The island's shape lends itself to stories of treasure and piracy, and it's hard to believe no one has written that book yet. It may be up to me...
Certain points that should be mentioned in any story about Sucia:
Honeycomb weathering - Sandstone plus seawater plus time equals this bizarre matrix of semi-eroded holes in rocks. Some are small enough to put just a single whelk shell in, and others are large enough to hold bodies, or as Park Ranger Steve Sabine told me, many many bodies.
Long ago, people smuggling Chinese immigrants into the U.S. used a section of these holes to stash them until the coast was clear. The China Caves, as they are called today, are a natural playground for rockclimbers.
Fossil Bay - Sucia used to lay flat on the bottom of the ocean, but was pushed up (and continues to be pushed up) as the Pacific plate was slowly subducted under the incessant push of Vancouver Island. Now that its Oceanic Sandstone lay exposed above the surface, it is a wonderland for geologists studying what used to be living here in the San Juans. When I was there two rockhounds flew in by floatplane and started merrily hammering away at the rocks on the west side of Fossil bay. The rocks on the east side are from a different formation entirely, the Chuckanut formation, so it's the west side for the geologists.
Opium - Ed the maintenance guy for the Park Service claims that someone buried a large amount of opium under a rock in one of the many coves of H-shaped Sucia. He noted, wink-wink, that the tide would be extra low in the coming days, so maybe I should have a look. He also tried to convince me that Sucia used to be part of Canada and still ran on Canadian Time, so I needed to set my watch an hour back, so take this with a grain of salt. Ed cleans and maintains the composting toilets on Sucia, and they are absolutely the nicest bathrooms I have ever spent any time in. I couldn't believe it!
Geocache!! - My friend Emily found a geocache site on Sucia, started by local farmgirl Nicole Gelb and some other folks when they were at Huxley (the environmental college of Western Washington University). It is a box full of treasures that you can add to and take away from, but I'm not telling you where...
Sucia means dirty in Espanol, but to me, Sucia was the cleanest, most lushly forested place I've been in a long time. It is what Orcas would look like if 98% of people moved away. As I walked around the island I saw so many strange wildflowers and Large Trees. I plucked red honeysuckle and salmonberries for snacks on the trail, and admired the large crowns of healthy ferns, noted the vibrant light greens of new growth on salal and scratched my head at the unlikely prominence of stonecrop which decorated every open sandstone surface with ridiculous plumes of yellow flowers and mint/red succulent leaves.
Sucia is a treasure you don't need a map to find. Just go to North beach and look across the channel.
Books you want to bring to Sucia Island:
Plants of the Northwest: Pojar/Mackinnon's bible to understanding any living thing (except humans) in the northwest
Restless Northwest: the geology of the Pacific Northwest
Edible and Medicinal Plants of the northwest
Whelks to Whales: a tidepool necessity
Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem.
This last one may seem weird, but Science Fiction
sounds pretty good when read from hammock to hammock, Enjoy!
Alfred
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