The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I forget sometimes that the island here is a vacation get-away still, even after the resorts were shuttered, sold and torn down. Even Cama Beach State Park with its dozens of refurbished cabins has closed them to habitation, maybe the last hurrah from the Resort Era when salmon were still plentiful and Camano was a fishing destination. Now folks come to their cottages or stay with family and friends, walk the beach and kayak the shorelines.

Today, though, Labor Day, the yearly Exodus begins. Range Rovers pulling trailers with dirt bikes, SUV’s with kayaks shoved onto roof racks, cars loaded with rubber rafts, coolers, paddle boards, grills and the kids — they all pack it in, head back to jobs and school, bid adieu to our sunsets, our clamming and crabbing, our desolate beaches, and drive off into their last island sunset for another year. Boats that have moored offshore get hauled in, trailered up behind trucks and driven back to a winter drydock, crab pots piled, buoys stashed, off they go, adios, vaya con dios!

For nine months we get our peace and quiet back. Walking the beaches below I won’t find my fellow hikers tomorrow. Old footprints in the sand will be gone by morning, just me and the herons now, seagulls barking, eagles overhead, hardly a boat out in the Saratoga Straits. Call me selfish but c’mon, I shared all summer with the motorcycles, the jetskis, the family reunions, the 4th of July bombardments, the traffic …. Just give me a few months of tranquillity, the least an old codger can ask.

And sure, I know these folks leaving are returning to 40 hour weeks in jobs they probably hate back in congested cities but we can’t all live in Paradise, can we? Adam and Eve didn’t have tourism, airbnb’s, VRBO’s, timeshare condos, did they? So it seems like an okay compromise to me, let a few folks share this place for a few days, weeks, months. But then they’ve got to leave. Labor Day is check out time. Seems fair to me.

You might find it hard to believe, but the South End used to be a Destination Spot. The whole island did. The island you could drive to, one developer in the 80’s called it, but 50 years before that, the resorts promoted it the same way.

Camp Grande, Diane, Tyee, Cama, Madrona, Indian Beach, Camp Lagoon, Sunset Beach, Utsalady Beach, Camp Comfort. The poor miserable sweltering city folks could escape their sizzling apartments and rent a cabin for the week. All day long the menfolk would do what menfolk have done since Cro-Magnon dropped their tails and descended from the branches of the nut-trees. They’d sit on their butts and drink. Course we modernists call it FISHING. Which is really a euphemism for Drinking.

When the boat was full of empties and dead salmon, the boys would pull up on the beach and wobble up to the mizzus with their trophy salmons and do what menfolk have done since the 2nd day they hit the ground. Order the womenfolk to cook up the catch.

Back then they had these cute pioneer woodstoves in every cabin. Women must’ve really liked this. Their menfolk, being he-men, could split up the firewood with an axe, probably whacking off a couple of fingers and toes, and she could stand over a 500 degree stove in a cabin with all the doors and windows open and the kitchen about 400 degrees, and she could fry up some smelly fish for the whole squalling family. Later she could wash the burnt-on skillets and the rest in water boiled on the stove. She probably had the time of her life playing pioneer mizzus.

The resorts are all gone now, end of an era on the South End. Some say the fishing dried up. I say the women finally got fed up.