❖ ABOARD LITTLE SOUND BOATS ❖ June Burn 1930

ISLANDER, Obstruction Pass,
between Orcas and Obstruction Islands.
Original photo by James A. McCormick from the 
Saltwater People Historical Society© archives. 

I am off San Juandering again. I have always dearly loved San Juan Island, Speiden, Stewart, Johns, Sentinel, and Cactus Islands, and supposed Orcas and Lopez and the rest could not possibly be so nice, or their people so friendly and lovable.

       But just as soon as each little bay and each high sunny point is peopled with friends these other islands will become precious, too. And so for the first time, I'm off to browse among the gnarled madronas to climb the high hills, to see the far views of Orcas.
      I never come aboard one of these little Sound boats but I marvel that I've been able to stay off them for so long. How is it I've walked city streets, turned the pages of dusty books, talked about business things when all this time these little boats are going up and down, up and down, and I not aboard one of them? How do we resist the lure of these channels and the wheedling appeal of island coves?
The sun is warmer out here on the bay, the wind softer, the lift and fall of the waves sweeter than the nicest swing father ever made.

SAN JUAN II
With winter weather,
scan courtesy of Charles Torgeson©

       
The Chickawana has taken the run of the San Juan II with the Tulip King to pinch-hit for the Chick. We did not come past the old hulk of the San Juan, where she lies naked and broken in Peavine Pass, but I heard stories of her last trip. One said she was driven ashore a scant few feet from a sharp ledge off which she would have gone to the bottom and all with her if the sea had not carried her to safety. But from the crew of the Chickawana, I could get no stories. Maybe they want to forget that wild night. Or maybe it was all in a day's work to them. But certain it is they won't talk much about it though you'd think each of them would have a tale all made up trimmed with thrills and horrors. The adventure of a shipwreck is wasted on folks who don't know they've had one!

OLGA DOCK, ORCAS ISLAND, WA.

original photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People HIstorical Society©

      I left the boat at Olga, the second stop on Orcas, the first being Doe Bay. The sun shone brightly on this new snow of the dock but icicles tinkled on the edges of the north wind and I was glad to find the fire in the big fireplace of the hotel kept by Mrs. Alexander and her daughter, Fairy Burt.
      I had stopped at Olga to see Mr. Ferri, the great artist of whom lately I'd heard and whom I met one day on a Bellingham street. But he is gone now and his pictures gone, too. A fire in his studio a few weeks ago destroyed pictures and sketches and dreams of a lifetime. His studio had burned to the ground and I did not go to see the ashes. He is gone too, though I think he will be back. For the sun still shines on this matchless point of earth and the Olympics still notch the horizon to the south. Who has once loved and lived in such a spot cannot long stay away. Mr. Ferri is not an old man for all his long years of work and his pictures were but the body of his dreams--the essence of them is here yet. Please come back to the islands Mr. Ferri, wherever you have gone, and trap some of this beauty on canvas again! The radiance is wasted upon just us who without an artist's eyes cannot see a complete glory.

       A chance encounter had given me the acquaintance of Dr. Madison, also of Olga, a physician, and writer. So that failing to find Mr. Ferri I still had one small excuse for stopping here. What was my surprise and delight, upon telephoning Mrs. Madison, to be invited to a dinner being given that evening to local friends. Nowhere else in the world, perhaps, would it have happened. Nowhere else have there been such things to eat. And nowhere else could I have gone in breeches and boots to dine with ladies in velvet. Nowhere else have stories that went round that table, of deer eating up the cabbages in the game warden's garden and he says all he can do about it is to plant more next time! See you tomorrow. June."

❖ THROUGH A SWARM OF ISLANDS ❖ 1929 with June Burn

SAN JUAN II 
on her rounds with passengers,
mail and freight 
in the San Juan Islands.
Courtesy of Charles Torgerson family.

"Breakfast time on the SAN JUAN! Homer, the combination deckhand, purser, mail-clerk, baggage rustler and cook, comes to call the skipper while the engineer takes the wheel. When the skipper returns, the engineer goes into the tiny galley and when the crew has finished I saunter back to find out what the chances are for a cup of coffee. I wash a cup for myself, fry myself a pancake from the leftover batter and have breakfast in jolly informality. There is jam for the cakes and the coffee is just right. Everything is just right!
      Fancy going into the galley of a big boat––even of the SOLDUC––and preparing one's own breakfast! Every time I travel on a small island-boat I teeter between delight at the friendly, informal, unbusinesslike atmosphere on it and fear that it won't last. If ever the islands become so populous that big, important, immaculate, impersonal boats fill their waters I shall join that throng of people who bewail the passing of the good old days. When I begin to sigh and whine that the golden island days are over and travel on the boats no longer any fun, you'll know I've grown old, too. For, of course, the golden days of every person is when he is most keenly aware of the romance and adventure and delights about him. 
      I think John Burroughs began at 20 to live with zest; he lived all his life long as if things were all right in his world. I know a woman who used to live in the San Juan Islands. She is 72, now. White her hair is and not very robust her body. But 'Cousin Polly' Butterworth enjoys every single day of her life nor has ever been heard to speak with a shade of criticism of the maligned younger generation. She loves codfish now as if it were a special thrilling adventure to catch and cook and eat one. Still enjoys the boats and the leisurely ways of the islands.
      She is gone now from the gray farmhouse like a seagull perched in its little bay, and lonely the farm looks without her and her white-headed fat little 'Fayther,' as she called her husband in quaint Lancashire dialect, both of them full of fun and vitality. We used to row over there two or three times a week, partly for the cheer of their friendship, partly for the delicious canned veal and fresh vegetables and homemade bread and butter we had there, for our homesteading days were lean days of real hunger. It isn't so nice to come back home and find great holes where friends used to fit so warmly!
      Down, and down, and down the passes, the world of islands flowing off toward the horizon all around. Nowhere else, surely, is there so magnificent a sea freckled with such beautiful verdant islands! Nowhere else in America. Where, then?
      Mr. Gamwell, reminiscing one day, said that in 'the good old days' of sailing boats they used to go all the way around Shaw Island without wind. The tide would take them half around and the backwash around the corners would carry them the rest of the way around, though one wonders what they wanted to go all the way around for, anyhow!
      There are very few deciduous trees in the islands. Here all is green. Great soft madronas in masses, their red bark glistening, their brittle limbs heavy with orange and tan berries. Firs six feet through and an occasional ancient cedar, tall and straight and beautiful. A world of alder and willow and on some of the islands a great many hoary old oaks with twisted moss-hung limbs.
      Such a swarm of islands as there are! On the chart, they look few enough with wide waters between. But when one is among them, they crowd in close, the channels 'scrunching'' up to give them room. Through Pole Pass between Crane and Orcas islands. Charlie Hammond, an old friend, lived on Crane in our homesteading days. He is gone now and his old crony, Mr. Crafts, gone too. Mr. Crafts lived on Orcas on his own little place that he sold before his death to Mr. Brehms. Now it is well groomed and fair. But I miss the old log house at whose fireplace I've sat and talked of 'far things and philosophies.' Over that fireplace the old fellow had nailed aluminum letters fashioning the phrase: 'Oh what fools these mortals be,' that of course placed him in the ranks of the aged. A cantankerous, lovable, learned old man was Mr. Crafts. We loved him well and mourn his passing. For he was the first friend we made in the islands.

Looking down on the once popular
Norton's Inn, Deer Harbor, San Juan Islands,
 the date is pre-1928.

This photo is dedicated to 4 generations
 of the saltyChet North family who
once played & worked on this
coast in summer sun and icy winter storms.
Original photo from the archive of S.P.H.S.©

     

        

        On up into Deer Harbor with Turtleback rising behind. Mrs. Norton's flock of cottages on the hill grows every season. How I'd love to stop and have dinner with her today! Hard-working, brave, and cheery Mrs. Norton, the leader and backbone of her tribe.
      Up the channel between Jones Island and Orcas to the steep walls of Waldron. George says that every man on the island comes to meet all the boats and that if one is missing they know he is sick. Then across the wide level acres to Prevost on Stewart Island. I cooked dinner of spuds, corn on the cob, canned beans, steak, and gravy. How good things taste from a high narrow shelf-like table in a tiny galley on a little boat, the marvelous fresh sea winds whetting the appetite even as you appease it––we are at Prevost––almost home!
      See you tomorrow. June."
Text from Puget Soundings by June Burn 1929.

❖ PUGET SOUNDINGS by June Burn ❖

Vintage linen postcard by C.P. Johnston Co., Seattle, WA
From the archives of the S.P.H.S.

Inez "June" Chandler Harris Burn (1893-1969), the author of Puget Soundings, first came to Puget Sound with her husband in 1919 from Washington, DC. They homesteaded a tiny island, the 15 acre Sentinel (48-38'22"N, 123-09'03"W), in the San Juan group and lived there a year. This was the last of the San Juan Islands to be homesteaded; it is now owned by the Nature Conservancy. After the second year in Alaska, they returned to the East, but the call of the West was too much for them and they came to the Pacific coast again, this time to California, summering in Puget Sound and wishing they might make their permanent home there.
      In 1928 they decided to pull stakes and come to Puget Sound with their family for good, but first they would make a vagabond trip around the US "hugging America", June Burn called the trip. They arrived in Bellingham, the one city in the US they wanted to call "home". In Puget Soundings, June Burn will reveal some of the reasons why she thinks Puget Sound has been rightly called the charmed land. 
      June became nationally known for the classic, her "unconventional autobiography" Living High, which she published in 1941 and then in 1946 for her series of articles that ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer "100 Days in the San Juans", mailed in from her adventures through the San Juan Archipelago in a surplus USCG lifeboat. In 1983 Longhouse Printcrafters & Publishers, Friday Harbor, WA., republished the columns in book form with the same title used for the original columns.  
      There are no titles to the essays so we will list some chosen examples by the date written. 

12 October 1929

"The waterfront of the little cities -- what delightful places they are! How friendly and informal and jolly are the men who work down there. Why is it that you never expect to get a story from a dressed-up man but are sure of getting one from that same man when he is wearing overalls? Especially if the overalls are torn and very dirty.
      Go down to the waterfront and listen to the stories of the fishermen and boatmen and workmen down there if you want to know something of the romance of Puget Sound.
      The smells of the docks -- the smell of tarred logs, of seaweed, of humans, of oil, gas, old sacks, food, fish. They are the smells of adventure. When I went down to the docks the first time after getting back to Puget Sound I stopped a block or so from the waterfront to savor the smells.
      It was early afternoon. The dock was nearly deserted. I heard the putt-putt of a gas launch below getting ready to pull out. Her master was untying ropes. He did not see me watching him, homesick to be a-going with him wherever he was going.
      The ALVERENE lay against the piling of the dock. It gave me a curious shock to see her as if she were a friend I had been homesick for. Filled me with nostalgia to be aboard, bound for island harbors.
      But when I discovered the CALCITE from Roche Harbor and fat, old Peter Larsen, her captain, talking down on a float I felt as if I had got home in truth, for Roche Harbor lies nearest to Sentinel, our homestead island, and a boat from that lovely bay is a boat from home. Peter remembered me and I sent messages to old neighbors.
      The SAN JUAN SECOND! There she sits. Waiting for a new engine, they tell me. How proud she will be to go "clickety-click" like a big boat instead of "putt-putt-putt" like a little one!

SAN JUAN II  on her mail route 

in the San Juan Islands

before heading to homeport of Bellingham, WA.

Relief Captain George Stillman 

standing on the caprail.

Two months after this column was written, 

the vessel was wrecked in

foul weather off the southern coast 

of Orcas Island. No hands lost.

Her gas engine was salvaged for 

her replacement, the OSAGE,

built on Decatur Island, WA., in 1930.
Photo date circa 1921 from the S.P.H.S. archives.©

The owners of the SAN JUAN II were among the first people in this land to welcome us ten years ago when we were here to homestead Sentinel. They used to run the boat themselves and many are the pleasant hours I've spent in her pilothouse talking to old Captain Maxwell. They used to stop at Sentinel to load or unload passengers for us. And once or twice we've hailed them from mid-channel to give them a fine cod we had caught that morning.
      The little tug TOREDO. Now why celebrate the pest of the Sound by calling your boat after it? A man in overalls, tells me that the TOREDO tows piling. The toredo worm destroys piling, thus giving the boat TOREDO more to do. Hence the name. He is joking, of course.
      The boat BALKO. Why that name? Won't she go? The big tugs DIVIDEND and PROSPER. Were they named in high hopes before the dividends and prosperity or have they been named in appreciation of their performances? The fine tug IROQUOIS. She burns more than a hundred barrels of oil a day and more when she works very hard.
      Tugs going out and tugs coming in. Heavy, squat, powerful, bull-doggy looking fellows and long slender, swifter ones each out after his own peculiar type of load. I watch them walking the waters of the harbor off down towards the islands and I decide that 'When I'm a man I'll be a boat captain!' See you tomorrow, June".