Under the Canopy

We had dinner with friends last night, one of whom referred to Point Roberts as ‘the last great nowhere surrounded by somewhere.’ That’s a good description. Its nowhere-ness is one of its most soothing qualities. When I was making the quilts of the abandoned houses on the Point, I used to think of Point Roberts as the place where dreams go to die, and certainly that was true of the dreams that produced those houses. Over the years, they have continued their dying, and now many of them are actually dead: blown down by winter winds, dug up and carried off by contractors and land owners with new dreams that will maybe work out better. I visit the houses that remain fairly frequently, taking new pictures of them, and it is about time for another set of those pictures.

But not today. Today, we are all about coming to Point Roberts. The photo above is of the canopy of trees that you see as you pass through the border station and enter this place. At the end of that road--on a day with sun--is the silver sheen of the ocean. The canopy looks the same, summer and winter for the most part, because the trees that make an impression are the tall Douglas firs, the hemlocks, and the red cedars, which are the primary evergreen forest trees here, with the occasional Grand Fir making its own impressive appearance. By now, all the deciduous trees have shed what is to be shed and it is only the skeletal outlines of the tall alders and big-leaf maples, the cottonwoods, poplars, and willows that fill our skies along with the evergreens. In spring, all different, of course. But not now.

A number of people who live here have commented to me on occasion what it is like to see that canopy on each return to the Point: a feeling of being rescued, of calmness, of serenity, of enclosure and safety. On the other side of our border is Tsawwassen, a text-book suburban/exurban town with houses laid too close, each one very much next to the other because land is too valuable not to get a lot of house placed upon it; a town with lots of clustered shops and malls, with sidewalks and streetlights. But with no canopy of trees like the one on Tyee Drive. That is partly because the roads there are too wide and partly because there is less unhoused land there, land with nothing to do but house trees. Tsawwassen is a part of the world of busy houses and busy clocks; and Point Roberts is not.

So, it’s good to be nowhere; it’s good to be under the canopy. But it’s also good to be surrounded by somewhere if you happen to have a need for what somewhere has to offer: all the things that flow from clocks, mostly: trains, planes, buses, high culture, and the availability of made things, many of them beautiful and many not. The city, I found, was often too much with me, late and soon; Point Roberts, by contrast, leaves you room.