Saturna Island, Salish Sea, BC, Canada
By the time the tour reaches Saturna Island, the cartilage in my left knee is screaming at me like a spoiled child.
“I want to go home!” she cries.
I can feel her pain. Literally she has been keeping me up at night. A throbbing nagging adolescent that occasionally stings me to full consciousness. When I get out of the EuroVan on the ferry ride from Swartz Bay and go to climb the stairs to the observation deck, she suddenly becomes a 19-year-old mass murderer with an assault rifle firing ten rounds per second into the nerve endings in the rest of my leg. I stop three steps up the stairs and tell my companion I think I will spend this crossing sitting in the car.
I know I can make it to the end of the tour. I know I can.
We only have two shows left. That is if you don’t include the “Ben Show.”
In my mind I’ve been preparing for the Ben Show since the tour began.
What is the Ben Show? It is something created by a young man named Ben Farrell sometime in the early 1980’s at a bar called Jim’s Landing in Elk Bend, Idaho. It has been a tradition of all Chautauqua tours ever since. It’s something like a talent/no talent show just for members of the tour (though astonished bar patrons have been onlookers many times). The idea is that everyone on tour performs as little bit act that is not what they normally do and is hopefully somewhat out of their comfort zone. It’s a bonding ritual. Everyone on tour is expected to take part. It usually takes place in a local bar somewhere toward the end of the tour and in MY understanding is supposed to be a little bit outrageous. It all depends on who has survived the tour and how much energy they want to put into it.
In my last memory of performing in the Ben Show (with Barney Lindsley, the sax player) I translated his speech into fake Ukrainian and pulled a straw wrapper out of my nose.
(It was a huge hit)
I’ve got something even bigger planned for THIS Ben show.
If my screaming knee cartilage will only let up on me. I will have to give her a good dose of drugs to help her be quiet for awhile.
We hit the shores of Saturna after another epic ferry schedule shuffle. We are lucky there are jugglers on board because with late ferries, missed crossings, loading accidents and the like it has been a great adventure to see if we are going to make it to our next island in time to do our schtick. I’m always surprised when I’m waiting in the ferry line and I see Charley-Bravo the Blue Bird Bus pull into the queue with only minutes to spare. Unbelievable. When I say this to the bus driver he always smiles and nods under his Karamazov hat with his bushy grey beard and says: “No Problem.”
(You can probably guess who the bus driver is)
We have a bit of a drive to Winter Cove where we will be camping in the Bob Hunter Memorial Ballpark where we will also do the big show. It’s a great spot being very close to the harbor where the sailboats are anchored, but it turns out there is no fresh water. The hosts haul us over a water tank which is enough to do dishes, but as for showering?
Nothing here to complain about but then the current Ben (Ben Neville, a sax player) comes over to tell us the Ben Show will be that very night at a bar called the Lighthouse Grill and Cafe.
My knee screams at this news, but I just give her a couple more tylenols.
There is just no rest on this tour.
Saturna Island (12 square miles) is very beautiful and is mostly made up of a National Park Reserve and a long beach front on the north eastern side that faces the churning Straight of Georgia. There is no town, just an intersection with a grocery store, and a few small businesses down next to the ferry dock in Lyhall Harbor. On the wider southwest of the island the bayside beach faces Plumper Sound and there is a vineyard/restaurant, Mount Money, and the Taylor Point Reserve. Out of Narvez Bay is the Orca Preservation Zone where I assume there are killer whales, though I never did see any.
The current population of the island is about 350. At least 13 of them show up when we do our parade from the recycling center to the ferry dock. A longer than usual parade, downhill almost all the way, which makes my knee scream in a whole different timbre. More shrill, more screechy, with notes of fireweed.
I have to say I’m not really in great shape to take my big shot at fame in the Ben Show. A the last minute I scrounge together, a red felt hat, a blue women’s under-slip, some pink lipstick and my bamboo walking stick from Delhi, India. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
It’s pretty packed down there near the ferry landing at the Lighthouse Cafe and Grill. We are keeping the place open late with our numbers and our talent show. I come on in the second half of the show, stepping out from a side partition, walking in a sultry lope to center stage where I deliver my extra-sexy version of “Making Whoopy.”
“Another bride, another June, another sunny honeymoon. Another season, another reason, for making….”
Somehow there is a stunned and awkward silence in the room. No one is laughing. I think they are tasking me seriously. Oh no.
Needless to say I don’t win the big prize in the Ben Show (a standing ovation). In fact I am totally eclipsed by this obscure British folk singer who takes the stage a couple of acts later. Her original song: “If you can’t live without me, then why aren’t you dead” brings the house down.
Maybe I am past my prime for this sort of thing.
My knee certainly thinks so. She’s starting to feel sorry for me, I think.
The next day, before the Big Show, she takes the day off from her screaming and allows me to walk all the way out to Boat Pass. The trail leads through a beautiful mix of old forest and tufted marsh grass and ends at a split in the cliff between Saturna and Samuel Island. The cleft is about ten yards wide and the tidal flow rushes through it like a waterfall. There is a timber bench overlooking the pass and I finally get to sit and just admire the landscape.
I have been told that Saturna is an island of hermits. People who relish the idea of living alone. I’m beginning to think that I have become one of those people, old and a bit calcified. Sitting on a bench watching the tide swirl around as it floods. Taking no risks.
But then I get up and begin the slow trek back to the sun-burned ball park. Everyone is there setting up the stage. It’s almost time to do the Big Show.