On a hot July weekend, the kids and I went kayak-camping on Hope Island, the pearl of south Puget Sound. We launched from the boat ramp in Arcadia, just over a mile from the campground at the south end of the island. The idea was to keep the crossing as short as possible, partly to accommodate three-year-old Leon’s limited capacity for sitting in a kayak and partly because I was worried all the campsites would be taken if we arrived too late in the day.
Route map. On an ebbing tide, currents from Arcadia to the island were slightly adverse.
Last time we camped on Hope Island, in September 2020, all the kayak-campsites were occupied by eleven o’clock in the morning. This time, we need not have hurried. Several of the campsites were never occupied the entire weekend.
As if to make up for the small number of humans on the island, there were a vast number of raccoons. Just paddling the shoreline, we saw seven of them, alone or in pairs, digging in the mud for mollusks and crabs. After we landed, we were confronted by dozens more. They marched right into our campsite in broad daylight. I taught the kids to wield paddle halves and confront the raccoons aggressively, which turned what might have been an intimidating animal encounter into a joyous rout.
Leon and Maya in kayak off Arcadia. The boat ramp at Arcadia is wide enough to accommodate two vehicles at once, so it is less hectic than most ramps in Washington.
Raccoon foraging along shore, Hope Island. Many of the raccoons were content to eat their natural foods, but many others preferred to try to steal ours.
Maya and Leon roughhouse in tent, Hope Island. Often in their games, the two kids would gang up on me, but sometimes they would attack one another.
Maya and I had been playing a lot of Pupperazzi lately, a computer game in which you play a human-sized, walking camera in a world populated by sentient dogs. Just as the dogs do in Pupperazzi, I gave Maya a list of thirty “tasks” to photograph on Hope Island.
Maya set to with her point-and-shoot, but some of the tasks were harder than others. Not until the very end of the trip was she able to photograph the final task: “Kayak on car.”
Maya with camera. Three-year-old Leon also wanted to try the camera, but he kept sticking his finger in front of the lens.
Maya’s list of tasks. She crossed off tasks as she completed them, except two tasks that she scribbled out because she didn’t like the thought of them: “Person frowning” and “Wet dog.”
“Chips being bad.” In this photograph, composed by Maya, Chips is the little brown dog sticking his butt out at the camera when he is supposed to be posing with the rest of the dog pack.
Chips in a bush. Two years ago, on Strawberry Island, Maya invented the “Chips Game,” in which Chips hides somewhere on the island and everyone has to look for him.
Hope Island is notable for its abundance of plant life, both native and introduced. When Rachel and I first visited in 2016, we discovered fields of vanilla-leaf, an herbaceous groundcover. When dried, its leaves emit a strong aroma of vanilla, but they emit no smell while green. On this trip, I couldn’t leave the kids long enough to explore the vanilla-leaf fields, but I did find a few individual plants in the forest near the campsite.
A few hundred yards past the campsite, the forest trail opens onto the old orchard for which Hope Island is famous. Apple trees, planted at the beginning of the twentieth century, still produce fruit today. The old pioneers’ cabin, remodeled to meet modern building codes, is now a summertime caretaker’s residence.
I ran into the caretaker when I came to beg drinking water. She told me she had been on the island since May—nice work if you can get it. I was a little surprised to learn she was not familiar with our native vanilla-leaf, although she carefully tended her own garden next to the cabin.
Vanilla-leaf. Just one of many inconspicuous Pacific Northwest plants that are more amazing the more you learn about them.
Apples, Hope Island. There are dozens of trees in the orchard, each with hundreds of apples.
Caretaker’s cabin, Hope Island. This is the only residence on the island, and the entire island is a state park.
Rows of sapsucker holes in bole of apple tree. Sapsuckers, a genus of North American woodpeckers, drink sap from the holes they bore and use the sap to bait insects, which they eat.
Lewis’s moon snail, Hope Island. This species is the largest sea snail in Washington State.
The kids roamed all over the southern shoreline of the island. They learned their way through the maze of forest trails, such that they could travel between the campsite, the beach, and the orchard at will. Most of the time, they preferred to bring me with them on their adventures, but early in the morning or whenever I was cooking food, they would go off on their own, Leon racing after Maya as fast as his legs could carry him.
Alex, Maya, and Leon, Hope Island. Raccoons shadowed us wherever we went.
Maya and Leon hug. Maya would set the agenda for both kids, but Leon often had his own ideas about what they should be doing instead.
Leon in grassy field. One of the kids’ favorite parts of the orchard was the fringe of long, unmowed grass.
Leon and Maya walking through the orchard. They raced ahead so quickly I often lost sight of them.
Leon laughing while I pelt him with Douglas-fir cones. This photo was not one of Maya’s “tasks,” but she liked to photograph Leon even without any particular goal in mind.
Maya sitting by the water, Hope Island. Maya kept track of the times of high and low tides, the better to advise me on what time we should depart the island on Sunday.
Our best wildlife encounter occurred after dinner on Saturday. We went for an evening walk in the orchard, where we discovered a small herd of mule deer, often called black-tailed deer in these parts. At first, I assumed the deer were grazing on the lawn, but on closer inspection, we saw they were actually eating fallen apples.
Maya got the idea to feed the deer. She began picking low-hanging apples from the trees and tossing them in the deer’s direction. Deer lack a strong predatory instinct, so most deer simply watched in stupefaction as Maya’s apples rolled past them. Only the oldest, wisest female possessed enough imagination to pursue the apples and eat them. The other deer would only eat if an apple rolled to a stop directly beneath their noses.
Even then, some of them struggled. The youngest male’s mouth was too small to accommodate a full-sized apple. The most he could do was lick the apples in futility. Eventually, we hit on the idea of picking tiny apples for him, which he ate with gusto.
We returned to the orchard Sunday morning, but most of the deer had gone. Only one female remained, and she trotted away at the sight of us. We packed up the kayak and, at Maya’s suggestion, departed early on the ebb, while the water was still high.
Maya and deer, Hope Island. The deer were smart enough to recognize the sound of an apple hitting the ground but not always smart enough to figure out where the apple was.
Deer fawn, Hope Island. None of the deer were at all shy, even this fawn and its mother.
Maya picking apples for the deer. She soon exhausted the supply of apples she could reach from the ground, so she climbed onto a picnic bench to reach more.
Young deer eating apple, Hope Island. Even the smallest apples were difficult for the deer to chew, but whenever they got a good bite, apple juice would spray out of their mouths.
Leon and Maya kayaking back to Arcadia boat ramp. On the return paddle, the ebb gave us a little boost.
Many kayakers on day trips came and went over the weekend. Only a few spent the night. We were glad we did. Indeed, we found we didn’t want to leave in the morning. Between the raccoon battles, the photography tasks, the forest trails, and the apple-gorging deer, there was more excitement on Hope Island than there was time.
—Alex Sidles