Whidbey Island: A test of character, identity for a Northwest way of life

Almost 50 years ago, in front of my uncle's fishing cabin on Whidbey Island, I was casting into Holmes Harbor when some monster sucked up my lure and took off for Dines Point.

After a long battle, he finally emerged from the depths in all his iridescent perfection, a 20- pound king salmon. He gave his head a little shake; the hook fell out and he disappeared.

In 1977, I looked down on Seattle from the glass bulb atop the Smith Tower. The city I'd known was disappearing and the new mayor wasn't going to do anything about it. "If the Northwest is up for sale," I thought, "I'd better get a piece before it's too late."

My wife and I found a waterfront cottage on Whidbey.

Twenty-five years after arriving here, the same question hangs in the air: "Can Whidbey survive the same forces of growth that have defaced much of Puget Sound?"

Knowing how to save essential Northwest values is not that difficult. The hard part is to find the political will.

Whidbey is long enough — 45 miles — that the personalities of the north and the south can be as different as Langley's county fair and Oak Harbor's military air show.

Let me take you on a tour.

The president of Microsoft can fly by helicopter to his new home. We'll take the Mukilteo ferry and land in Clinton.

Three miles north is an intersection. To the left is Island Greens, a little gem of a golf course that our former state representative, Dave Anderson, carved out of a cow pasture.

He's our former representative because he wrote a law saying developments cannot exceed road capacity.

To the right is Langley.

Langley looks like a movie set. It's got the Clyde, an old-time theatre. A park out of Alice in Wonderland. A great thrift store. And a children's preschool that's pretty special.

The school's guiding light, Mully Mullally, came here in the early '70s. With Irish freckles and a voice like Melanie Griffith, she can wade through an ocean of chaotic children and, with a touch here and a word there, make them peaceful and happy.

But she's just one angel in a remarkable South Whidbey sisterhood.

Lynn Willeford at the Clyde Theatre directs Hearts and Hammers and Friends of Friends — who help repair homes and pay medical bills.

Debra Waterman's logging family has donated land for schools and parks.

Judy Yeakel created a bank for women — and established both a birth-control clinic and a shelter for battered women.

And then there's Nancy Nordhoff. She's responsible for a women's writing colony and that Langley park, helped save Ebey's Prairie and has been a one-woman Works Progress Administration. What Nancy likes about Whidbey is that "you can get your arms around it."

On a recent evening, she fielded telephone calls while trying to watch a Mariners game. She'd prefer less attention and more retirement, and hopes it will come after the community's next big project.

On the drawing board is a South Whidbey Commons that will combine Mully's preschool with the Senior and Teen Centers, and a community living room. It will be across from a crescent of land in Bayview that already contains a historic hall, farmer's market, coffee shop, art gallery and nursery.

Freeland, the next town up the road, features the island's best grocery and only health club — where one out of every eight people on the south end attempt to prolong their lives.

Across the street is a shiny new Shell station. It's sited on a wetland. It's usually empty. "I don't intend to ever go in there," says Judy Yeakel, "even though I'd like to use that car wash."

An ex-county commissioner from Oak Harbor finagled the gas station. He also erected a storage facility nearby that looks like a cardboard fort in some grade B Hollywood movie.

By contrast, over the next hill, is a local favorite: Island Recycling, which recycled 5 million pounds last year. Owner Dave Campbell grew up on the island. What he notices most about how it has changed is the number of cars that tailgate him.

"Where did all these a — s come from?" he asks. "And if they are in such a hurry, why don't they go back?"

Outside the dump is the island's best highway, lowest speed limit and No. 1 speed trap. Olympia has been busy transforming the island's country highway into an intrastate.

Up the road is Meerkerk Rhododendron Gardens and idyllic Greenbank. Here, in the early '80s, the FBI shot it out with the neo-Nazis.

The island's prettiest spot could be Greenbank's Loganberry Farm — where you can sit on the hill and watch freighters turn for Japan. Or taste the world's best berry pie.

This farm, like Classic U Forest, Double Bluff Beach and Ebey's Prairie, is another stunning spot saved by islanders from commercial development.

Ten miles north is Coupeville — another movie set — sometimes referred to as "Kansas by the Sea." This fertile prairie once held the national record yield for wheat, and the perfume you smell is cow manure.

Coupeville grows characters. And stories, like of the headless pioneer, Isaac Ebey; or Lawrence Reuble's horses, giant Shires that rumbled over the prairie.

And the former school superintendent. After ramming a sheriff's car and setting the local breathalyzer record, he announced, "I think this will be a good lesson for the kids." Before that he'd tried to hand off the water under school property to a local developer.

All kinds of deals are made in Coupeville. It's the county seat.

North 10 miles is Oak Harbor, a town that, with its suburbs, constitutes almost half of the island's population of 55,000.

Nobody minds expressing their opinion about Oak Harbor, so long as you don't use their name. It's a city that needs its own Anti-Defamation League.

"Whidbey's most beautiful setting and ugliest town," says a former town planner.

The sign greeting visitors could say: "Fast Food Capital of America" or "No Building Permit Ever Refused."

The boulevard into town is interrupted by a stoplight for a new Wal-Mart that many locals consider Disneyland.

The bottom line of opinion on Oak Harbor is that its "Dutch Mafia" establishment, 10,000 retirees and the transient military population are so "self-centered" that there's little community.

Passing levies for schools and kids' sports facilities is mission impossible.

The schools are hurting because federal support has been almost cut in half in the past 10 years. Tim Eyman's voter-approved Initiative 747 forced drastic city layoffs, including planning staff.

What is most impressive about Oak Harbor is the Navy base. You name a place where the United States has fought since World War II and naval aviators from Oak Harbor have been beyond the front lines.

They're warriors.

What a difference 40 miles can make. Mully, in Langley, once took care of Jane Fonda's daughter. Retired Rear Admiral Lyle Bull in Oak Harbor thinks Jane should be tried for treason.

What does Whidbey's future hold?

Right now, because of Oak Harbor's population, Republicans control the board of county commissioners, two to one. Before becoming commissioners, one installed septic systems, the other was a developer.

Since 1998, the commissioners have put the county's compliance with the state Growth Management Act in the hands of Keith Dearborn, a Seattle lawyer and planner.

Narrating what has happened since then in a telephone conversation, Dearborn is articulate and almost hypnotic. His conclusion: "Island County's plan is as good as any rural county's in the state."

However, others say that at an exorbitant cost Dearborn gave the commissioners just what they wanted: A document that minimizes environmental protection and maximizes development.

Sometimes the biggest impacts to our island life come not from the county or the state, but from a neighbor.

One of those planted trees across the Cultus Bay view of bird sculptor Ed Nordin. "It was yours," he told Nordin, "Now it's mine."

Mully notices some harried newcomers tapping their feet in the checkout line at the Star Store.

"They aren't interested in what life here was all about — a slower pace and knowing people."

Many newcomers seem hell-bent on recreating Lynnwood.

Most islanders are not against development, per se. We just want it tasteful, in scale, and respectful of the community it's joining.

It's a continuous battle, like fighting weeds. "McDonald's is back," headlined a recent edition of the South Whidbey Record. Another story: VoiceStream wants to build 15 cell towers starting in Langley.

Whidbey still remains a place that is human in scale and surrounded by natural beauty. And like Seattle in the '70s, it is trying to hang on to its essential Northwest character.

If I were king, I'd put a graduated tax on real estate sales, so that growth paid for itself.

I'd outlaw, with certain common-sense exceptions, Puget Sound commercial fishing — so that the wild experience that bonded me to this place was perpetuated.

Third, I'd force the highway department to develop a template that doesn't pave over rural character.

Ultimately, the best chance for Whidbey to remain a green respite in the Puget Sound trough will depend on three elemental forces working together: nature, people and money.

That's in all three's long-term interests.