Picturesque, quiet and peaceful, away from the madness of the big city. These were the things we had looked for and found on this island we now called home. We slept with the windows open and throughout the night we could hear animal noises frequently in the woods around us: owls, cats and other small animals, large animals and sometimes screams that sounded like distress. We read in the local paper about coyotes and disappearing pets and saw the culprits often on the edge of the road and sometimes even in our driveway, peering at us warily. There were also reports in the newspaper of a cougar on the loose, but after a few months the reports ceased.
A mountain beaver regularly ran across the back yard while I was making dinner; a family of raccoons traipsed through, single file, looking for sunflower seeds the birds might have dropped from the feeder (and anything else they might scavenge); small, brown native squirrels, a separate specie from the European grey squirrels on the mainland, were never at a loss when it came to raiding squirrel-proof bird feeders; possums wore a path from our little garden house into the woods, looking for who knows what; salamanders lived in holes at the base of a Douglas Fir in our back yard; whales meandered by in the spring returning from wintering in Mexico; hummingbirds arrived in March and fed voraciously at my feeders until the early part of July. And of course, the deer. People who didn't have gardens were known to coax them into their yards, for they are graceful, non-threatening animals who remember profitable feeding stations and bring back their young the following year.
One day I came to a stop in the middle of the road on my way home from somewhere. A doe was attempting to cross the road with two newborns who were still wobbly on their feet. A couple in a car coming from the opposite direction had stopped too, and the man was on the road taking pictures. Since I didn't have my camera with me I just sat and watched. And hoped they would avoid becoming road kill like so many others.
There is an albino deer on the island--there'd been pictures in the paper, but it frequented another part of the island and we never saw it. People who did see it regularly fretted about hunters getting it during the season.
From the Interstate it was a 20 minute drive to our house, with no stop lights or stop signs. I never knew exactly, but it seemed as though only about half the homes here were occupied year round. Only 20 years ago it was far lower. There were 3 small markets on the island, 1 on the south end and 2 on the north end, but when you're accustomed to a supermarket you frequent the island markets only in emergencies. For everything else it was a 45 minute drive off the island. Well, I didn't mind. This was what I wanted. I just saved up my errands and went to "town" once a week.
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