A place to unwind

Vacation came early this year. Yet, a week on Orcas Island is good anytime, even if the sky is gray much of the time and the songbirds haven't quite come back yet.

We got back home yesterday after six days and nights at our Eagle Lake cabin. It was too wet to play golf and too early for the Farmers Market to be in operation, so we just stuck close to home, venturing out for three short hikes and one lunch in Eastsound with a new friend, Iris Graville, an author and editor who lives on Lopez Island.

We had our good friends, Carl and Juliana Capdeville, up to the cabin for dinner Sunday night and then had the good fortune to head for home Tuesday morning on the same sailing as another friend, Jennifer Brennock, a writer-teacher-young mom, who was bound for Seattle that day for a poetry slam.

It was the most sedentary time we've spent up there. But I have no complaints. Sometimes, when the stresses of work start to intrude on your peace of mind, there's no better place to be than crouched over a game of Scrabble, just a few feet away from the wood stove heating up the living room; or, on a whim, baking three dozen oatmeal cookies with Raisinets.

Even our choice of VHS movies was a little different this time. The previous owner left behind some 300 videotapes, most of them from the '80s and '90s. But thanks to a little more care in picking and choosing, we treated ourselves to two films from the 1940s, both of which were quite good.

-- "Rebecca," starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, was Alfred Hitchcock's directorial debut in America and won the Oscar in 1940 for Best Picture. It's an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's  novel of a couple tormented by the presence of the husband's dead wife, Rebecca.

-- "Laura," starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, was a 1944 film about a New York City detective trying to solve the murder of a beautiful, successful advertising executive. It's representative of the film noir genre and was directed by Otto Preminger.

As we left Portland to head up north, I was very aware of the international events that were  dominating the news cycle: the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown; the democracy movement sweeping across the Middle East; Gaddafi's murderous crackdown on his own people in Libya.

It felt a little odd to be out of the loop, with no internet access to speak of. But I have to say, I came to work today all refreshed. And isn't that the sign of a good vacation?

Photograph: A view from our eastbound ferry, crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca, bound for Anacortes.