Quick! Snatch spring before that brilliant sunshine slips rudely back behind the clouds. I suppose one’s impression of April really does depend on whether your sky is half cloudy or half blue. A Canadian friend of mine insists spring arrived last month. Me? I assume that the glare from all those glass-paned high-rises has left her blindly optimistic. I see April as more of a dance, which requires us to drop everything and run into the sun break, because the fickle orb usually only shows its face for ten-minute windows of time.
Northwest spring flirts with us. We are tasked to seek out radiant sun belts and travel where the low cloud ceiling doesn’t cast our day as its plaything. Langley, on Whidbey Island, is Washington’s quaintest seaside village; it offers the perfect stage where we players can loll for a weekend among the bookstores, cafés and beaches of Saratoga Passage, the waterway separating Whidbey from the mainland, whether the sun shines brilliantly or takes an extended holiday of its own.
Langley offers up a similar ambience to Mystic, Connecticut; Camden, Maine; and (almost) Mendocino, California. Like these storied seaside hamlets, Langley is a breathing, working town that allows visitors to step in and pretend our lives are as tranquil as those who live there. It’s not surprising that this village was “resettled” in the 1960s by a merry band of folks looking to drop out of the rat race.
Today, many of those back-to-the-landers run galleries filled with pastels of pastures and meadows, sculpted otters and other celebrations of the island aesthetic. Migrants continue to arrive; prodigal sons and daughters return.
“I’m still playing music in Portland,” my old Greener (Evergreen alum) comrade Timothy Hull tells me, when I bump into him outside the Useless Bay Coffee Company, one of three cafés found on one half-block of this two-street town. “But I decided to take a room here over the winter and do some gardening.”
I leave Timothy to his trowel and depart to explore the alleys, which peek out between almost every building. The streets are all but deserted in early spring. Thousands flock here like Hitchcock’s crows (remember I said Langley is almost Mendocino) in the summer. Off-season events such as Mystery Weekend, when the entire town plays a game of Langley Clue, also brings out the masses.
But most spring weekends are much quieter and offer an opportunity to settle into a long dinner at the excellent Prima Bistro after a day of nuzzling a good read on one of the many benches or, should the sunlight scowl, in one of the many water-view rooms and cottages. Lodging options also include The Inn at Langley, recently recognized as the best-designed inn in America by Condé Nast Traveler and well known as a leader in supporting local agriculture in its restaurant.
More than just farms surround Langley; I am tempted to go kayaking with the Whidbey Island Kayak Company. However, I reside in such a languorous state that the powerful Saratoga Passage tides would easily overtake my paddle and funnel me toward Tulalip Bay.
Instead, I pack a picnic — a baguette, some stinky cheese and assorted fruit — from Chef’s Pantry, a fine-foods caterer. I find a log to lean against and disappear into my dejeuner sur mer as the waves lap lazy upon the sand.
Life’s a loll in Langley. You won’t have to walk more than five minutes for dinner; everything you could possibly want, from clamming rakes to merlot, is available at Star Store, a Langley institution for 90 years, and there are plenty more benches than streets.
“It’s not too bad a place to be,” smiles Timothy, a Whidbey native. “Just easy living, really.”
I wonder if he’d mind getting into my car and returning to Seattle for my noon meeting. I’d just grab his room key and perhaps his Wellington work boots. I’ve completed two novels before the fantasy shatters when my phone “announces” that I should depart for the ferry in fifteen minutes. I depart begrudgingly, but calmly, secure in the knowledge that I’ll be returning in the fall when the crowds thin and the café tables open up for another afternoon spent doing absolutely nothing.
Crai Bower is a Seattle-based writer. Check out his work at FlowingStreamWriting.net