At home, I shower before I eat breakfast, and here, with the promise of showers and hot water, I stuck to my home routine. I showered immediately upon rising. Or I tried to. Unfortunately the showers were coin-op, a vital point I didn't notice until I tried to turn on the water. A woman whose large German Shepherd, Romeo, accompanied her into the bathroom, took pity on my plight. I scrubbed down quickly on two bits, then sought her out among the tents. Actually I looked for the dog, all humans looking alike to me.

She was surprised and maybe a little offended (that I wanted to return the money, not that I looked for the dog--I'm more subtle than that), which I empathized with. I felt especially bad at not only having to ask a stranger for help and help in the form of money but doing so a day and a half after denying a thirteen-year-old the same amount for bus fare (even though he already smoked, even though he obviously didn't take the bus all the way home). I didn't tell her that either, but instead about the transitive principle of airport rides, which here meant if I couldn't return her kindness I would be obliged to haunt the showers until I found someone I could help out. She liked that. Plus I liked her dog, which also helped.

The neighboring party included kids, I assumed from the candy on the picnic table. I was wrong. These folks, 50 or not, were having s'mores for breakfast and having them with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups rather than Hershey bars. I myself dislike marshmallows, but anyone who likes fluffernutter sandwiches pro'ly would like these. I guess.

These neighbors, from Tacoma, had a Labrador Retriever named Abby. Romeo's mother, Abby's, and I talked dogs over breakfast. I asked if Abby was young, since her paws were so big, and Nancy exclaimed, "You do know labs!" They adopted Abby at two from dog showpeople who were willing to part with her because she scored low. (This is why I don't like dog shows: a dog is a companion, not a pumpkin at a state fair.) Her paws are too big, her head too wide (for a lab?!), and her nose too mottled. But apparently I don't know labs that well: Abby wasn't young, she was nine. A noble beast through and through, happy and devoted. Even RDC, who initially favored Romeo, agreed that Abby held her head like a Sphinx and that she was a good dog. A good dog, if yellow.

The day dawned overcast and we took our time over breakfast, warming our hands on our coffee mugs and our tummies with oatmeal. But the sky was clearing as we traipsed into Eastsound to find RDC a knee brace. We hadn't brought any of our three with us. His knee injury spared me any cycling on the drowned mountain, and the more I saw of it the happier I was that the voice of my conscience was silent on this subject. Hilly.

When I think islands, I think flat. Key West. Long Island. Martha's Vineyard. Block Island. Not the San Juans. Drowned mountains, they are. The deep valleys make for the placid water; the peaks make for extremely hilly islands. Our resort was on Enchanted Forest Road, a fitting name.

We did the tourist bit in Eastsound. I took a photograph of a store called Trés Fabu because it reminded me of DEDBG--a Franglish name on a cottage garden of a shop. We explored the library, which is an excellent one for the size of the population it serves (love those property taxes). It has vaulted ceilings and window seats in the children's room and offers web access. I didn't examine its collection much, but enough that one librarian asked if I were another because that woman over there was yet another, on vacation from the New York Public Library. Busman's holiday.

From Eastsound we drove (wimps! wimps!) up Mount Constitution. A remark on the naming conventions in the San Juans: they're a mix of British, Spanish, and American, and Mt. Constitution is named for the Usan ship. Driving up, we understood again why some guide books even advised against biking the islands, despite increase in automobile traffic. A steep, curving, hairpinned peak road, which bikers of all abilities from wobbling with exhaustion to expert, have to share with cars, is dangerous. If RDC had brought his other knee, we probably would have hiked it; as it was, I was glad of the excuse to practice for my dotage.

At the top, I fished around the detritus of maps, ferry schedules, and Cliff Bar wrappers on the floor for the binoculars and camera. Binoculars in paw, I checked the capacious pockets of my parka for the camera. Nope. Here, at 2,450 feet above sea level on the highest point of the San Juans, we had phone coverage. Our map listed important numbers on the island and had the taste to consider the library's one of them. I called. They found it. I breathed again.

I've been doing this a lot lately. I would sincerely appreciate a vacation from being me, just for a little while so I can experience some common sense, just for a couple of days.

Everyone says the view from the top of Mt. Constitution is unparalleled anywhere, and I can believe it even though we didn't see it in 360 degrees. I cannot think of another place of similar natural beauty with such perspective. And we saw maybe 80 degrees of it! From the top of the stone tower (all you Southpark fans, this is where Canada (still British) and the U.S. came closest to blows, and the watchtower remains), we could see a slice toward the northeast, I think. We saw a bit of the mainland but a cloudbank prevented our seeing Mt. Baker or Mt. Whistler. To the west, fog rolled in from the sea. We watched it dissipate into clear air beneath our feet. In between, we counted islands.

But what's this? West from the sea? The sea is to the east, everybody knows that. Connecticut's being on the east coast is so firmly entrenched in my skull that one time driving home from Cape Cod, in the wilds of Rhode Island at a roundabout, I nearly turned east on Route 6 because east is home. RDC unwittingly drove toward East LA when looking for the beach in Los Angeles. Even staring at a map with blue on the left on this trip, I'd confuse port and starboard.

Anyway. After Mt. Constitution and fetching the camera from the library, we found lunch at a place called Vern's. The food was better than the name. RDC ate oysters that grew in the oyster beds we'd passed on the way to the mountain.

Home sweet tent again, and we sat on the dock reading for most of the afternoon. I read Anna Karenina and wondered if I should assign my dislike to Tolstoy or to the translator. Everyone can always express encyclopediae with their eyes, and everyone else interprets these volumes of information flawlessly. And if they don't, Tolstoy clarifies with a little aside. That's got to be Tolstoy's fault; however, the following sentence is the fault of the translator: " 'Let's walk to the spa,' said Charactersky in French." No. Leave the French alone; it's bad enough that the characters' fluency in English as well is lost to the English reader. Leave the French and annotate it.

So I plugged along, waiting (hoping?) for the train, and was easily distracted by what might certainly have been porpoises in the sound off West Beach, blue herons, and anything else that struck my fancy. It was only a matter of time before the water struck my fancy. How impossible could it be?

The Puget Sound redefines "impossible" as far as water temperature goes. I dove off a shaded bank into Shadow Mountain Lake in Colorado and dove right back out again, sensing that if I stayed in any time at all, my muscles might not be able to bring me out. This was colder, and this was shallow water in the afternoon. I cringed in (the bottom was pebbled but not punctuated with rocks like Lake Crescent), submerged, and charged out. Oof. A bystander commented, "You're a brave woman." "No," I smiled, "just a cold one." I could have sliced bread with my nipples. I changed out of my suit immediately and warmed up quick.

While in the San Juans I often considered the logistics of living in such a remote place. We shared the ferry with 18-wheelers from supermarkets. The guidebooks pointed out that if food is expensive, islanders pay the same that tourists do and aren't on vacation budgets. Waldron Island, just west of Orcas, deliberately doesn't get electricity or phone installed because it doesn't want to be overrun. It has a one-room schoolhouse that only goes to eighth grade, and what happens to older kids no one seemed to know, unless they were homeschooled or the family moved. (Orcas, plumbed, electrified, and connected, has a high school.) There's not much of anything going on in these parts, especially if you don't work in the tourist trade, and if you are in the tourist trade, you have four or six months to make your whole annual income.

Despite this, I didn't feel as isolated as I did near Olympic NP on the coast. I felt at home, what with the islands and the water (it's redundant to say "islands and water" but allow me the emphasis), and that helped. I didn't expect to see clear-cut around every bend, which also helped. Another contributing factor might have been the poverty of the coastal Indian reservations in contrast to island folks mostly deliberately opting out.

The land of coastal Olympic NP is unsullied (except for roads and campgrounds) and it's surrounded by lumber country. If it's clear-cut, it hasn't been cut to build a shopping mall. Lots of the stands of timber were fronted by signs listing the dates of the first cut, maybe a second cut, a replanting, and a future harvest date. Old growth forest can't be planted, but trees can be, and are. The cuts are the development.

Orcas grew thick forest almost everywhere; the pastured farms and the developed towns looked out of place. What wasn't developed didn't look undernourished. Guilt as a paper user plus guilt as a European oppressor with an infinite horizon versus farms that looked New English, virgin forest and hills, and safe little towns, all surrounded by water whose other shores I could see. No wonder I felt more comfortable on Orcas.