Monday Oct 25, 2010

Our first Monday off duty.

The other volunteer couple, who were parked nearby, left the island Saturday. It’s lonesome around here. They took the early ferry to try to get the jump on the winter storm that was threatening NE Utah and southern Wyoming as they traveled I-84 and I-80 heading east to Michigan. Today should be their crux travel day. Because the elevation of the Interstate is over 6000 ft for the whole state, it the weather can play havoc on travel through that area from now until late spring. It is bad enough traveling in snow and ice, but doing it with a large trailer attached to you makes it even more interesting. Good luck, Bob and Mary.

The rainy weather is upon us. Saturday was actually quite nice, with lots of sun in the morning, almost warm but becoming mostly cloudy, cool, and windy in the afternoon. Listening to the weather forecast made us expect rain and wind for the whole day so when the forecast was wrong, nobody complained. The wind, however, did pick up during the night. It blew in about sunset and left before morning, but it made the darkness even darker with its ebbs and blows during the time in between.

This morning, Monday, as I said before is our first Monday off. Prior to this, we worked Sat, Sun, Mon, & Tues. and Bob & Mary worked Wed, Thurs Fri, & Sat. That way there was a volunteer couple at the VC to augment the ranger staff. Now that one couple is gone and we leave on the 31^st and the visitor count has dropped considerably, the winter schedule has been put into effect. The VC is closed Mon & Tues. and hours cut from 8:30-5:00 to 8:30-4:30. Wed. R and I start our last four day stint. It has been a good run.

We have learned a great deal. We had never been to the San Juan Islands and had not even heard of the Pig War or the politics of the time in this area. Learning the “story” and the history of the place is always stimulating. But the real fun comes in learning what Paul Harvey used to call “The rest of the story”. The pleasure was in the finding out about the small stories that occurred behind the scenes, the characters that were players in the drama, and the seemingly innocuous occurrences that changed everything or prevented a larger possibly disastrous event from happening.

Examples:

One of the rules of the joint occupancy was the limit of 100 soldiers from each country on the island at one time. So when the British Engineer came to English Camp to survey the site for the placement of buildings, he came in civilian clothes so he would not affect the count.

The arbitrator sent by President Buchanan, General Winfield Scott was selected because of his successes as a negotiator in previous actions. But the poor man was not fit to travel especially in those times. To travel from the East to the West meant a journey by ship down the east coast, a hurried 5 hour train trip across the Isthmus of Panama (hurried because of the fear of getting yellow fever), followed by another ship journey up the west coast. The trip took six weeks. Scott was a big man! He stood 6’5” and weighted 385 lbs. He suffered from gout, pleurisy and had broken his collarbone falling off a horse a short time before his trip west so he was probably not happy to be selected for the task. Because of his mobility issue, he never set foot on land while he was here and did all of his negotiations aboard ship. Going from one ship to another required climbing ladders which was not possible so he was lowered in a basket from one to another. Even with all his physical difficulties, General Scott was able to negotiate with British Admiral Baynes and James Douglas, Governor of Vancouver Island, to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. No war.