The pace is slow on The Friendly Island

By M.L. LYKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The sheep are on the loose, and Moss is on the job. Taking commands from a shepherd's whistle, he leaps fences, stops, slinks, crawls and then runs around a half-dozen wayward lambs, herding and chasing them back to pasture.

"It makes my heart sing," says Julie Matthews, watching her sheep dog in action. "He's my right-hand man."

A half-dozen fine lines fan out at the corners of Matthews' blue eyes. Could be the exposure to weather. Could be the laughter that accompanies her big, easy smile.

"When you have 1,200 sheep, you really need a good sense of humor," says the fast-moving, hard-working, 39-year-old from New Zealand who moved to Lopez Island by way of the wide world eight years ago with dreams of becoming a sheep farmer.

She works her Wild Currant Sheep Station solo, using leased lands for grazing, island roads for transport, an in-your-face guard llama and eager sheep dogs.

"They'll wear the pads right off the bottoms of their feet and keep going," says Matthews, whose lamb is on the menu at the Dahlia Lounge and the Palace Kitchen in Seattle. "My boys are what makes it work for me. That and this community. Without the support of people here on Lopez, I never would have pulled this off."

Locals lent her money, gave her access to land, and "always, always gave me words of encouragement."

That's the amiable Lopezian (low-peeez-ian) way. This quiet, rural island -- first ferry stop in the San Juans -- is known as The Friendly Island. To outsiders, the most visible sign of its kindly disposition is The Wave. Or The Waves.

Locals customarily greet everyone from first-timers to old-timers with a wave from the driver's seat. The style varies according to mood, intent and personality. Some ripple the fingers, or flop the hands. Some hold 'em steady. There's the one-finger wave (pointer lifted casually off the wheel), the two-finger wave (same, with both pointers), the peace wave (two fingers, one hand), the four-finger wave (fingers together).

The exuberant five-finger wave (one hand off the wheel) can mean "I want to stop and talk." On this laid-back island, that may be in the middle of the road. And, given the easy lope of island time, it may take a while.

It's as close as Lopez gets to a traffic jam -- unless Moss' master is running sheep on the road.

"When I first moved here, I heard that San Juan Island was called Sin City, Orcas was Orcatraz in the winter, Orcapulco in the summer, and Lopez was called Slowpez -- the forgotten island," says Robert Herrmann, president of the Lopez Island Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Fish Bay Mercantile gift shop.

In the 12 years Herrmann has been on the island, the number of full-time residents has grown from 1,200 to 2,200. But the population boomlet hasn't spoiled it. Not yet.

"Lopez has its own sweetness. There is something very gentle about it -- it's what the rest of the San Juans were like 25 years ago."

Third largest of the San Juan Islands, the 29.5-square-mile Lopez is a patchwork of pastoral fields with pinwheel bales of hay, charming old farmhouses with white picket fences and protected bays where fiberglass megayachts may anchor alongside historical wooden schooners, steamers and gill netters.