My friend, artist Marie Roper visited Saturna recently. All the way from England, via Vancouver, Seattle and LaConner, where she is in a group show, titled SIX (the show is on till the end of December, another good reason to visit LaConner). It was a thrill to pick Marie up at the Washington State Ferry in Sidney, and bring her to Saturna on our "little ferry", the Mayne Queen. Her travel schedule was pretty tight, but she managed to make a window of 36 hours to spend some time on my magic island in the strait of Georgia...
What do you do with visitors? Take them to the beach, of course. Here she is, touching the Pacific. Testing the waters. Yep, it's frightfully cold water, and very clear too.
Marie and I are textile artists. We are easily fascinated by texture and wandered the beach, taking a long look (and a very close look) at all kind of minute things. It's nice to do this with someone who "understands"... No need to explain why it's taking you soooooo long to crawl around, staring at things. For example, we spent a lot of time holding up this disintegrating bull kelp, held together by encrusting bryozoans. Their skeletons, really. (If you are interested, click on this link, it'll take you to a very detailed page on bryozoans, with fantastic electron micrograph images of these critters.) We wanted to get a good counter lit image of the skeletons. Just one part of the flotsam on the beach at low tide.
And here is Marie, sizing up some major flotsam. BC is a place of giant trees, and their giant bits scattered on beaches around these islands... Brought in by the tide.
While we were looking at the birds at East Point, an otter came by, patrolling the shore for goodies. It was not the least disturbed by our presence. There was business at hand...
Just before dinner, we drove up to the Mount Warburton Pike summit, and had a quiet moment of meditation. The sun was trying to create a bit of drama, among the clouds. And around us, goats. Dozens of feral goats, grazing the grasses of Brown Ridge around us. Sorry I don't have pictures of those goats... it was getting too dark.
All too soon, it was time for Marie to get back to Vancouver, the next leg of her trip. Above, her ride on that morning, the Seair flight from Lyall Harbour, Saturna, to Richmond, near the airport.
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