Living in the Dark, with Color

Once you get past the border, what is Point Roberts like? Do the thousand regulars just collapse on their couches having gotten through it one more time? Of course, many of the thousand regulars aren’t actually there right now. In the summer time, the regular Canadian cottagers pour over the borders, and in the fall, they pour back into Canada. And as it gets a little colder, many of the American (theoretically) full-time residents start pouring south to someplace warmer in the ROA (rest of America). Point Roberts has no employment to speak of but the reason that that doesn’t matter so much to its permanent residents is that they are largely retired. And the folks who stick it out from November to March seem to be Canadians with green cards who live in Pt. Roberts and work somewhere else (often movie people in the Vancouver industry), retirees who don’t have jobs and have grown weary of travel (like me and Ed), and people who work locally at the grocery store, the real estate sales offices, the gas stations, the liquor store, or have pretty small home businesses—cleaning, flowers, maintenance, carpentry, or, increasingly, internet businesses.

In real winter time (say, December), it gets dark at 4 in the afternoon if it’s a heavily cloudy day, and it usually is. You come on to the Point and it looks as if the entire place has been closed down. The vast majority of houses and cottages are dark, and the only cars are the ones that are lined up at the border. The border station itself and grocery store have a big light presence, as do the FIVE gas stations (all on the main street), but otherwise, not much. (Remember, there are almost no street lights and only two flashing traffic lights.) So it’s dark, and cold and lonely feeling, and probably windy, and definitely wet. I LOVE it! I think this is what is meant by being away from the madding crowd. It’s not just the feeling of isolation; it is also the redundant wetness: the ground is wet, the plants are wet, the air is wet, the ocean is wet, the roof, skylights, and deck of the house is wet. Inside, there’s a nice fire going and it’s pretty warm for a moderately insulated house. Inside it’s home, but outside, too. For people who have lived almost all their lives in high and low deserts (me) and low deserts (Ed), it’s like being re-hydrated after a very long dry spell. And it is blessedly quiet, even though we are just south of the Vancouver airport.

It is true that it is hard being away from the sun for such long periods of time. Yet, yet, the saturation of color provided by a northwestern cloudy day is spectacular. You can hardly keep your eyes off the outdoors. There are a million green colors even in the winter; the Icelandic ponies that are abundant in fields about have extraordinarily rich brown and reddish coats. The tree bark of small forest areas wants you not only to look at it but also to touch it to see if its green and grey and orange lichens are as tactile as they appear, and they are. It is an absolute visual wonder, even in winter. In spring, in summer, in fall, even more so, and each is a very different kind of look. I think it is in great part so astonishing because its variety is so subtle and so coherent. The big contrasts that are inherent in a man-made environment are simply not here. There is nothing much around that is man-made, other than houses that are, for the most part, and certainly on our street, pretty much one with the environment. Older houses in Point Roberts tend to just collapse into the background. (Sometimes literally, and from that fact emerged my series of 17 sizable wall quilts, ‘Abandoned Houses of Point Roberts.’ ) There is something strangely satisfying about the thought that you can have a little house and when you are through with it, it will go back to where it came from.