Rosario Beach: Webbed roots hold the splintered earth together

The Refuge at Rosario

Rosario was one of the first places I was taken to on Fidalgo Island. Every year, before I moved up here, I always made sure to take a walk around Rosario. Out on Rosario Head, standing just above the cliffs, looking out towards Desolation Island, is one of my top ten places to be in Washington.

As you walk into the part there are well tended grounds with scattered picnic areas and beautifully designed log cabin style refuges. Most of the refuges and small cabins were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

From Wikipedia:

Modeled after precedent employment-conservation programs in the United States and Europe, FDR introduced the idea for the program with his first inaugural address on 21 March 1933:

“ ...The propose for me to create a civilian conservation corps to be used in simple work, not interfering with normal employment, and confining itself to forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control, and similar projects. I call your attention to the fact that this type of work is of definite practical value, not only through the prevention of great present financial loss but also a means of creation future national wealth...

[...] The CCC performed 300 possible types of work projects within ten approved general classifications: 1) Structural Improvements: bridges, fire lookout towers, service buildings; 2) Transportation: truck trails, minor roads, foot trails and airport landing fields; 3) Erosion Control: check dams, terracing and vegetable covering; 4) Flood Control: irrigation, drainage, dams, ditching, channel work, riprapping; 5) Forest Culture: planting trees and shrubs, timber stand improvement, seed collection, nursery work; 6) Forest Protection: fire prevention, fire pre-suppression, fire fighting, insect and disease control; 7) Landscape and Recreation: public camp and picnic ground development, lake and pond site clearing and development; 8) Range: stock driveways, elimination of predatory animals; 9) Wildlife: stream improvement, fish stocking, food and cover planting; 10) Miscellaneous: emergency work, surveys, mosquito control.

The responses to this six month experimental conservation program were enthusiastic, and on 1 October 1933 Director Fechner was instructed arrange for a second period of enrollment. By January 1934, the second year of the CCC program, 300,000 men were enrolled. In July 1934 this cap was increased by 50,000 to include men from drought affected states of the mid-west. The temporary tent camps had also transitioned from tents to wooden barracks. An education program had been established emphasizing job training and literacy.

As is typical of all CCC structures, they were built to stand for many, many decades. They all embody a sturdy, practical, even healthy, aesthetic of shelter. Constructed from local stones and trees, they echo and honor that natural world around them. If I were to ever build a house, I would try to construct it as close to the style of a CCC building as possible.

The Island or Rosario Head

Just past the the buildings it a narrow stretch of land that leads to Rosario Head. Just beyond a small woods, you climb up to a windswept plateau overlooking Puget Sound. Deception Island rests nearby. There are a few windswept trees up there, one of which I must have photographed over a hundred times and can never quite get what I am looking for. It's just one of this images that is too much for a camera.

The Tree

From the Washington State Parks site:

The human history of the park dates back thousands of years, when the first people settled in the areas now known as Cornet Bay, Bowman Bay and Rosario. Eventually, the land was settled by the Samish and the Swinomish. They lived on the land until the early 1900s.

During his Northwest coastal explorations, Captain George Vancouver became the first European to identify the area near Whidbey Island as a passage, which he named "Deception Pass." A 1925 act of Congress designated the property for public recreation purposes. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built roads, trails, buildings and bridges to develop the park.

Fallen Madrona Tree (Arbutus)

From Wikipedia:

According to the Straits Salish, an anthropogenic form of pitch would go fishing, but return to shore before it got too hot. One day he was too late getting back to shore and melted from the heat and several anthropogenic trees rushed to get him - the first was Douglas Fir, who took most of the pitch, the Grand Fir received a small portion, and the Madrone received none - which is why they say it still has no pitch.

Also, according to the Great Flood legends of several tribes in the northwest, the madrona helped people survive by providing an anchor on top of a mountain. Because of this the Saanich people do not burn madrona out of thanks for saving them.

From Coast Botanical Garden:

Father Juan Crespi, chronicler of a Spanish expedition to Monterey Bay in California, named this species "madroño" in 1769, after its resemblance to the Mediterranean madroño or strawberry tree. (Arbutus is Latin for strawberry tree.) Archibald Menzies, naturalist on Captain Vancouver's 1792 voyage to the Pacific Northwest, made the first botanical description. In his honour, the tree was given the scientific name Arbutus menziesii. [...]

Aboriginal people revere arbutus. In their fine guide, Plants of Coastal British Columbia, Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon tell us the Saanich used its bark and leaves as cold and stomach remedies, in a tuberculosis medicine and for contraception. The bark was also used to colour food. According to a Straits Salish legend, the survivors of a great flood tied their canoe to an arbutus atop Mount Newton near Sidney. To this day, as a mark of gratitude, the Saanich do not use arbutus as firewood. Victoria poet Richard Olafson's In Arbutus Light refers to another native legend, where the tree's "webbed roots hold the splintered earth together." If the arbutus should disappear, the myth warns-whether from fungal infection, habitat loss or some other cause- the planet would fly apart and be utterly destroyed.

TheTotem Pole | The Maiden of Deception Pass

From the Pacific Science Center: Reprinted from Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest page 199 by Ella E. Clark 1953

Deception Pass is a narrow, high-walled gorge between Whidbey and Fidalgo islands in the Puget Sound. It was named by Captain George Vancouver in 1792 when he learned that it did not lead to a closed harbor. The tidewater rushing through the channel makes navigation difficult even for motor boats today.

The story of the maiden of Deception Pass is represented on the Samish side of the base of the totem pole on the Swinomish Reservation. Alexis Edge, one of the carvers of the pole, said (in 1952) that the Indians who once lived on the islands had no trouble bucking the swift current if they would think about the maiden; if they did not keep their minds on her, their canoes would get caught in the whirlpool and they would sink. Sometimes they saw the girl come up from the water; with her hands on her hips she would wade around in the current behind the canoes.

In the days that are gone, the Samish Indians lived near the narrow channel now called Deception Pass. Most of their food came from the sea, where they usually found plenty of clams, crabs, mussels, and salmon.

One day, a group of maidens was on the beach gathering some-of the shellfish. In the group was a very pretty girl. Once, a clam she had in her hand slipped from her grasp, and she followed it into the water. Again and again it slipped from her, and she went out farther and farther until she was in water up to her waist.

Then she realized that a hand was grasping her hand. When she screamed with fright, a voice coming from the water said softly, "Do not be afraid. I will not harm you. I only want to look at your beauty."

Soon the speaker let go her hand, and she went back to her home. Again and again she had the same experience. She would be drawn into the water, a hand she could not see would hold her hand, and a voice would say loving things to her. The voice told her about the beautiful world at the bottom of the sea, about the beautiful plants and the colored fishes which she could never see from the earth. Each time, the hand held hers a little longer, and the voice spoke to her a little longer.

One day a young man rose from the water. He went with her and asked her father if he might marry her.

"Oh, no," said the father. "My daughter cannot live in the sea."

The young man told the girl's father about the beautiful world at the bottom of the ocean, but the father would not say yes.

"You will be sorry," warned the young man. "If your daughter cannot be my wife, I will see to it that you and your people cannot get sea food. Then you will be very hungry."
Still the father would not let his daughter marry the young man.

In a short time, shellfish became scarce. Then salmon became scarce. Then the streams flowing into the salt sea dried up, and the people could get no fresh-water fish. Soon the springs dried up, and the people had no water to drink.

Then the maiden went to the beach and out into the water. There she called to the young man. "Let my people have some food," she begged. "And let them have water to drink."

"Not until your father will let you marry me," replied the young man of the sea. "Not until you are my wife will there be plenty of food in the waters again."

So to keep his people from dying of hunger and thirst, her father at last gave in. He asked one thing of the young man from the sea: "Let my daughter return to us once each year. Let us see that she is happy with you."

The young man was willing to do as the father asked, and so the maiden walked out into the bay. The people on the beach watched until she disappeared from sight. The last they saw of her was her long hair floating on the surface of the water.

Soon water returned to the streams. The shellfish and the salmon returned to the sea. The Samish people were well fed. True to his promise the man of the sea let his wife go back each year to visit her people. Four years she came. And before each visit, the fish were more plentiful than ever before.

Each time, the people saw a change in her. First they noticed that barnacles were growing on her hands, then on her arms. On her fourth visit, they saw that barnacles had begun to grow on one side of her beautiful face, and that she seemed unhappy when she was out of the water. A chill wind came from her whenever she walked among them.

The people talked among themselves and then gently said to her, "We release your husband from his promise. If it makes you unhappy to leave the sea, you need not visit us each year. Do not come unless you wish to come."

And so the woman did not come again from the water. But always she was the guardian of her people. Because of her they always had plenty of seafood and plenty of pure water in the springs and streams. Her people could see that she was watching over them. As the tide passed back and forth through Deception Pass, they could see her long hair drifting on the surface of the water. They knew that the maiden of the sea was watching over her people.

The Beach