Mostly residential town is a community in every sense of the word

By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The island is currently 95 percent residential and likely to stay that way under a proposed comprehensive plan that calls for rural zoning.

It has one fancy restaurant and one cafe, a few new Internet-based home businesses, and studios for woodworkers, glass-blowers, sculptors, painters and potters.

"It seems to be a place that draws artists, musicians and writers," says artist Karla Matzke, co-owner of The History of the World, Part IV, a fine arts gallery on the island's south end.

For now, with no educational or commercial center, the strongest bond throughout the island seems to be pure neighborliness. Residents take as much pride in old-timers like Ole Eide -- who mows the lawn, chops wood and tells stories with the vigor of a man one-third his age -- as they do celebrity islanders such as Galloping Gourmet Graham Kerr.

"There are great people out here," says Judy Mills, who runs a drive-through espresso stand on a gravel driveway off the main road to town.

"People will pull up and turn off their engines and chat. They're not in so much of a hurry," she says. One customer spent hours writing out tide tables and clamming instructions after Mills mentioned she'd like to try it.

Volunteerism is another strong island bond, and has been for decades.

About 70 people each week volunteer at the expansive Second Chance Thrift Shop benefiting the senior citizen center, folding clothes and repairing TVs and ringing up sales.

At the Y-shaped intersection that starts the main loop road around town, island artists and businesspeople are volunteering their labor to build a new visitor center and sculpture garden.

The new building is itself a work of art, designed by an island architect and constructed with a floor-to-ceiling stained glass window donated by Archibald. Materials, landscaping, a shore-themed mural by noted artist Jack Gunter, and all the sculptures were gifts.

And more than 150 residents belong to the Friends of the Camano Island Parks, which helps acquire and maintain park land, holding work parties to build trails and clean paths.

"An island like this has boundaries, and I think that helps," says Carol Triplett, head of the parks group. "People want to have ownership of the island and take care of it."