Destination Orcas Island: A Walk though Our Own Historic Journeys

Orcas Island Historical Museum visitor wonders how he'd size up for a wilderness journey

On Sunday afternoon, Aug. 15, Four Winds*Westward Ho Camp will describe “Childrens’ Journey to Orcas since 1927” in a presentation at 2 p.m. at the Odd Fellows Hall as part of the Journey Stories experience.

The Smithsonian exhibit, Journey Stories, continues to draw islanders and visitors through its final two weeks at the Orcas Island Historical Museum. The extensive exhibit, housed in the Museum’s six original island log cabins, explores the history of American travel from immigration to migration, the role of myriad transportation modes and the search for freedom.

Andrea Cohen, Chair of the project,  says, “The Smithsonian name is magic… people come pouring in, and it enable us to tell our own stories around the national narrative. Engaging people in the museum – this is the exciting part.”

Cohen, too, has a unique journey story as an art therapist and a resident attached to the U.S. Foreign Service in Yemen, Ivory Coast and South Africa.  But when she arrived on Orcas, like so many other island residents, she too claims the “intense and immediate” feeling of arriving home. “On Orcas, life is a journey story,” she says.

Destination: Orcas Island is the local component of the exhibit, which includes amazing Orcas Journey Stories from both past and present. Placards identified by Destination: Orcas Island throughout the exhibit speak for islanders’ stories. Cohen notes that these placards relate the sensory nature of the journey experience that is “so rich to read,” such as Bogdon Kulminski’s  tale of the “deep and mysterious” sounds and sensations of the train trip that took him from his family’s farm in Germany.

Five islanders are highlighted with photograph-on-canvas panels  created by Martin Taylor:

• John and Lucy Ketonah Grey, a Lummi Indian princess rescued near Olga following the death of most of her family
• Ethan Allen, school superintendent who rowed 10,000 miles in five years as part of his job,
• Grandpa Judd Terrill, “an intrepid guy,” says Cohen, whose 90-year history included numerous careers and journeys, from Hawaiian tea-shipper to Sucia Island fish seller and Orcas blacksmith. Along the way he married, left for 10 years, returned to father 7 children, and then left again.
• Aviation pioneer Bob Schoen
• May Shiwozawa, Museum docent – you read her words, “I don’t have strong feelings about discrimination,” although she spent her teen years in a World War II American internment camp.

The Smithsonian exhibit itself tells in six free-standing modules, of the chronological journey stories that make up U.S. History:

• The One-Way Trip of Pilgrims and Slaves — We see the packed sardine-like diagram of the African slaves aboard ships taking them to America, and hear of a slave market sale
• Pushing the Boundaries through the Wilderness
• Across the Great Desert —  we see the early photographs of the large families clad in long-skirted and long-sleeved pioneer dress outside their sod cabins, we read of wagon trains (“We are really a moving village, nearly 400 animals and 708 men”) and of trails across the Western wilderness (“A miserable trail such as a snake might use”).Although Daniel Boone, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Laura Ingalls Wilder are quoted in the exhibit –“I resigned my domestic happiness,” says Boone — the journey experiences are described most often in the words of ordinary Americans, unknown to history students.A brochure to aid city-dwellers in their transition to pioneers is reproduced, with advice on practical matters such as how to pack bacon so the fat won’t melt away, and how to traverse rivers and build temporary shelters.

• Highways of the Nation – we see photographs of the Chinese railroad laborers and the 3-story railroad car dormitories. We hear of Henry Ford’s innovative genius in creating the modern assembly-line factory to mass-produce cars that can be purchased and maintained by the average individual.And we learn of the side-effects of industrialism and entrepreneurship – the Jim Crow laws, the travels of the “Okies” and other Dust-Bowl refugees as they seek a better life: “We got blowed out of Oklahoma,” one Depression-era traveler says.

• Accelerated Mobility describes the advent of air travel, when flight attendants were nurses equipped with a wrench and a fly swatter
• Our Expanded World shows the journeys that came with the Civil Rights movement, and the modern wave of immigrants.

An easy-to-overlook part of the exhibit is a cabinet with odds and ends about transportation. On these shelves are china dishware decorated with Orcas Island scenes, once included free in oatmeal boxes, many generations of cameras used to record the journey stories, and old hand-written journals and logs.

A video created by an Orcas Island High School class under the direction of teacher Paul Evans, is “so much more than I dreamed it would be,” says Cohen, who expected simple question-and-answer interviews of islanders telling their journey stories. “It’s beautifully edited” says Cohen, with additional images and scenery. The video will remain at the museum, enclosed in a rustic lumber frame, created by James Lobdell.

In the corridor addition on the north side of the museum, Islanders’ stories are compiled in notebooks along a display built by Bruce Hubbard. Cohen says, “This part is best seen after the main exhibit. Throughout the year, the museum has requested islanders’ journey stories. The four notebooks are “a total mixed bag,” says Cohen, “For me it’s the most exciting part of the whole project,” Hopefully the stories will continue on. The whole island is so full of journey stories.”

There is still time to add your own journey story to the archives. “My Journey Story” forms are available at the museum, at the public library. The stories will all  be compiled into a beautifully hand-made book, created by Denise Wilk using local deerskin, now displayed at the exhibit. This book will be archived and remain at the Orcas Museum. Islanders are encouraged  to submit their stories in standard 8.5 x 11 inch size paper format so they will fit the page protectors in the book. Submissions will be accepted throughout the duration of the Journey Stories exhibit.

The story can be completed on the one-page form, or it can extend as long as you wish, says Cohen. Journey Stories can be mailed to PO Box 134, Eastsound WA 98245.

Because there is such a wealth and depth of stories in the exhibit, museum visitors are allowed continued free admission to the Smithsonian exhibit. That way, they can return as many times as desired to see, hear, and consider the journey stories that our forebears have undertaken, that we have made, and that we may yet consider making.

Regular exhibits have been packed away to make room for the Smithsonian traveling exhibit . . . all except the Boede cabin which is the last room you will visit while making the rounds in Journey Stories.

Remaining presentations before the Smithsonian Exhibit packs up and leaves town on August 29 are

• “Captain Wilkes’ San Juan Voyage of 1841,” by Tom Welch at the Orcas Grange at 7 p.m.
• “Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip” a documentary film by Ken Burns at the West Sound Community Hall at 6:30 p.m.

The Historical Museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day of the exhibit. Go to www.orcasmuseum.org for more information.