By Walt Corbin
While stationed at Ft Lewis in 1954-55, I traveled the ferry to Vancouver Island through the San Juan Island. There was a long log boom in tow and the islands were like forested jewels to me. I vowed when I retired, the San Juans would be my home.
Well I did retire in1990 and camped out on the land that I had purchased in 1981. I expected to fish and boat and build myself a log cabin. None of that happened. But what did happen was my melting into community. A community of people that had many of the same feelings about the environment and space that we were living in. I planted trees and bought as much land as I could to plant more trees on. I have held them over the years like a growing family and as crazy as it may seem I often touch and talk to them as my own kin.
As I have frequently told my wife, Gayle, each morning I wake up that I can scarcely believe that I am living in this place. And I suppose my great expectation was that the Islands would remain as I found them. That of course was not to be. When I realized this, I became more interested in how I could preserved what surrounded me. Gayle and I immediately extinguished the development rights on most of our forested property here on Orcas and our land in the Okanogan.
And today my great expectations have allied me with others in the community who, like myself, are striving to preserve the rural community that has been our vision. Will the majority of people cherish the land as myself and others do? Will people think that now that we are here – no more should follow? Yes and no and they probably do.
But my great expectation is that people will suddenly realize that the community that they came here to enjoy is slowly slipping away and they will realize that they can’t be arm-chair anything but must actively participate in the preservation of a common community vision.
I loved reading that you bought up all the land you could and planted as many trees as you could, and that you often touch and talk to trees as if they were kin. I wonder how many of us humans have found comfort, nurturance and kinship in the presence of trees in moments so dark that we could not find them within our own species? I remember snuggling into a great old tree and sobbing the night Martin Luther King was killed. Thanks Walt.
I loved reading that you bought up all the land you could and planted as many trees as you could, and that you often touch and talk to trees as if they were kin. I wonder how many of us humans have found comfort, nurturance and kinship in the presence of trees in moments so dark that we could not find them within our own species? I remember snuggling into a great old tree and sobbing the night Martin Luther King was killed. Thanks Walt.
I loved reading that you bought up all the land you could and planted as many trees as you could, and that you often touch and talk to trees as if they were kin. I wonder how many of us humans have found comfort, nurturance and kinship in the presence of trees in moments so dark that we could not find them within our own species? I remember snuggling into a great old tree and sobbing the night Martin Luther King was killed. Thanks Walt.