REEFNETTERS ONCE AGAIN ON MONASTERY LAND

Reefnet Boats on Monastery Land- Ned Griffin

For over 30 years our local fisherman on Shaw stored their reef net boats on our beach- what I call "saluvial muck" (bay mud). It takes seconds at low tide to sink to your thighs. A few years ago we- having had approval dismantled the decaying boats so we could reclaim the site for our own use, especially bird watching with the local children.

Reefnetting could be the oldest form of net fishing in the world and is unique to the Pacific Northwest. In the San Juans, this ancient art was the primary salmon harvesting method for local tribes.The techniques employed date back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Even today, most modern reefnets sit on traditional sites that have been "farmed" for the fish for hundreds of years.

Four local tribes that we know of worked reefnets in their territories including the Lummi on Shaw and northwest Lopez. Summer villages were established near the sites to support the fishers, and a great deal of ritual and ceremony accompanied the start of each season's fishing. As far as is known the natives never had permanent dwelling on Shaw Island.

The technique is basically simple with a pair of boats facing each other with nets suspended between them. It would take the fishermen several weeks to get their boats ready and into place, having no propulsion of their own they had to be towed in place.

(Amie Hood- Photo)

Standing on spotting ladders 16 feet up, they see the salmon headed for their reef net and the race is on. The fishermen have about 10 seconds to gather the fish before they get away.

The nets would be pulled up by manual winches catching the fish, which were then hauled into the boats. Fishing with the reefnets was  grueling work. The season ran four or five months as different salmon runs came through the islands, and openings often lasted five or six days a week. Keeping the gear clear of kelp, working the big winches, and rolling the fish into the boats was exhausting, but it was a good living for many islanders.

Ed Hopkins & Crew (Ed & Kathy Hopkins photo)

Fishing the reefnets required particular conditions, including daylight, calm water, and reasonable clear weather, since darkness, surface chop or heavy overcast made it impossible to see the salmon enter the net. Since all reefnets fish only on a given tide, they were manned only when the currents ran the proper direction. Different gears were also fished during different salmon runs. One set might work well for Chinook, but not for sockeye. Another might be particularly effective only on cohos, pinks, or chums.

This type of fishing is environmentally sound  as the catch arrives alive, not smushed as in a purse seine, or ripped and bleeding from a gill net. As the years went by the Natives were given more days to fish then the local men, so about 12 years ago they called a halt to the fishing. We missed this as the "rent" for using our beach was salmon from the catch. We lived on that salmon through the year.

By 2011 there were only 11 non-Indian commercial reef-fishing licenses left in the Washington state, with fishermen working off Lummi, Lopez, Shaw and Stuart islands.

Boat Demolition- Debra Maden, Orcas Is.

Abandoned Boat- A. Hood

Recently some Shaw men have "resurrected" this ancient art of fishing and once again park their boats on our land.  Maybe salmon coming?





Thanks to SALTWATER PEOPLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY for information.

NEW YEAR - NEW ABBESS

We rejoice that yesterday February 1 our new Abbess, Reverend Mother Lucia Kuppens, was elected. She is the 3rd Abbess of the Abbey of Regina Laudis and will probably be the last Abbess who knew our Foundress, Mother Benedict Duss.  Most Reverend Leonard P. Blair, S.T.D., Archbishop of Hartford, celebrated Mass and presided over the election which took place in the Abbey Church Jesu Fili Mariae.

Mother Abbess Lucia (right) with Mother Abbess Emerita

Mother Abbess is originally from Boston, but having attended college in Conn. she lost her "accent". She was a freshman at Conn. College (then for women only) when she first visited Regina Laudis. She was particularly struck by the Abbey´s strong sense of community and 1,500 years of tradition. “Regina Laudis had something solid and deep,” she once said. “Its members radiated a joy that was increasingly hard to come by as the experiments of the ´60s began to fade, and idealism turned to cynicism.”

She has a PhD  in Literature from Yale University, writing her dissertation on the breakdown of male and female relationships in Shakespeare’s plays.  One of my fondest memories was a course she taught  to us on Flannery O'Conner.

Mother Abbess Lucia also served as the Abbey's Librarian and Econome (head of kitchen). She has been the Abbey Cellarer for over ten years and has been in charge of the Abbey's renovation and expansion project

The lovely writer, Harriet Scott Chessman (who was a graduate student with Mother), wrote of Mother Abbess: She is one of the kindest, wisest, and most compassionate people I have ever known, and also one of the most modest, private, and contemplative.

The joy she once saw in others is certainly radiated in her!

HENRY'S LEGACY TO SHAW

In several of the past blogs on Island life, I have mentioned HENRY DELBERT HOFFMAN, who was a much revered man, know for his humor, simple life and generosity.


He was born on September 28, 1929 in Seattle, Washington, the only child of Delbert and Helen (Coleman) Hoffman of Shaw Island.

At the age of two, the family returned to their home on Hix Bay where Henry spent most of his life until 2010, except for time he served in the U.S. Army and his college years at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where he graduated in 1962 with a B.S. Degree in Business Administration.

Though Henry was born just before the Depression, he says his family was never hungry. They raised plenty to eat, with livestock such as steer, milk cows, chickens, ducks and turkeys as well as vegetable crops. Fishing and trading with the native Indians supplemented the food shelves.

Henry was a fifth-generation Shaw Island resident, who worked as a farmer, gillnetter and carpenter. As we said in a previous blog, he ran a sawmill and rented heavy equipment for his cousin’s earth-moving business and squirreled away scrap metal “I’m a scrap metal pack rat.” He built four homes on Hix Bay, named after his great-great-grandfather. The cove “next door” is named after Hoffman’s grandfather, who came to the San Juans from Ohio when he changed his occupation from accountant to boat-builder in order to save his eyesight.

Henry remembers being lonely as a teenager on Shaw. “Instead of dating I would hunt rats in a neighbor’s hen-house, but it’s not as satisfying as going out with a girl,” he once said with his typical tongue-in-cheek humor. In college he met Marlyn, his wife of 51 years.

Family history was important to Henry and his interest in writing began with creative writing courses taught by Janet Thomas. Henry took her memoir-writing class and “Henry’s Stories” was really intended for the family so the kids wouldn’t lose the stories. At local meetings we loved to hear Henry tell old tales- he was our local Garrison Keillor. His book about growing up and living on Shaw Island is heartwarming and humorous,  written with the wit and wisdom only an early pioneer family member can have. It's an island treasure.

His stories are replete with do-it-yourself instructions describing how to build a trailer from a Model A car, retool a car horn motor to fit a wood lathe, fish from spar buoys, and build small explosives, as well as retrofit a hand gun. “Recycling is nothing new, and it came in handy during the war years,” he once said.

In his book, Henry described “the Olden Days” on Shaw of subsistence farming, including hunting and butchering, raising lifestock and going to dances at the Grange where the women talked about kids and babies and men talked about raising chickens. While a different era now Henry said: it’s still the same community spirit and caring... it’s a little friendlier now and work is better than it used to be

Henry's favorite pastime was getting out in the boat and beach-combing – a love he inherited from his father and uncle. The materials he used in building his houses were from things he found nearby: fir framework from the old ferry landing dolphins, cedar for paneling and spruce logs for ceiling timbers. “You could get good logs in those days.”

Henry and Marlyn raised three children on Shaw and all of their grandchildren were born here. About seven years ago we lost the whole family, as the farm that has been in the family for over 120 years was sold.   Over the years, he served on the Shaw Island Community Organization  and as a Fire Commissioner.. With Marlyn he also sang bass in Mother Kateri’s wonderful group in the 90’s.

Henry died in Anacortes in 2011 of pancreatic cancer but he left this island with a legacy of one who possessed wonderful smiles, the love of story-telling, a generous heart, and a humble faith in God. He was laid to rest on his beloved Shaw Island.

Henry's book can be found at the Shaw Store.

ISLAND ART- RESCUED

In our previous blog on the Shaw  Library we mentioned that MALCOLM CAMERON and his wife Babs donated the land for the library, but there is more to this man then just his generosity to the island. Malcolm P. Cameron was born in Los Angeles in 1902 and died in 1975. As we said in the last blog, Malcolm Cameron donated his services as an architect to design the island library.

Return to Yellow Island

After graduating from Cornell University in architecture he practiced his profession as well as drypoint and lithography in New York and Los Angeles. This was followed by lithography, book illustration and sculpture in San Diego County. The unifying thread throughout his life has been drawing, for it was practiced in his various professional pursuits as well as purely for the joy of it.

His career was broadened with travels to Europe, Mexico, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia.

In 1962 he and Babs (Margaret) moved to Shaw Island.* "From the time of their arrival, Malcolm was fascinated with the quality of light and atmosphere in this area. The low keyed values, the soft edges of forms, the moods from gay to somber were all so different from Mexico, the Malacca Straits and the Mediterranean. A new challenge was presented, that of catching and recording this particular quality of light and it took four years of living among these islands to gain full awareness of their serenity. This element of serenity so rare in today's hectic world presented an obligation to state, that together with the shocking, the ugly and the violent, this too exists. After much time and many studies he then offered this folio of twelve drawings which represent his own feeling of the mood of the islands."

“The subject matter of these drawings is largely in the San Juan Archipelago with others in Canadian waters. Whether of broad sweep of island seascape, the solid masses of dark forest edging prismatic cliffs, or the quiet dignity of a single tree, the mood and essence have been the ever-sought priceless ingredient. The drawings are not literal nor are they realism in the sense of painstaking delineation of from and texture of physical objects. Rather, the hope and intent is that they be truthful and real in expressing the feeling of these inland seas.”

(Darvill’s Rare Prints- Orcas Island)

Blind Island Abandoned

Scattered around the island one can glimpse a few of these lovely art works: in the Library, at the Community and once in awhile in someone’s home.  About 20 years ago I was cleaning out a closet in the monastery which had paintings and blueprints from the original building (now monastery).  I came across a sort of portfolio made of a lovely, light wood, perhaps 22x30 inches, tied with a thin leather strap. 

Before I even opened the case I was sure I had made a great discovery and was fairly certain what it was. To this day I have not a clue why this feeling came over me. It was a  complete set (minus the “Reefnetters”) of Malcolm’s drawings.

Several I have never seen anywhere else are of Henry Hoffman's lumber mill here on Shaw.  Significant to us, as Henry did many odd jobs for us over the years and when we built our new chapel in 1997 he milled the wood for the beams inside and the lumber for the outside-  his last big job on Shaw.

Straits Island

*In her own right, Babs was a very talented sculptor.  Her "Seal"  rests in our Chapel Japanese garden and we have a collection of her angels- which Islanders "fight"over when on the market.
 

Seal Sculpture in Monastery Chapel Garden

Bab's Angels- with lamb & violin

SHAW LIBRARY & HISTORICAL MUSEUM

I have a special place in my heart for our island library & museum.  First of all I am a voracious reader and secondly I served on the Library board for 5 years at one point. Because our library is owned by the island and not in the public system, we do not have the usual "junk" but wonderful books.  Our librarians are all volunteers, including the head librarian.  I wish I was a child again to read all the children's books - I have been known to take some out...

The origins of the library go back to the late 1950s when Mabel Crawford worked at the Shaw Store. Mabel loved books and wanted to share them with others, so she dedicated a shelf at the store to books that people could borrow.

When Gwen and Don Yansen sold the store, the books moved to the home of Mabel's brother, Frank Fowler, and his wife, Elsie. Frank built book cases and Elsie served as librarian. But people didn't feel free using a private home as a library and decided a separate building was needed.

The Shaw Island and Historical Society was incorporated in 1966. In the summer of 1967, several islanders, including Babs and Malcolm Cameron and Zora Gross bought one-acre parcels kitty-corner from the school and donated the land to the society. Malcolm Cameron, an architect, donated his services to design the library and Zora donated the log cabin, part of which had been the island's post office, which became the museum. Henry Hoffman and his uncle, Loyal Hoffman, finished the work in the summer of 1970 and the library and museum were formally opened Aug. 22, 1970. More on Henry in another blog.

The first addition to the library--the children's library--was opened in 1985. The back building, which provides work and storage space for the library and historical society volunteers and is linked to the main library by a breezeway, was completed in 2003. All three projects were undertaken by longtime Shaw Islander Skip Bold.

Museum- with reefnet boat replica

Currently: The library and museum have about 2,000 visitors each year. They check out approximately 1,200 books and an equal number of videos. The library also has a selection of magazines and local newspapers, a copier and a computer with internet access available to all members.

The Shaw Island Library and Historical Society generates all its operating funds from donations and relies heavily on volunteers in order to provide its services, making it one of the last such organizations in the state. Since we have so many avid readers on the island many of the books are donated by them. So there is some high quality literature by authors from across the globe.

Yearly the Library invites a renowned speaker. This past summer we had Bryan Payton, author of "The Wind is Not a River". We have teas, poetry readings and other fun events, including an annual book sale and ice cream social.  Books and ice cream?  doesn't get any better!

UNIQUE EDUCATION

Into the New Year I thought I would do a few blogs on our Island life- past and present.

When I came to Shaw Island, almost 30 years ago, our island school was one room with one teacher, K thru 8 grades. One of my first outings on the island was to the 8th grade graduation. I was seated next to one of the graduating boys and was impressed with his ability to talk to a strange adult with such ease. I was to find he was not unique for island kids.

The little red school on Shaw has been in continuous use since it was built in 1890 and is the longest- running school in the state. The building is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.  The current building was the second school house on the Island. The first, a small log cabin, was only open for a short period of time before it was replaced by the current building. That old building sits in deep woods slowly rotting away- soon to be part of the earth.

Today our school community consists of two classrooms - one for our kindergarteners through fourth graders, and one with our fifth through eighth graders. Over the years the classes have ranged from two to 35 students. At present there are 14 students.  Last year there were 22.

As far as I am concerned the kids get one of the best educations in the country, mainly due to the many islanders willing to pitch in and offer outside activities.  Unlike many areas of our country the arts have not been cut, so they have weekly music, poetry, writing and art.  Scientists visit and give courses in everything from geology to chemistry to marine biology. Due to the small number there are not competitive sports but I have known kids who could drive a boat before they could drive a car. And they always top the charts for national contests. For the most part they use their imagination in their school work and play... so lacking in education today! And it also helps that the parents here care deeply that their children are educated in more than the 3Rs.

SHAW ISLAND WINTER DOLDRUMS

Shaw Island Landing- Cindy Margritz

This winter has been a strange one in the history of our small isolated island. Last winter, for the first time in anyone's memory the store closed for the winter.  This fall we lost our postmaster (and the store is still closed for winter months). This means our two daily places to meet are either closed or limited. We have been desperate: one woman parked her RV in front of store/postoffice and invited people to come in for cookies and hot chocolate and game night has now started on Thursday evenings. We celebrated Howard's 90th birthday in December and over 100 people showed up- not only for Howard but to see one another!  On top of our local woes the powers to be have decided to put all ferries on a reservation system- which means those of us with no bridges are... well, you get the picture! One wonders what next will happen.

The history of Shaw Island storekeepers stretches back to 1898 when Gene and Sadie Hoffman Fowler sold food and supplies from their house.  In 1924 they built the store at its present site, on the water’s edge. In the early days, feed (for the many island chicken farms) and building supplies for Shaw and other islands were an important part of the store trade.

The Fowlers’ daughter, Mabel Crawford, ran the store from 1924 to the mid-1950s. Darrel Fowler was the next storekeeper. He was born in 1929 to Frank (born in 1900 on Shaw to Gene and Sadie) and Jessie Rice Fowler. Darrel’s brother, Wayne, still owns land on Shaw. A large part of Darrel’s trade was in chicken feed. He would bring in two longbed trucks full of feed twice a week.

The warehouse, adjacent to the store, was originally a cannery built for the Shaw Island Canning Company in 1912. The cannery processed salmon and produce from local farms. Later, the building was used for boat building, as well as sales of feed and lumber for the store.

In 1958 after many years in the Fowler family, the store was sold to a succession of owners. The Yansen, Leidig, and Nichols families each ran the store for a number of years. When we first arrived on Shaw, John and Geb Nichols casually ran things. One would grab supplies and if they were not around, just deposit money in a box.

Mother Kateri at ferry ramp

In 1976 the Franciscan Sisters purchased the store and ran the ferry dock. The “Nuns” were famous for meeting the ferry in their brown habits and greeting people at the store. They named the store "Little Portion" after the Italian church Portiuncula, meaning "a little portion [of the earth]," where St. Francis of Assisi lived and died. For a generation the sisters ran the store putting in long days meeting ferries at the terminal. They maintained a chapel near the dock and welcomed many people to Shaw. They continued to serve the Shaw Island community for 27 years and then sold the property to the present owners, Steve and Terri Mason. Over time the owners and the kinds of items for sale have changed but the store has always been the central hub of Shaw Island life.

Our small store is one of the oldest businesses in the San Juan Islands and indeed in Washington State.