.”

I don’t usually talk to strangers when I am on vacation, because they are mostly from places like Houston, Tex., or Allentown, Pa., and have nothing to say that I care to hear.

Cinelli loves to make new friends and gathers them in like bundles of wheat. Eventually we adopt them and lend them money and absorb all of their misery and end up wishing to hell we’d never heard of them.

The man on the veranda captured my attention because he seemed so p.o.’d in paradise. His comment, like a burp in church, was an intrusion into my moment of serenity, and I resented it. So I said, “Just exactly what are you talking about?”

*

Turns out, the guy, whose name was Harry, was an L.A. expatriate who had fled the city years ago in search of just the Right Place to Be, the way Dorothy had set out to find Oz.

Harry’s search had begun in the L.A. area itself. Born in the Valley, he had moved from Encino to Hollywood to Santa Monica to Thousand Oaks, but had not been happy in any of those places.

He disliked crime, noise, smog, neighbors, barking dogs and his first wife, Ellen, who didn’t like him either and who, tired of his eternal state of dismay, kicked Harry out.

He decided life would be better in Sacramento, which is where he moved next, but that wasn’t what he was looking for either. It had all of the lousy things L.A. had, except for Ellen, and Harry found it too much to take.

Eureka was next, but the air smelled funny from the paper mills, so after a few months Harry moved to Astoria, Ore., and then to Ilwaco, just across the border in Washington, where he lived in a motel under a waterfront bar, and finally to Orcas Island.

He liked Orcas at first and even married again, but Wife 2 apparently also found Harry’s negative attitude too much to bear and after awhile departed for Seattle, never to return.

The day I met Harry he was ready to move again. He’d grown tired of trees, sunsets, water, serenity, ferryboats and little birds that perched on his windowsills like animated creatures from a Disney movie, begging for crumbs.

Harry, so help me, was weary of this island paradise and itching to get back to L.A.

*

I thought about that for the rest of our trip, as we wandered through the Northwest. My intention in the first place was to find just such an island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, because I have always had this romantic notion of a place isolated by water that would bring total peace of mind, beyond the reach of celebrity trials and media whores.

Like Harry, I was looking for the Perfect Place, but only on a temporary basis. To paraphrase Adlai Stevenson, I wanted to rest for awhile, to sit under a tree with a glass of wine and watch the dancers.

I found such a tree at Capt. Whidbey’s Inn on Whidbey Island, and then at the grand old Orcas Hotel on Orcas Island. Now I have two islands of peace and beauty, and I’ll return to them both someday.

But I also discovered, thanks to Harry, that life is composed of many islands. His is an island of discontent, which he will never leave, and mine an island of imagination, on which I have always dwelt.

Small towns are also islands, isolated plots of parochial interests, far from a mainland of vast movements and large themes. We saw many on our trip and knew in our hearts why the islands existed, because they respond to an aching need for gentle days and quiet nights.

And now we have crossed the Sea of Serenity and are back on the noisy mainland. I don’t know whether Harry is here or not, but if he is, I hope he’s happy, if only for a little while.

I’ll get by OK too. My islands have sunsets, and I’ll never stop dreaming about them.