Individualists with a real sense of history

By M.L. LYKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Orcas is called The Big Island, The Tourist Island, The Horseshoe Island, The Gem of the San Juans, and, by some teens eager to get off it, The Rock.

Real estate agents pitching million-dollar properties call it The Martha's Vineyard of the West.

Departing families unable to afford housing might call it Neverneverland.

One label that sticks is The Garden Island. This 57-square-mile island, largest of the San Juans, is blessed with lush gardens and decades-old orchards that root in the fertile soils of its rolling valleys.

It is also blessed with the fertile imaginations of a populace that prides itself on doing things a little differently. Green and soulful, The Garden Island is a place where even the wildest ideas can take root.

Here, skinny-shouldered roads bear names like Lovers Lane, Uff Da Hill Road and The Yellow Brick Road. Conversations can veer from septic tanks and emergency ferry schedules to Tao philosophy in a heartbeat. Artists experiment with form, chefs with food, gurus with philosophies, gardeners with flowering perennials.

"If I get an idea here, I'm not afraid to try it. You have more room to take chances," says sculptor Tony Howe, who moved from a loft in New York City to a 10-acre spread on Orcas with wife, Lynne, five years ago. The Howes set up their own art gallery in Eastsound, the village at the heart of Orcas. In their outdoor sculpture garden, Tony's large, otherworldly, kinetic sculptures do a slow dance in the wind, their multiple metal arms curling in dreamlike movements.

It's Wonderland, awaiting Alice.

"People say, 'Do you miss New York?'

"I don't," says the 43-year-old sculptor. "There's so much more psychic freedom out here."

Free-range thinking is evident across the island, in the custom railroad that encircles a millionaire's acreage, in pastoral farmlands where emus graze alongside sheep.

"I'm threatening to get an elephant next," jokes Tish Knapp, a writer and high-school English teacher. The mewing, braying, clucking farm she shares with her husband, Gene, a Mount Vernon attorney, is home to the emus, horses, donkeys, llamas, sheep, dogs, parrots, turkeys, chickens, doves and the eagles and raccoons that feed on them.

In bakeries and restaurants, chefs tweak recipes island-style, with a little funk, a little pizzazz. The popular Olga Cafe at Orcas Island Artworks adds whole lemons -- even peels -- to its Lemon Shaker pie. At Christina's restaurant in Eastsound, ocean greens are served with halibut ceviche and poki (marinated ahi). One of the most beloved breads at Roses Breads and Specialities is its garlic parsley walnut bread, a nice complement to a bottle of Vino Rosso and leek-and-goat cheese tart.

Ideas spin in and out of The Living Room, an intimate performing salon in Eastsound offering empowerments from Tibetan monks, Feng Shui workshops, singathons, poetry readings, wolf howls and "Life Stories," with islanders recounting autobiographies to packed salons.

Across the street at The Healing Arts Center, stressed minds and bodies undergo Japanese acupuncture developed by blind practitioners or spirit-body integration and balance.

Creative landscapers loosen up formal gardens with curving lines and native plantings. Robin Kucklick, a landscape designer who has planted more than 300 trees in Eastsound and designed many of its public gardens, likes to play with scents, planting a lavender bush to jut out into a pathway and brush against passers-by, releasing a heady, purple perfume. "When you smell something like that, it can change your mood," says Kucklick.