A Christmas Surprise for Tib –– From "Jello" Island and Lew Dodd

The Tib and Lew Dodd cabin 
Yellow Island, 
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Ca. 1948.
Courtesy of their family.

"Tib" Van Order Dodd (1895-1989)
and Lew Dodd (1892-1960)
Yellow Island residents
Photo courtesy of their family.
Click image to enlarge.

A letter written by the former co-owner of Yellow Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.

"Jello Island"
(is what one Swede calls it)
Deer Harbor, WA.
December 1957

"Dear –––––––––––,

Well, the Islands are about rolled up in mothballs until Springtime, I guess, and from all appearances anyway–for there are extremely few boats to be seen nowadays; the Channels are deserted except for the mailboat and the ferry.
        It is not really broad light in the morning until 7:30 and the sun (if any -and wherever seen) goes down behind the black San Juan Island hills at 4:15 PM. The whole Archipelago is slumbering and quiet in its usual winter hibernation so far as any comparison with June to October.
        For the first time since last July, accompanying Jack Tusler in his boat, we went to Deer Harbor, most of whose sparse population isn't very much in evidence; for, those who can afford it have folded their summer tents, so to speak, and have migrated to the South––the road from Kirk's to the store, black in the gloomy wet and little traveled, and at Norton's dock a single troller leaning wearily against the float as if utterly tired out from the summer's fishing, the essence of ennui!
        Blue smoke issues straight up from a few chimneys, and the forlorn old red cannery seems to stare vacantly upon the scene, which more than at any other time of year, resembles a small Port that once was and may never be again; deserted, forlorn, useless, abandoned; hopeless! Hard by, across the inlet, at the bridge, a forlorn sawmill no longer sings a tune, drift logs beachcombed, and red rust is King over all its metal machinery. The attitude which the whole hamlet has seemed to have acquired is one of extreme lassitude, and, perpetual waiting in a permeating forlorn hope that--well--"Something might occur someday; maybe." The place somehow manages to convey a very bleak empty and depressing picture as it sits on its sidehill, soggy, sodden, clammy, and damp--with its feet in the cold December sea. --Deer Harbor in winter! "The deserted village!"
        We are always glad to return to our Island from such a brooding atmosphere, for upon clearing the vicinity the forlornness and the lifelessness leave one as if awakening from an unrealistic dream.
        Back on our own Island, we are happy to pull the skiff up into its snug boathouse, shoulder the provisions, and climb the path to the bright, warm cabin where for so long as we have lived here we have been happy and content.
        There is never a dull or uninteresting day at our Island home and no two days are alike: for there is always something, yesterday Tib and I watched two otters hauled out on our East end. It was a sight seldom seen by even those who do live in the country, and we may never see such an interesting performance as they went through with no idea in their heads that two human beings were observing through binoculars every move they made.
        One reason that prompted me to drop you a line is because I wanted to (which is an excellent one, in my opinion!) Another reason is that I need Lloyd's advice:
        Recently I saw an "ad" in December National Geographic of Zenith's new Transistor Transoceanic radio (8 bands) etc. price advertised as $250. Lloyd, what do you think of this radio and do you deal with them?
        We are out here beyond television until they produce some kind of a battery set maybe––and even then if the programs don't get any better we wouldn't be interested. But, radio, a good one, yes, for it would give us worldwide contact everywhere, internationally––everywhere there are broadcasters. Ship to shore, aircraft, etc. How do these transistors stack up with the tube radios in performance? Do you think this new Zenith is a good buy at that price and could you buy one of them at any sort of a discount if you do not handle them?
        I've been toying with this zenith idea to surprise Tib for Christmas. (I'm 65 now and may not last too long.) I can manage to pay for something that should give us whatever is to be had in worldwide radio for some time to come. But before I make any move at all I'd like your candid opinion about this machine. Just what your knowledge and experience can tell me. I will certainly appreciate it.
        Tonight 8:00 PM we're having a hard westerly (about 40 mph) and the sea is noisy but the solid little cabin doesn't have a vibration in it, the kettle sings on the stove, the lamp is bright, and it a sweet, sweet home on an island in the San Juans far from the milling crowds and traffic, the fumes, and burning gasoline and the roar of trucks and trailers.
        Our sojourn in Bellingham this summer, after so many years away from the modern clatter and clutter taught us both to appreciate and love even more our peace and quiet, sweet air, unchlorinated water, clear running tides; and natural surroundings, the seabirds calling and soaring in the clear, clean sky! We are so thankful and grateful for it all. It is a good life.
        Our best wishes to you for a happy holiday season and we hope your year ahead will be a successful and contented one filled with whatever is GOOD and with whatever you most prefer."

Signed, Lew and Tib.

Another SPHS post of Yellow Island Dodd's can be seen HERE

Another SPHS post of Lew's sail on Gracie S around Vancouver Island, B.C.,                         can be seen HERE

And a post under the History section on the home page, for the 8,500 mile 

passage crewing the R.B. Brown schooner Ranger from Milwaukee, WI.  to Orcas Island in 1939, 

click HERE.

❖ Sea Story with Schooner GRACIE S. ❖ verbatim by Lew Dodd of Yellow Island.

Letterhead stationery of
Lew Dodd,
owner/resident of Yellow Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Letter sent to a mainland friend in 1954.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

Lew and his wife, Tib, longtime Orcas Islanders, purchased Yellow Island and retired there full-time in 1947. Lew wrote long, interesting letters to friends and family while he was snugged down and happy building a life on their private island. Written in longhand by Lew to some correspondents on the mainland, here is an excerpt from one letter dated 30 December 1954.

"...Several years ago, I went all around Vancouver Island on Ed Kennell's pilot schooner GRACIE S.*  We went into places that still are raw, undeveloped, wild, and about as they were many years ago. It is a wild region that West Coast, and it is anyone's guess of what will ever be made of it. One place we went into was Refuge Cove north of Nootka Island and west a bit. On the west side of the cove was quite a large Native village, canoes and skiffs hauled up in a long row. The men had rigged clothes lines running from the shanty-like homes to the tops of the tall fir trees and these lines resembled the masts of vessels dressed with code flags as on a special occasion. Every color of the rainbow in shirts, pants, dresses, underwear, ribbons, and whatever else those Natives used. On the opposite side of the nearby land-locked cove was a fish camp run by an Englishman who had seven children, who when lined up on deck, looked like animated treble musical scales and sounded like it also.
      This Englishman told us that the old Natives had said to him that our schooner was the largest vessel which had ever come this far into the cove and the only sailing vessel of such a size, in many, many years which had been at this place.
      On our second day, there were two very, very old Native men who came alongside in their canoe, which they tied to our rail, and then made signs they wished to come aboard. Once on deck, they moved slowly around, inspecting everything very closely and missing nothing. Their English was extremely limited, but their gestures were emphatic. All they kept saying to each other was: "beeeg sheep, beeeg sheep" and "Seelah! Seelah!" and nodding to each other in agreement. They believed we were an old-time sealing schooner and wanted to know "where come--Seattle?" Ugh--Seelah"; "Come Seattle, many long time ago! "Here!"
      So, you see, there are still Natives along that west coast of Vancouver Island who remember the pelagic sealing days.
      When we finally got down to Victoria, among the visitors who came aboard was a very tall, lean, sharp-faced man with piercing gray eyes and a general bearing of one who had known at first hand the sea. I was introduced to him and he turned out to be a Captain Todd, one of the last skippers of a pelagic sealing schooner sailing out of Victoria, shooting seals along the coasts of Japan before the International agreement was established outlawing this wholesale slaughter of the fur seal.
      On Orcas, when we first came there, lived a Captain Gale whose schooner, also a sealer, had been seized by the U.S. government. Just before his death, I think around 1934, the government reimbursed him for his loss. This came at a time too late to do him much good but his sister, Mrs. Madeline Curry, at about age 92, is still able to supply her few needs from what remains of the money refunded to Capt. Gale.
      So it can be seen we're not so very far removed in time from some of what happened when this Pacific Northwest was yet younger than we now know it. I shall never forget that evening spent listening intently to the first-hand accounts of the sealing days of Captain Todd of Victoria, B.C."
Lew Dodd.
With thanks to Ruthie for sharing the letter copies written by this retired man of the sea. 
* More about the pilot schooner GRACIE S can be seen on this Log HERE

Another post of the arrival of Tib and Lew Dodd to Yellow Island in 1947 can be viewed HERE.

❖ YELLOW ISLAND LETTERS FROM LEW ❖

Lew and Tib Dodd
The first year of camping while building on
their newly purchased Yellow Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA. 1947.
These two photos courtesy of their family.

Lewis and Elizabeth 'Tib' Dodd
There is a short post of their arrival
posted HERE.

Yellow Island,
Deer Harbor, WA.
1954

Hello _____,

       This is the kind of weather in the San Juans we've been looking for all summer! For the past three days, it has been superb, each beautiful day filled with bright sunlight, blue skies, and sparkling dancing saltwater. Filled also with fall sounds of the seabirds and the splashing of the Bonaparte Gulls diving vertically for small fry. Two days ago there were about fifty Blackfish (Orca whales) huffing and puffing south down San Juan Channel; and did they put on a show! Sometimes breaking water five and six abreast and all leaping in unison like prancing rearing horses of a Roman charioteer. We could almost see Neptune prodding them with his trident and, of course, see Amphitrite hanging on for dear life!' but it really was a sight and a remarkable show. We never tire of such exhibitions. These Blackfish are so strong and blow so heartily! They are so vibrantly alive.
      We have been busy as usual with the commonplace daily chores which are a part of everyone's life. But ours seem not to be chores but mostly fun. This is probably because we never become bored.
       For instance, its fun gathering enough wood to cram the shed full against the rain and wind and rawness which we know isn't far away. We have so much in now it's difficult to get in ourselves!
       Lately, however, there has been an interlude when things were briefly pretty hectic. A week ago I went to feed the poultry and found five dead chickens. Then shortly after this on taking the panel off the front of the pigeon-house saw 29 dead pigeons and 16 dead squabs––mink trouble! AGAIN! To shorten the story we set about a dozen traps and four days later we had Mr. Mink. He weighed three pounds and measured 23 inches from nose to tail tip. I have to say that I haven't one iota of goodwill toward any of the mink. This makes two of them we've caught this year. 
      Tuslers have recently seen mink over near Coon Island. I hope no more come this way for a while.
Saturday we could hear "Iron Horse" Thompson running his small locomotive. There were some boys over there and the whistle got a workout all day long. But by now the whole family has returned to Seattle and the McConnell Island Railroad is probably rolled up in mothballs for the winter.
      However, never a dull moment in the San Juan Islands. Always something to interest us turning up––porpoises, etc.!!
      Lloyd, I'd like some information for I'm both dumb and ignorant as to radio. I'd like to know what AM and FM really mean. I do have an idea that FM means frequency modulation but what this is I haven't the vaguest idea!
      Tusler volunteered the information yesterday that in an advertisement in the N.Y. Times he has learned of a German radio receiver A.M and F.M. which can be battery operated and which, so he says, "has everything," (whatever this means!!) And sells for around $150.00. Tussler's Naval Captain brother says he wouldn't be without FM, as the music is so much better. Do you agree about this?
      I would like to know if the new Zenith "Super De Luxe" Trans Ocean Radio selling around $150 has FM? This I know can be battery operated. Model L600.
      Do you know of any battery-operated America-receiver which has AM and FM comparable in price to Zenith and or as good or better? Zenith has 7 bands I think. 
      Well, so much for this. I hope it won't trouble you to give me your ideas and advice. We're out here all winter, you know, and I've been thinking that it would be pretty nice to be able to listen in around the world to the many good things which are available to anyone with a really good receiver. Any up to date information you can help us with will be very much appreciated. You're in the business and I know that you know. I certainly don't.
      Must leave you. Tib needs wood and water and logically, so do I, I suppose, if we're going to have a hot meal soon. 
      Will be thinking of you, as ever, Lew and Tib.

Fall 1955

Dear______

We've been about swamped with people, (over 200 in the month of August), and we hardly dared leave the island unwatched for fearsome careless one might drop a cigarette and burn us out! so, you can see quite readily, that at this season, there are definitely drawbacks to island living! Tib says she has had about all she can take as to trying to entertain, talk to, and show the island to everyone, and still remain courteous and unruffled at some of the remarks!
      After all, it's our home! and, certainly, unless we were friends of longstanding, we would not intrude ourselves upon people we do not know or commit the unpardonable breach of well-bred courtesy by even contemplating the invasion of their homes without being invited. So––living here as sort of a 'Target' for everyone afloat during the height of the summer becomes quite an ordeal for us at times and we are glad to be quiet and undisturbed by the time fall arrives.
      Both of us send our sincere best wishes to you. As ever, Lew.

29 January 1956

Dear________,

It certainly has been a pretty gloomy time since 11 November when the weather got rambunctious and we've had more east and northeast than in many years. We had a humdinger of a southeaster, too, which put heavy spray all over the weather side and roof of the cabin. Washing out one row of asparagus bed and filled all the south beaches with piles of logs, timbers, and broken debris, a great deal of which will eventually get to the fireplace. Neptune is very good to us. As ever, your friend, Lew.

'Sunbrite Republic'
Yellow Island 
3 August 1958

Dear _______,

The Radios are certainly giving us a lot of enjoyment. They are both very clear and good and certainly a pleasure for us.'
      Of course, the 'Broadcast' is the best. The short wave is not particularly good as it may be later but we have no reservations about the little Zenith; its a grand little radio.
      Just heard yesterday from a man named Edward Kendall (not Kennell) that they're soon going to drill for oil on Oras. Kaiser is this man's boss and Kendall works for Permanente Cement. He says Kaiser Steel plant is soon to be rolling. They came to Yellow utter strangers to us. He had chartered the LILY FOSS for a tug thru the San Juans and Canada. His sister said 'this happens every year!')
      It's 5:00 P.M. now and probably you've had about enough of this!
Our best to you. Hope to see you before long. As ever, Lew. 

Yellow Island, 
Deer Harbor, WA.
2 October 1958

Dear ________,

Except for the pale dead brownness of the grass cover on Yellow Island, it is like an August day in late springtime; the sun is warm and the mauve haziness of a very calm and sere4ne day seems to make all this island country appear slumbering, and utterly quiet; there are no boats in sight, and no noises except the natural fall sounds the sea birds make at their 'conventions' in mid-channel. This is the time of year when the murres all seem to be searching for "otto otto--ahhh to,' and the plaintive whistles of the little murrelets seem to say 'please' as they paddle behind their mothers who no longer will feed them. 
      It is a difficult time for these young ones for they are now on their own and, of course, constantly and terrifically hungry; the ways of nature as in many ways rugged and it is, certainly, for many wild things 'the survival of the fittest.' Darwin was a keen observer. 
      The rubbery old whale, 'Goodyear,' is still chasing minnows around our island and if anything could appear more rediculous when he clumsily boosts himself nearly clear of the water apparently in frustration at missing a school of his favorite candlefish, we don't know what it could be except of course when he puts on a repeat performance several times a day. He generally shows up here about high slack tide. Just why this is is hard to guess except that at this time of the tide the small fry may have less trouble feeding themselves. But they're sure in for trouble about the time 'Goodyear' comes huffing and puffing along to his chow time just off our cabin.
      Our island is full of robins and flickers nowadays and they are feeding on the madrona berries and dry seeds and small apples and seeds of the grasses. We put out oatmeal for the sparrows, Juncos, Towhees, and Golden Crown and White Crowns and they all like a lot of fruit too. It is comical to see them come when they are called in the morning by rattling on an old coffee can and hammering on wood with it and yelling at the same time 'Come birds, Come birds, Come little birds.' It doesn't take them long to 'catch on' and get wise. They never miss a trick and later on our feeding board will be even more popular as natural feed gets scarcer.
      Cheerio until we see or hear from you, as ever, 'yours without a struggle,
Lew. 

Yellow Island, 
Deer Harbor, WA.
20 November 1958

Dear ___________,

Today for the first time for quite a wet long while there is little wind and the beaches on the island are not being pounded but they're certainly had a recent thorough scrubbing and going over and the drift debris is all rearranged--some 'newcomers,' and a lot of the 'old-timers' have moved a bit and show signs of being used a bit roughly--and all seem glad just to loll on the beach and rest. The whole mess looks 'done in,' 'beat up,' 'tired out,' and exhausted!'
      During all the worst of the bad weather, with so much rain, we were confined to the 'Igloo' trying to catch up with an avalanche of reading (that we know will never get to if we live two or three more lives!)--and, too, listening to Chinese or Malay over the short wave unable to tell whether they're yelling for help or just wishing everyone a pleasant evening. 
      We haven't seen the book Pacific Steamboats you mentioned in your letter but it sounds very interesting. How the old BEELINE ever got in it will never know! I have absolutely no recollection of ever having a group picture taken of that crew, but I can fill in the name of the old chief engineer, his name was Cabe and the oiler's was 'Rusty' McKenna (he was very red-headed and very freckled.!) The BEELINE then was on a regular run between Bellingham and Orcas Landing. She could carry about 20 cars without putting herself out too much. I'll never forget the last day of our season when we left the head of Van Morheims dock at Orcas to go into the ferry slip––Jim and I were on the head end, Capt. Johnny Oldow in the wheelhouse, Johnny rang down for full astern just before we were to touch the apron, and, by mistake somehow the engineer gave her full ahead and we made a shambles of the landing apron and like to windup on the porch of the Orcas Hotel. I thought the splinters would never quit flying. Next thing Jim and I saw was John Oldow and Cabe down on the main deck yelling and waving their arms at one another and––such language!!––well, we finally got underway for West Seattle where we were to lay up. Beyond Lopez heavy fog set in and we were coasting along parallel to the west shore of Whidbey. Jim was on the lookout when suddenly piling loomed up and we were just about snared in a fish trap––we backed out of the pot and spiller of that salmon trap and set on course for West Point and where did we fetchup?–––Port Townsend! Well, it finally cleared and we went on to West Seattle and slowed down to ease into and alongside the dock. One bell to stop! then two bells to go astern! and a hookup jingle bell to give her all she's got–– and bang snap and we kept right on ahead and whammed into that dock. She had broken her tail shaft! What a last day! Jim and I tied her up and got ashore and headed for home the next day and we never saw her again. 
      She was finally dismantled and broken up––and that was the end of that perky little ferry; we never knew what she might do next!
      Incidentally, on our evening trip from Bellingham to Orcas we used to turn on a radio, it invariably blanked or 'blacked' out under Eagle Bluff on Cypress Island's north end. Evidently, there is a 'blind' radio spot there for some reason--or maybe the old BEELINE just simply got tired of hearing it and preferred to listen to Capt. Johnny, Jim, and me 'part' singing 'you'll come back to the Red River Valley' (which was John Oldow's favorite.) As near as I can remember the year was 1934 ––anyhow I know that in 1939 I was in the West Indies on a schooner. *
      Looks like our 133 acres on Shaw is the very last unimproved acreage between Shaw dock and Neck Point. We are in no hurry: it will do alright before long.
      We close with our sincere regards to you both. 
      As ever, your friends, Lew (and Tib)
      P.S. It is 8:30 PM and dark as the inside of a cow outside. 

* To read a post on Saltwater People Log about Lew's passage on the schooner RANGER click HERE.


Also another article written by Robert Stafford in 1979.    "Captain of Yellow Island"
⚓⚓⚓⚓

❖ THE CAPTAIN OF YELLOW ISLAND

Lewis Dodd (1892-1960) and
Elizabeth 'Tib' Van Order Dodd (1895-1989)
New residents crafting their home
on Yellow Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Photo courtesy of the Dodd family.

"Yellow Island remains the kingdom of the paradoxical man who sculpted its 11 acres into a monument to himself. From 1947 to his death in 1960, Lewis Dodd and his wife Elizabeth lived alone on Yellow, fashioning a way of life as unique as their home.
      Lew Ddd's whole life was an apprenticeship for the Yellow years when he wrought his masterpiece. Born in 1892 and raised on Long Island, New York, he ran away to sea when he was 15 years old to sail before the mast on square-riggers. He tried cowboying, served in WW I Navy, married Elizabeth ('Tib') in 1920, and became the first mate of merchantman before he went ashore in 1921 to try the real estate game in New York. Hating the confinement, he came west looking for freedom.
      The Dodds found it on Orcas Island, practicing subsistence agriculture until 1947. During these years Lew perfected his frontier skills, and Tib, too, learned the skills necessary to raise a family without electricity or plumbing.
      In a Northwest still wild enough for creating one's own niche, Lew's idiosyncracies molded their lives. He was determined to eschew all frills. Lew was always the captain often his way meant the Navy way. His daughter Sally Hall remembers him as moody, and difficult to live with. He sometimes expressed bitterly his sense of entrapment by familiar responsibilities.
      Lew's portrait reveals a compulsion to be unique, whatever the cost. His family shared the joys and sufferings of a man who never quite grew up, a man who mourned the loss of the frontier so deeply that he re-created it in a self-imposed life of struggle; a mate so self-determined that one wonders if he wasn't running from doubt, a man so stamped by the sea that he imposed its harsh regimen of work and discipline on his family.

Arriving on Yellow Island with logs towed 
from their Orcas Island farm.
1947.
Courtesy of the Dodd family. 

      By 1947 Lew Dodd was ready for Yellow Island. He bought the chip of wilderness for $8,000, sold his farm, and moved aboard. The poet was finally in the presence of his theme. After drilling a well, he and Tib camped in a tent for two years while they built their cabin. Except for hinges, nails, and windows, they beachcombed all the materials. Working from dawn to dusk, doing everything from scratch, was back-breaking, but Lew persevered because he would not allow himself the luxury of giving up.

Lew and Tib Dodd camping at home.
Yellow Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.
  Dated 1947.
Courtesy of the Dodd family.

      

Tib also exhibited high courage––enduring living conditions, lugging materials, and helping Lew lift the heaviest beams. Both had the will to succeed that the venture demanded.
      Lew accomplished much and visualized lucidly what he wanted, his work is lasting and good. The cabin has needed no maintenance in 30 years. It fits so perfectly into Yellow's landscape that Frank Lloyd Wright couldn't have designed it better. It grows effortlessly out of the rock surface and wind-skewed madronas. The flow line of the roof and wall, door and chimney, has poetry that speaks volumes for Lew Dodd's sensitivity. The trails are laid with skills: even the outhouse has a millionaires' view.
      First, Lew paced off the 27-by-33-foot floor and leveled it with beach gravel. A level, rule, and square did the rest. Stockaded logs, planked on the outside and insulated with sod and cedar bark, form the walls, whose seams are caulked inside with twisted cedar bark. Adzed cedar rafters support a ceiling and roof of hand-cut shakes. The rafters rest on a huge oaken ridgepole that may be a catwalk washed down from a Fraser River mine. The floor and Dutch doors were hatch covers. There are snug bunks, rope-handled storage lockers fashioned of dynamite crates, a sewing box made from a wooden rigging block, stools fashioned from whale vertebrae, windows salvaged from a chicken coop, and a ship's identification timber built into a bench. The yawning fireplace is native stone cemented around a chimney of welded oil drums. the hearthstone is a living rock. An iron wagon tire forms the fireplace arch, and the poker is a whaler's flensing tool for stripping blubber from whales.

Dodd cabin interior
with the native stone hearth.
Yellow Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Photo courtesy of the Dodd family.

      All is of a piece with the man, the island, and the beach. Lew skippered Yellow like a ship: perhaps he chose it as the closest approximation of life on shipboard, the perfect solution for a seaman searching for a frontier. Every barnacled, worm-eaten surface is worn with love and age, and the whole forms an intricate montage of flotsam, jetsam, and craftmanship, pleasing the eye and reflecting Dodd's uncompromising individuality.
      Lew probably regretted finishing the cabin in 1949, for he continued salvaging. He was a generation before his time; every possession was recycled. Yet in other ways, he was of his time. He kept building with maniac energy. Robinson Crusoe tells us why: A marooned man of action must be doing! A root cellar, workshop, boathouse, guest cabin, several beach buildings rose simply from an obsession to use material. These structures share one feature––low doors. Lew was 5-ft 3-inches tall, and he wreaked a short man's vengeance on all who came later.

Dodd home on Yellow Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Dated 1948.
Click image to enlarge.
Courtesy of the Dodd family.

      The Dodd's full, natural life was not escapism. Their time was absorbed by living. In 13 years the Dodds rarely left the island. They both read hugely, and the cabin remains full of books. Viewed against his building achievement, Lew's lack of interest in any fiction except sea stories suggests that his imagination was confined to fantasies he could build. There is a fairy-tale quality to the cabins, hideaways, stone-cairned flagpoles, and the Jacob's ladder disappearing into a tall fir. Tib wrote poetry, studied birds, and botanized. Both kept journals. Lew describes mainly the weather but reveals his healthy self-esteem and ready denunciation of other ways of living––the writings of a man reassuring himself.
      ' I don' want to sell my life for a jingling pocket, a stiff uncomfortable collar, flabby muscles, and a bilious complexation. I've chosen to live, however precariously, in the atmosphere of pure air and pebbly beaches. I think it is lovelier to come to the end of the trail through physical struggle surrounded by the things an outdoor man loves.'
      Lew's ashes are interred on Yellow in the meadow he named Hummingbird Hill. If you would see his monument it is neither here nor in his journals, but in Yellow's buildings and beauty, where he laid his heart. Tib lives in Seattle. She no longer visits Yellow, but daughter Sally said her husband Joe spend their summers there.
      The family has given The Nature Conservancy a year's option to purchase Yellow because they would rather ensure it will be preserved with the gentleness Lew Dodd's memory deserves than chance the heartache of a private sale. The Dodds reveled in the thought of passing their island on to posterity and now that dream may be realized in a more lasting way than even Lew hoped. Another generation that has come around the wrong way to values Lew Dodd presciently understood may now inherit his dream."
Source: Robert A. Stafford, Pacific Search. Nov. 1979. From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.
Thank you to two supportive San Juan County friends, one who donated this 40-year-old article and another who provided an introduction to Sally, Jo, and family.


For more up to date information on the preservation of the island please click here

❖ Wild Flowers of Yellow Island ❖ with Schooner MORNING STAR

Schooner MORNING STAR
  May Day 2012.
Happily snugged in to Yellow Island.
(Yes, she's a schooner. Her main was being replaced.)

NOAA Chart 6379, dated 1972.
 Yellow Island is located on the crease of the folded paper,
nestled near to the inhabited islands of Crane, Orcas, and Shaw.
Click to enlarge this image. Out of date for navigational use.

These photos by Debra Madan are from May Day 2012. The cool spring altered the blooming pattern slightly so many of the species were in color at the same time this year. Here you can see Indian Paintbrush, Chocolate Lillies, blue Camas, Avalanche Lillies, Shooting Stars, Buttercups.... it was a riot of color, unmolested by browsing deer. The entire island, owned by  the Nature Conservancy, has a friendly, informative, live-aboard caretaker who requires visitors to stay on the foot path. They close at 4 pm.