Stories from an Island

https://explorevashon.com/

Many years ago I drove a bus on Vashon Island. Vashon is very close to downtown Seattle, and there are a couple of ferries that run back and forth to it throughout the day. The bus route took the ferry over on Saturdays in the morning, zipped back and forth for a few hours, then brought me back on another ferry. If you can believe it, I picked my entire schedule around that one piece of work for several years. I loved it. Islands in the Pacific Northwest are beautiful and just the right amount of rural. The people are quirky and friendly, the scenery is gorgeous even especially in the rain, and city life feels far away. Of the seven years of bus-driving fame I can claim, I drove on that island for at least six of them.

SO many things happened on that island. How to choose. Start at the start?

When I first qualified on the route, I worried that I would lose my way. The senior Operator instructing me explained that it was an island, so “if you hit water, turn around!” And we both laughed. Funny thing, backing up a bus isn’t something the company really wants you to do. Facts of life on an island? I backed up that bus so many times I became a pro at it.

Goats

First time out on the island on my own, it was very early in the morning, dark, and foggy. On my way out to Dockton (which is technically on Maury Island, but it’s connected with a gravel spit), a herd of pygmy goats had broken loose and flowed across the road like a river of legs and ears and tails.

Flag Service

In the city there are bus stops. They have signs and (often) shelters for rainy days. On Vashon, no such luck. There are only a few established zones on the entire island. Most riders use flag stops, which literally means you flag down the bus speeding toward you on the highway. Sometimes I would stop for people who were waving to say hello. But, of course, I also fell for the carved people by the side of the road who have been standing there waving for a long, long time.

A King Apple Tree

Conversations on the bus were the highlight many of my days. Folks would board the bus and talk to me about all manner of things. One woman sat near the front and told me all about (Thompkins) King Apples from the apple tree on her mother’s property. She went out most weekends to help her aging mother, and this time of the year the King apple tree was heavily laden with fruit. Now if you don’t know much about apples, let me explain that King apples are considered a heritage variety, meaning they’ve been around a long time and have a pretty cool history. I don’t know it as well as my passenger did, but she enchanted me with one of her mother’s apples the next weekend, and I can say with no hesitation that it was the largest, most incredible apple I have ever eaten.

Granny’s

A kid boards the bus. They look up at me (I’m guessing they were about ten or twelve) and say, “I need to go to Granny’s.” I’m dumbstruck. Here’s me thinking this kid is lost or alone and needs to get to their grandma’s house, and I instantly worry about them. “Oh, wow, uh… Do you know her address? I mean, I need a street at least.” The kid rolls their eyes at me. “No. Granny’s. The thrift shop just past the high school.” Oh. Right. Sure.

Baby Ducklings

Just off Quartermaster Harbor there’s a road (ironically named Quartermaster Harbor Road – you didn’t see that coming?) that has a family of ducks that returns each year to roost, nest, and raise their young. One year they were crossing the road. I – of course – stopped my bus to let them pass. They were adorable and fuzzy and so cute. I was smitten. But on the return trip an hour later I witnessed that someone else had not given quite so much care to minding that crossing, and half of the brood was squashed flat in the road. Oh man, I cried over the steering wheel at the sight of that.

The Giant Peach

A guy boarded my bus wearing one of those huge plastic boots you get when you’ve had foot surgery or a funny break or tear of some type. He was nice and smiled warmly, and I didn’t think anything of him until he was the last person on the bus and we approached the terminal. “Hey,” he started as I turned up the hill. “Would you mind driving me closer to my house?”

“Where is it?”

“Oh,” he waves nonchalantly upward, “that way a couple blocks.”

Now here’s the thing – when you drive a bus for a big company like I did, you don’t go off-route, and you don’t take chances. You never really know what’s “a couple blocks” up that road if you haven’t driven it, and it might be the sort of thing that won’t fit a bus. This was way before phones with Google Maps, and I hadn’t ever been off-route (intentionally) on that island, so he was asking me to take a big risk. And a guy in a boot is no good helping me back up a 35-foot-long city bus in an unknown space. I waffled.

“Listen, it’s not that I don’t want to…” And he immediately started looking really tired and sore, and it tugged on my heartstrings. “Alright. Just how far up the hill are we talking?”

He assured me that the road was simple and wide, that it would turn the very next block and bring me right back onto the route where I needed to be. I took a leap of faith and trusted him, and we drove together on that road I had never before seen. Nothing dramatic happened. I stopped at his driveway and opened the door, and then he confessed that he did not have the bus fare to pay for his ride. “But I do have this,” he said, and from within his coat he pulled out the single largest peach in the human history of cultivated peaches. It was so big I needed two hands to hold it.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Robin, don’t take candy from strangers.” And that’s absolutely something that was playing on a loop in my head, but the fragrance of that peach cut straight into my nose, and could suddenly think of nothing better than biting into it, warnings be damned. Honestly, I never really cared about the fare out on that island anyway. I thanked him and internally called him James forever afterward.

And that peach tasted every bit as good as it looked and smelled.

“James and the Giant Peach,” Penguin Books

Nice Dog

One day I stopped near the high school, and a huge, fluffy Golden Retriever boarded the bus. He promptly laid down on the floor right at the front, stretching himself out between the seats and the farebox, completely obstructing the ability to get on and off the bus. I think I tried to have a polite conversation with the dog, maybe asking him to move over a little, and I was corrected by one of my passengers. “Oh, that’s Sampson. He’s a regular rider.”

I mean… okay?

And, true to form, everyone who got on or off the bus from that point politely stepped over Sampson, sometimes pausing to pat him on the head or say hello. No one seemed to mind how much space he took up, no one complained, no one seemed put out. When we got to the ferry terminal, Sampson woke up, hopped to his feet, and trotted off the bus.

At one point in my career, I was dating a girl who really wanted me to take Saturday’s off so that I could spend more time with her. And she could not understand why it was that I refused. I couldn’t find a good way to explain that I needed that day of the week in order to make it through the other four. Driving on Vashon gave me a mental reset every single time, and I look back on those memories with great fondness.

If you happen to visit the Pacific Northwest, don’t skip an island trip. You won’t regret it, and you’ll likely gain a few fun stories along the way.

Your trans friend,

Robin