IslandWood is Home

Since the moment I arrived, I've wanted to put my thoughts on my life here into words.  This place has affected me so profoundly even though I've only been here for exactly 7 weeks today.  The time has simply flown and I can already sense that a piece of my heart will remain here no matter where the rest of my life takes me. IslandWood has become home faster than any other place I've lived in my life outside of Portland.

I'm living in a cabin on the edge of the forest. A mother deer and her triplet fawns often come graze and nibble blackberries in the meadow in front of my cabin.

All around are towering Douglas firs and Big Leaf maples, which are currently swaying precariously in the high gusts of wind that are accompanying the torrential rain storm we've been having today. But oh wait! Patches of blue are now wafting overhead between puffy gray rain clouds. Even though I like autumn with its fiery leaves floating down to earth and the dried cornstalks propped against porch railings and piles of big orange pumpkins heaped at farm stands, there's always a part of my that clings onto the sunny flip-flop carefree weather of summer. I never want to say goodbye to the days of swimming in rivers, barefoot beach walks, sunny harbor kayak explorations, and late-night campfire gatherings, even though I know it's just for 7-8 months. So as much as I love the sound of rain on my roof as I'm falling asleep and puddle jumping, I can't help but smile as periwinkle blue sky and bright sunshine push through the storm.

(the left side is mine)

Ah, but I've been distracted. Back to my cabin. The front faces southwest so the afternoon light streams through the large picture window and higher row of three smaller windows, warming the interior of my cabin with a golden glow. When the sunshine comes in at just the right angle, it hits the mini disco balls I've hung from the rafters and sends dancing sparks of light swirling around my room, sometimes to a dizzying effect. I've decorated with lots of bright colors—reds, turquoises, oranges, yellows, blues, and pinks—so that I can walk into my room and step into an exotic land out of the rainy pacific northwest rainforest. I tucked all sorts of inspiring and memory-provoking mementos high and low, including photos of those I love, the Ecuadorian flag, the parasol I got in Chile, my Indian tapestry, soul collage cards, prayer flags and framed Z, O, Ë photos from Audrey, my "Always Evolve" painting on a wood cookie from Lili, my afghan my mom made me freshman year of collage, an Otavalo tablecloth, and lots of cards, letters, and images that I've received throughout the years. The furniture that came with the cabin is all made from Red Alder branches and saplings from IslandWood's land and is well crafted to show off the bark and varying colors of wood. And to top off the room, I have a small lemon tree that my mom gave me as a cabin-warming gift in a bright yellow pot on the side-table next to me. For the first month I was here, the lemon tree was blooming and filled my cabin with the sweet scent of lemon blossoms. Now, the blossoms have fallen, but a bouquet of sweet peas from the Bainbridge Farmers Market is perfuming my cabin nicely.

I moved my bed up to the loft where I tucked it next to the window. Now when I lie in bed, it's like a treehouse because I gaze out into the leafy branches of Red Alders on the edge of the forest behind me. In the mornings, birdsong from amidst the branches greets me and sometimes at night the loud hooting of barred owls echoes through the darkness. The cabin's water heater if up in my loft, and I've grown to be comforted by the tick-ticking it makes when it's warming up as it means hot showers and warm radiative heating from pipes in the floor.

The cabin building is divided into two halves, kind of like a duplex. I have one side and my cabinmate Sarah has the other. We have separate entrances and separate living spaces and lofts, but share a bathroom, to which we have separate doors. Sarah and I get along quite well and agree on the living expectations of sharing a space. We're very similar in many ways but also have taken different paths to get to IslandWood, so every conversation with her brings reassuring confirmations but also new insights and ideas to mull over. We've had a few cozy movie nights and a couple nice cabinmate dates. The first was out to 122 Winslow, a small fancy restaurant in town where I had the best salad of my life—a warm smoked trout salad with apples, bacon, potatoes, and balsamic onion vinaigrette.  The second cabinmate date was to the Treehouse Café, a little spot in Lynwood with a warm ambience.  We perched on tall chairs tucked in the back and talked over blackberry crisp and the dreamiest soy caramel steamer of my life. I like having my own space in the cabin, but I also really like having Sarah so nearby. We both need to spill our thoughts on the day's happenings some evenings when we come home so it's nice to have someone I trust, respect, and enjoy to do that with. We've both expressed that we're very excited to get to know each other more and I can't wait to continue to do that!

About 200 feet along a skinny path from my cabin is the Graduate Commons, where I share a kitchen, living room, study, and laundry room with the 15 other grads who live in cabins. Sounds pretty hectic, and sometimes it is, especially during dinner or breakfast rushes, but most of the time it's not too bad because we all eat at slightly different times so usually there are only 1-2 other people preparing food at the same time as me, while 1 or 2 others eat at the dining tables or hang on the couches or use the computers in the study. There are three fridges and plenty of food storage closets so we all have our own shelves, so that's not a problem. Plus, there are two stoves, two ovens, two microwaves, two toasters, and two sinks, so it's rare that there's an appliance someone needs that's too full to be used. The kitchen can get pretty messy but everyone seems to pitch in a fair amount to do general tidying and we all have assigned Commons jobs that rotate every two weeks. Even when it gets messy, it's not too irksome since I don't have to live there. I can always do some cleaning then escape back to the peace and order of my cabin. It's nice to have two different parts of my home, though. When I feel like being social, I can go to the Commons. If I need some time to chill by myself, I can hang out in my cabin. It's a good balance.

There's also a vegetable garden next to the Commons, so I've enjoyed fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, and others have harvested a lot of chard and kale. I also try to hit up the Farmers Market in Winslow on Saturdays if I can to stock up on other local fruits and veggies. I love fresh produce!

IslandWood itself is beautiful. Beyond words. There are 255 acres of gorgeous temperate rainforest, cattail marsh, bog, pond, ravine, and meadows, and miles of trails. But it's not just land; there are venues to use scattered about that kids helped design to add whimsy and exciting learning experiences. On the edge of the bog, a treehouse wraps around one of the tallest Douglas firs at IslandWood.

 

A bird blind perches on the shore of the marsh, with eye slots cut out at two heights so both adults and children can watch the red-winged blackbirds, kingfishers, wood ducks, and herons without the birds noticing their presence.

Stretching about eighty feet above the ravine is a suspension bridge that, although very sturdy, sways and bounces with excited kids on it. The floor of the bridge is metal grate so the kids can lie down and gaze through the holes at the stream at the bottom of the ravine, while feeling like they are levitating in the air.

Although kids helped design all of IslandWood, one of their most creative contributions was the floating classroom on Mac's pond. It's a square wooden raft with benches along the sides that detaches from the dock and can be moved along two underwater wires into the middle of the pond by students turning big metal cranks. Once in the middle, the kids can take water samples by lifting hatches in the floor.

Over 150 high, reaching above the treetops is the canopy tower which was just completed this year. I've heard watching the sunrise from up there is magical, although I have yet to do so myself. In one of the side ravines is the Learning Tree, which is a classroom on stilts, parallel to the tree branches with a deck encircling a hexagonal classroom with big windows and skylights.

On the edges of IslandWood's land are a historical cemetery and Blakely Harbor. Although not technically IslandWood property, these are great venues for teaching the kids about Bainbridge history. The cemetery has headstones dating back into the 1800s, some in Japanese and some clustering in familial groups with tiny headstones for babies.  There's a Jewish section with piles of smooth round stones placed upon the headstones. There are also two graves of native women who had converted to Christianity and wanted to  be buried in a Christian cemetery but were denied because they were native and so were buried right on the other side of the cemetery property line in the shrubbery on the edge of the forest.

Blakely harbor is a fun place to take the kids. It used to be the site of the largest mill in the world and still has all sorts of remnants and evidence of this, such as old water-worn bricks, the base wood beams of the mill buildings, and the skeleton of the electrical plant. The kids to get guess what happened there, then we show them a video of the mill's history when we return to campus. They also get to explore, climb on rocks, and seek out scurrying crabs.

The main campus itself is incredible. All the buildings are LEED gold-certified or higher. For those of you who aren't in the environmental spectrum, that means that they're all very sustainably built. Think sheets of solar panels on the roofs, a living machine to recycle wastewater, big windows facing south to collect light and heat, radiative floor heating, composting toilets, sustainable and/or recycled materials used, etc. And the best part of how sustainable the buildings are? All of the workings of the buildings that make them so sustainable are openly viewable instead of hidden behind walls so that the kids can see and learn what's happening. The main campus buildings are: the Dining Hall, the Admin building, the Learning Studios (where my graduate courses take place, the prep room for teaching is, and the microscope labs and classrooms for kids are located), the Welcome Center, the Art Studio, the Great Hall, Bluebill Cove (conference hall), and four lodges for kids and other guests to stay in (Invertebrate Inn, Birds Nest, Mammals Den, and Ichthyology Inn). Besides being sustainable, all buildings are beautiful and put off a very homey vibe.

Admin Building

Dining Hall

Art Studio

Learning Studios

Ichthyology Inn

The dining hall staff cook incredibly delicious food. As a grad, I only eat in the dining hall when I'm teaching the school overnight programs I am so well-fed during those weeks! They mostly make comfort food so the kids don't get homesick, which includes dishes like pancakes, bacon, sausage, fruit salad, and muffins for breakfast; sandwiches, chips, fruit, and cookies for lunch; and roast turkey, mashed potatoes, tacos, pizza, veggies, brownies, and homemade ice cream sandwiches for dinner. Sounds like pretty general camp fare but even though the dishes are common, the way the kitchen makes them is not. They use as many local and/or organic ingredients as they can and really put effort into making the food good. They don't think, 'Psh, it's just for kids, it doesn't have to taste good.' They value the kids just as much as anyone and really put effort into it. Plus, they pay extremely close attention to any dietary restrictions anyone has, which means that I don't have to skimp at meals just because I can't eat gluten! They've made me gluten-free pizza, polenta dishes, rice bread, gluten-free muffins, portabella mushroom pizzas, flourless chocolate torte, and chocolate mousse! I'm so grateful!

There's also a garden on campus. It's much, much bigger than the graduate garden since it used to both educate the kids and to provide some of the food used in the dining hall. It has a beautiful fountain, a cob oven, many beds full of lettuce, herbs, pumpkins, garlic, kale, chard, sunchokes, cauliflower, broccoli, beets, sunflowers, apple trees, bay leaf trees, jasmine vines, blueberries, cranberries, squash, peppers, nasturtiums, onions, comfrey, tomatoes, potatoes, and so much more! There's also a very high tech greenhouse that self-monitors everything from ceiling covers to ventilation slats and is filled with plants that prefer warmer climates like papaya, ginger, cactus, and stevia, which is so yummy! Just a teensy piece of stevia leaf fills your mouth with a strong sugary flavor! Not only do the grads have full access to the garden next to the Commons, since we maintain that one, but we're also welcome to help ourselves to the plentifully growing goodies in the campus garden too.

And I can't forget about the Friendship Circle! The Friendship Circle is where the kids and instructors all gather every morning for songs and an introduction to the day, and is also the place where Wednesday night campfire takes place, almost entirely filled with kid produced songs and skits, with the grads opening and closing the campfire with traditional African drumming. The Friendship Circle is a place of lots of music, smiles, and laughs.

(at Wednesday night campfire, there IS an actual fire,

this picture is from a morning gathering)

IslandWood is wonderful. I just can't get enough of the seas of ferns, the huge yellow Big Leaf maple leaves drifting to the ground, the rainbow of hemlock needles tucked into the crevices of roots, the spotted banana slugs plugging along, the fluttering Red Alder leaves spotting the canopy, the symphony of bird songs weaving through frog croaks, the nonchalant gaze of a black-tailed deer as she looks up from her munching, the barnacles polka-dotting every rock and brick at the harbor, the owls, bald eagles, ospreys, and great blue herons that grace us with their soaring presence, the towering Douglas Fir trees, the graceful Western Red Cedars, the funky-looking mushrooms that pop up overnight, the hammering of woodpeckers and sapsuckers ringing through the trees, the coziness I feel in every building especially my cabin, and above all the freshness of the air, pure and rejuvenating.

That's all I'm going to write for now because this entry is long and it's late. Hopefully this gives you an idea of my world right now. I'll write about the people I share this world with and everything I've been doing in it in the next entry or two. For now, just know I am happy and picture me in all the places I've just described.

Love to all. I hope you too are happy wherever you are.

Thanks for listening.

~Zoë