Midnight Mutterings | Quaking

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

Having grown up in the Southeast United States and lived in the Northeast and Midwest, US, I knew nothing of Earthquakes. The shaking of the Earth existed only in movies and geography books in my young life. Only when I was almost thirty years old, and made my first trip across the country with small children, camping along the way, did I arrive in the Bay Area to experience my first earthquake not long after our arrival. That first quake was a small one, a gentle shaking of the bed and water moving in a small aquarium where the guppies my son loved that traveled across the country with us, whose water froze around them in the high altitude of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Somehow that first crossing of the continent didn’t really work for me. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the small earthquake, but California just didn’t feel right to me. (Possibly I was unnerved by all the perfect weather.) In any case I packed up the kids and returned to Chapel Hill within a couple of months, glad to see familiar friends and settle into a job teaching kindergarten in a small private Quaker school, where we experienced the first Earth Day that I wrote about in an earlier column. What I didn’t write about in that column is that not so long after we arrived in Chapel Hill there was an earthquake. I have tried to look it up on the internet, but had no luck. Perhaps it was too small to be of interest. All I remember was a fairly loud noise and a crack in the plaster wall of our living room in a second floor apartment. It wasn’t scary, just a little ironic, leaving earthquake county for another earthquake. So soon.

After a year, we returned to the Bay Area of California, and it suited me this time, so we stayed there until I took a job at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, only to return to the west coast, this time to Washington State where I’ve lived ever since.

All my experience of earthquakes has been small ones, much like the one that encouraged me to get out of bed at 5:02 AM last Monday, March 3, 2025. My house on the beach at Obstruction Pass is over 100 years old, according to the county records, and the creaking may have contributed to my alert state. And there was an additional noise besides the house creaking, not unlike a distant explosion.

As my property is in the tsunami zone, the first thing I did is look out my window at the water, which was reassuringly flat. My vague understanding is that when there is a tsunami, the water pulls out before it returns, when it causes the damage. I have read that in serious tsunamis, children venture onto the newly revealed beach to pick up flapping fish abandoned by the water and that is when the returning water is at it’s most dangerous.

The first radio report of Monday’s quake I heard said the center of the quake was six miles east of Orcas Island, but later maps showed the center as right in the little bay where I live, just off ‘Deer Beach.’ No one I know is aware of a place called Deer Beach, and the best guess is that the reference is to Deer Point.

The best part of this latest earthquake is that I heard from several people from out of state I have not seen in years who contacted me when they heard the news. Even though I haven’t had a landline phone in a while, my e-mail is ancient, and it was lovely to hear old friends are doing well. I’m not the best about keeping in touch, and this was a reminder that I need to improve in that realm (as well as in so many other areas).

I have heard from other people on the island that some, but not all, felt the Monday earthquake, even as far away from Obstruction Pass as you can get on Orcas. My next door neighbor on Orcas, who was in Burlington, said she didn’t feel it but her friends in Anacortes did. My cats in Bellingham didn’t report anything, but they are very self-involved.

I haven’t heard of any physical damage on Orcas, or that there were personal injuries. I hope that’s true. One of my neighbors went out on his paddle board with a feather in his hair to give a prayer of gratitude for safety. I’m grateful to him for staying in touch with the spirits in these uncertain times. (Perhaps he should take his paddle board and feather to Congress, with a prayer.) And I’m grateful to the earthquake gods that this was such a small quake, given that we are so close to the center of this one

I have heard several personal reports of ‘our’ earthquake from people on Orcas, but would like to hear yours. Meanwhile, may all of your quakes be mild ones.