Pilgrim’s Progress
You lived on the island as long as I have, you start thinking you either discovered it back when the Spanish cruised through or you must have come over on the Land Bridge from Everett, maybe when the mastodons were heading north on their last exodus.
What memories are still intact are of a place not too populated, logged over long back and growing a new forest. The road down to our homestead was through a continuous woods from Terry’s Corner to the Camano Head, 15 miles unbroken only by Elger Bay Store and Garrison’s Real Estate office. Since then things have opened up a bit. Price of progress, they tell me. High price, you ask me … and I know you didn’t.
But … things change. Take that to the bank any day of the week. I forget sometimes how really long I’ve lived here. Of course it’s going to change! If we wanted it to stay the same we could move to the desert or over to the peninsula where it rains all the time, some place nobody wants to live. Me, I was hoping to live in Paradise a long way from jobs or work, which, I know, is a paradise almost by definition. I just forgot how many people retire here, folks like myself who wanted the cheap land. Trouble was, they also wanted medical services, fire services, police protection, lots of local shopping and, well, everything Lynnwood has without the congestion and taxes. They never figured out that if they got their wish we would BE Lynnwood.
Still, I’ve been hiding out down here 37 years now and okay, we got a couple of stoplights we never had, two little shopping complexes, a medical clinic, full time firemen, way more deputy sheriffs … but … Tyee Store closed and so did Elger Bay Café, Terry’s Corner Commons ‘ commercial district never caught fire and the road down to the South End still looks like it did my first dark and rainy drive to get a first look at my shack and property. Probably some guy in early Lynnwood thought the same as I did 150 years ago. Ask me what I think in another 100 or so….
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