Peace for Paris

Our sympathies are with our French friends in this time of horror and sadness.  We thank all of our staff and campers, past and present, who have let us know of your safety. Please include us in any news that we should know-- whether it is thankful or sad.   Our sympathies are also with the people of Beirut who are suffering through a similar event this past week.  We realize that so many unfortunate people suffer these horrors daily and we hope the good people everywhere overcome the evil in the world.

le chocolat

Le chocolat. Brought to Spain in the early 1500s by Cortez, sweetened with sugar and sipped in secret by aristocrats for almost 100 years. One theory is that with the marriage of Anne of Austria, daughter of Phillip III of Spain, to King Louis XIII of France in 1615, one of her wedding gifts for Louis included chocolate. And thus chocolate was brought to France.

In the 1700s, the first hydro powered chocolate mill was built in France. This made chocolate available to the masses. Chocolate houses became popular in Europe, places to sip chocolate and socialize. The tradition of building a community around chocolate and all the subtle bliss it provides continues on Orcas Island at Kathryn Taylor Chocolates.

This small chocolate shop combines local ingredients with French chocolate. Seasonally harvested fruits, berries and nuts make for a year round adventure in flavors. The storefront in Eastsound is a corner stop for locals and visitors. Next time you are in the San Juan Islands, be sure to stop in and savor the flavors, of chocolate!

Tout ce que la pluie se promet et en plus

Tout ce que la pluie se promet et en plus

Squish, squish, squish. My toes danced in the newly forming puddles of my shoes. My thick hiking boots had finally relinquished any semblance of staying dry.  The water leaden moss and rain soaked leaves sent droplets slowly and surely into my boots, socks and between my toes.  What drew us out into the cool, wet, fall forest? We were hunting for… Les champignons. Glorious, soil busting mushrooms that scent the air with fruity, earthy odors. This is chanterelle season.

Mushrooms are abundant in the Pacific Northwest. They are the fruiting bodies of a much larger underground network of mycelium. The chanterelle is one of the most popular mushrooms. Their international commercial value exceeds $1 billion dollars annually. Beyond their monetary worth, fungi are also very important to the forests in which they grow.

Fungal mycelium forms a symbiotic relationship with trees. The fungus assists trees in their intake of nutrients and water and helps with organic decay. In return the trees provides sugar for the fungus to sustain itself. Next time you take a walk in the woods to marvel at the giant coniferous trees, take a moment to find a mushroom and say, merci!

Enjoy these fun interpretations of les champignons normands!

née du feu et de la glace

Canoe Island, née du feu et de la glace. The San Juan's location along a major fault line, subduction zone and site of ancient continental ice sheets, makes for some exciting and complex geological history. French speaking naturalists of the late 18^th and early 19^th century played a large role in the development of glacial theory that scientists use today.

Glacial and interglacial cycles are an example of just such a French influenced theory. This theory attributes the advancement and retreat of continental ice sheets to long lasting cycles of higher or lower average global temperatures. The groundwork for this theory came from Saussure and Charpentier, french speaking naturalists, who studied glaciers of the Alps.

Horace Bénédict de Saussure was a Swiss-French physicist and alpine traveler. He was the third to climb Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France, 1787, and proposed that glaciers moved erratic rocks throughout the countryside. He provided extensive observations on the topography of snowy portions of the Alps as well as alpine botany.

Jean de Charpentier was a Swiss-German geologist who studied Swiss glaciers. He documented erratics between 1818 and his death in 1855. Many of the erratics were found in places that current glaciers didn’t extend to. He believed that the glaciers used to be much bigger but wasn’t sure how. The eventual theory of glacial and interglacial cycles, first proposed by Karl Schimper and published by Louis Agassiz, accounts for this conundrum.

This theory is also how geologists studying the San Juans account for the many glacial landscape features found in the islands. How neat that the understanding of San Juan Island geology and glacial history has such an accent français!

Ice Sheets that covered much of North America, including the San Juan Islands, during glacial periods over the last 2.6 million years

FRIENDS of the San Juans à Canoë

This weekend Canoe Island French Camp was honored to host members and friends of the FRIENDS of the San Juans, an organization founded in 1979 that advocates for healthy and sustainable communities in the San Juan Islands. For Stephanie Buffum, the FRIENDS Executive Director, there are three key pieces to creating a thriving community: citizen science, community engagement and continuity of people being there.

Tina Whitman with a captive audience at Malmaison beach

Tina Whitman, the FRIENDS science director, shared her citizen science research techniques for monitoring and restoring forage fish habitats. Gary Bergren from Lopez recounted a story of witnessing surf smelt spawning in an area that had been restored a year earlier. Troy Olsen of Lummi Indian Nation gave a powerful talk on the reef net fishing revival movement and presented his handmade model of a sxwole (reef net). Debbie Fincher from San Juan Excursions introduced the group to the resident orcas and ways to advocate for them.

Joseph, Troy,  Mike, Shirley, Stephanie and Connie with Troy's model sxwole

Between discussions folks enjoyed the wonderful homemade cuisine, canoed, kayaked, played soccer and tennis, roamed the island in search of plants and birds and gathered around a campfire for songs and s’mores. The thriving community experienced this weekend is just the beginning of the many enduring friendships to be made here this summer during camp. We at Canoe Island would like to thank all who participated this weekend and we hope to see you, à bientôt.