By M.L. LYKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The Exchange isn't on Orcas Island tourist brochures -- nor is it likely to make future editions. The brochures show leaping orcas and deserted driftwood beaches and soaring eagles and fire-red sunsets on this, "the loveliest of the San Juan islands."

Orcas easily lives up to the hype. Sculpted by massive glacial sheets that gouged out the long channels of East Sound and West Sound, it is named not for the killer whale but for the viceroy of Mexico in 1792: Don Juan Vincente de Guemes Pacheco y Padilla Orcasitees y Aquayo Conde de Revilla Gigedo.

Its geography is as varied as its citizenry, with steeply forested cliffs, sweet green valleys, blue mirror lakes, 125 miles of shoreline and towering, 2,407-foot Mount Constitution, with its sweeping view of the San Juan archipelago and the mountain ranges beyond.

Connected by winding, narrow roads, the estimated 3,800 full-time residents are spread out in four population centers. On the east arm of the island is Olga, home of the Orcas Island Artworks and Doe Bay Resort, where mineral hot tubs and cedar sauna are still clothing-optional. On the west arm is Deer Harbor, site of a bustling marina surrounded by a quiet community with clapboard buildings that date back to the 1890s.

To the south is Orcas village, with the ferry landing, tourist shops and 100-year-old Orcas Hotel, listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In the narrow middle waist of the island "horseshoe" is Eastsound, shopping and business center for the island.

Tourists, whose numbers swell the island population to 10,000 or more in the summer, use words like "enchanting" and "magical" to try to describe the island's beauty. Some weep from the back of the ferry as they pull away. Some come back to stay.

"We knew within a few hours on Orcas that we were going to live here, even though it took us 20 years to do it," says Hazel O'Brien, who moved to the island with her husband from the East Coast in the '80s. "It's an old story. You come here and fall in love."

Unfortunately, say locals, that old story has a new twist. Some newcomers fall in love and take the vows, then try to change the very island that stole their hearts.

"A lot of people who come here now are used to high-powered jobs. They come here and try to save us from ourselves. We don't want to be saved," says Peggy Wareham, co-owner of West Sound Marina, with more than 100 slips, a boat repair and a chandlery.