Sun Days on Orcas | 27 things about Marcia Spees

1. Marcia is the eldest of ten siblings in an exuberant blended family.

2. She grew up in Seattle and Anchorage with summers on Whidbey Island. Come Labor Day, “I never wanted to return to the city and vowed at an early age that I would always be an island girl. Here I am.”

3. She has dimples on her shoulders.

4. She and her ever-loving and supportive husband, George, have four grown children and eleven grandkids.

5. Marcia was a ten-year Girl Scout and achieved the rank of First Class which, at the time, was the equivalent of the Boy Scout’s Eagle Scout.

6. In third grade she performed original songs on local Seattle kids’ TV shows: The Stan Boresen Show – “King’s Clubhouse” and “Captain Puget.”

7. Marcia has backpacked throughout the Olympics and hiked Mt. Rainier’s Wonderland Trail. She once hiked the High Sierras out of Yosemite. Four days in, a pack of bears ransacked their food cache, leaving the patrol of seven high school girls with little food. This circumstance prompted Marcia to corner a rattlesnake and cut off its head with her Girl Scout knife. It tasted like chicken.

8. She has a vast repertoire (kazoo and uke accompaniment) of old-timey campfire songs with a particular emphasis on cowboy laments.

9. In the seventies, Marcia conducted Lamaze Childbirth Preparation classes on Orcas and has attended several births.

10. It’s kind of quirky, but she has often been approached for “person on the street” interviews by TV crews.

11. In high school, Marcia’s Scout troop of six girls refurbished a UW library van and embarked upon a cross-country trip to the New York World’s Fair. That’s another story, but suffice it to say that it culminated with a luncheon in the exclusive DC Senate Dining Room, eating bean soup next to Senator Robert Kennedy.

12. And speaking of brushes with greatness: Lee Meriwether, Miss America 1955, was in the next compartment on a train trip to California. Miss America gave Marcia a rose from her bouquet. Marcia sat next to Fess Parker at breakfast at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Art Linkletter was on a flight with her from LA to Palm Springs. (He wasn’t very nice!) At age thirteen, she danced the twist with Caesar Romero at the Ranch Club in Palm Springs at Easter brunch. (For you youngsters – these were once famous people.) Oh – and Joan Baez.

13. She irons her pillowcases and spritzes them with lavender water (but not the sheets!).

14. Her first steps were taken on her first birthday aboard a DC prop flight from Seattle to Anchorage (before jet planes). It was a six- or eight-hour flight, but she can’t remember exactly because she was only one year old.

15. She was First Cello in the Seattle Youth Orchestra in 1959.

16. As a student living in Vienna, Austria, in 1967, Marcia saw Rudolf Nureyev dance in “Swan Lake” at the Vienna Opera House. “It was standing-room only, and, as students, we camped out all night the night before the performance in the colonnade of the Opera House so as not to lose our place in the queue. Our numbers were checked every hour, and, of course, we were exhausted by show time. But the tickets cost only 25 cents.”

17. For about the last 30 years, Marcia has kept a log of people locally and near to her who have died. You may recognize many names. She calls it her “Death Book.”  Some people don’t like that title, so call it what you will; but the purpose is to never forget those who have once been with us and are now gone.

18. In the 60s and 70s, Marcia managed Doe Bay Resort, which her Dad then owned. As an adherent of the “back to the land” movement towards self-sufficiency, she tended an organic garden and kept goats, chickens, and ducks. One day, her idyllic Island vision was shattered, sadly, when her pet duck, Gretchen, choked to death on a slug right outside her kitchen window.

19. Marcia does the daily New York Times crossword in ink (Saturday’s is the most challenging) as well as Sudoku, and she’s getting pretty good at Wordle. There is a dedicated jigsaw puzzle table in her living room.

20. Over her 50+ years on Orcas, Marcia has participated in the development of many community projects and organizations, among them the Library, Emmanuel Episcopal Church, the Indian Island Marine Observatory, Children’s House, Orcas Center, and as a charter trustee of the Orcas Island Community Foundation. She sat on the San Juan County Planning Commission during the development of the first comprehensive plan.

21. She has hiked the Mexican Sierras and witnessed the breathtaking cacophony of millions of Monarch butterflies.

22. Her mother predicted that she would become an artist, but it took until her mid-40s for Marcia to really believe it.

23. An amateur birder (thanks to Kim Middleton!), Marcia has attended birdfests across the US: Cape May, New Jersey; Mobile, Alabama; the Rio Grande; Leavenworth, Washington, and Florida’s Space Coast.

24. She has skinny-dipped at the north shore in the moonlight with the dripping phosphorescence.

25. Her poetry has been published in “Prune Alley,” (a now-defunct library publication); she wrote and self-published a cookbook, “The Skinny Gourmet;” and she collaborated with Frank Loudin to write “Capture Your Hometown in Watercolor” for NorthLights Books. So, she’s there, in the Library of Congress.

26. The regular delivery room was occupied at the birthing center, so, on a hot August night, Marcia gave birth to her second child on the kitchen table. The Dutch door was open to the garden breezes and baby Cordelia had her first bath in the kitchen sink.

27. At this time of Thanksgiving I would like to say that I fear entitlement is on the ascendency and gratitude is in short supply these days. For my part, I could not be more grateful for friends and family, the opportunity and freedom to pursue my passions, and all the blessings of this beautiful Orcas Island life.

Thank you, Marcia, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving full of love and gratitude!