Blissfully bored

I am bored. A rare occurrence, this. Like so many, I have a stack of books crying to be read, a collection of “Frontline” tapes waiting to be watched, a to-do list expanding like America’s waistline. But today, I am on Camano Island. And I am bored.

Gloriously, deliciously bored.

The beauty of writing travel articles is people find you. I’d never heard of Camano (pronounced Kuh-MAIN-oh) Island and I certainly wasn’t likely to stumble across it in my daily comings and goings. But someone in Camano Marketing Central reached out, so over I came to just sit and look at the view from our deck at the Camano Island Inn.

My husband, Tom, won’t come out of the bathroom. It’s not for the reason you think. He is enamored of the heated tile floor. He’s in there, feet bare, just soaking it up.

He’s a strange man.

Kari Soth, co-owner of Camano Island Waterfront Inn and crackerjack stacker of bed pillows – we must have a dozen or so – has wisely prepared for guests in need of gearing down. She’s provided a library of magazines, games and movies designed to fill the empty moments.

Because the truth about Camano Island is plain for all to see: There’s no central commercial district, there’s no apparent nightlife, there are no attractions all tarted up and packaged for tourist amusement.

All you get is a lovely setting, beaches, hiking trails and some art galleries.

And you don’t even need a ferry to get here. About 50 miles north of Seattle, exit Interstate 5 to Stanwood, drive through town, cross the bridge and you’re there.

Let the doing of nothing begin.

To help with the unwinding process, the inn offers hour-long hot stone massages for $65. This was a whole new experience for me and, I’m sorry to say, the gravel in my driveway has proven a poor substitute for an encore.

These are not just any rocks, you understand. Massage therapist Kathleen Hanson spent 26 hours traveling by ferry to the Queen Charlotte Islands to find her favorites. She keeps those five with her in a special bag made by her yoga instructor.

I know, I know. It sounds a little woo-woo. Nevertheless, it feels great.

Hanson didn’t always massage with stones, but now that’s all she does.

“I think the stones help to synchronize our vibrations with that of nature,” she says. “That’s where healing happens – in that synchronized stillness.”

She uses similar terms to describe the island’s charms.

“The energy here is good,” Hanson says. “You need to be able to enjoy the stillness.”

If you’ve just got to move, though, Camano Island State Park’s 134 acres offer hiking trails along the beach and in the forest, where the ferns look big enough to shelter a tent.

On Saturday evenings, the park amphitheater hosts a series of nature programs organized by Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission and Friends of Camano Island Parks. Topics include gray whales, bats and birds of Camano Island.

We spent an hour or so exploring the trails, encountering quite a few birds and almost no people, despite the park’s picnic grounds and 87 campsites.

The next day, we took a second hike in Cavalero Beach County Park, with the driftwood-covered shore to one side of us and a salt water marsh on the other. Delightful.

With all that water around, kayaking is an option, too, and the inn provides whatever you need.

“We kept asking ourselves, ‘What would make it a place we would want to go to?’ ” Soth says of the three years she and her husband, Jon, spent renovating the inn.

Neither has a hospitality background, but they seem to have the knack for it. They serve a very fine breakfast, with fresh fruit, pastry, a rotating selection of egg dishes, juice and coffee, all laid out in the inn’s wicker-chaired, crisp-white-tableclothed dining room.

The rest of the island doesn’t have much to recommend it in the way of food – the Elger Bay Cafe turns out three meals’ worth of the usual eggs, burgers, and fish and chips, while Jimmy’s Pizza and Pasta in Stanwood cheerfully and boisterously doles out an Americanized version of Italian staples – so the recent arrival of Brindles Marketplace looks like a good move.

In the all-new Camano Commons development, with a coffee roaster and a couple of eateries, Brindles presents fresh meat and fish, a selection of wine available for tasting, cheeses, specialty food and other good stuff. You can take your purchases home or have them cooked up for you right on the spot.

They’ve also got a few things at the ready, including Chef John Bond’s monumental clam chowder, complete with three kinds of clams, smoked salmon, crab, ling cod and three kinds of shrimp.

While Brindles represents a promising trend, Camano is most famous for cooking up artwork. A Mother’s Day Studio Tour throws open the doors of 27 studios, galleries and gardens, some of which usually are closed to the public.

Sculptor David Maritz, a native of Zimbabwe, participates. He took the long way to Camano, stopping off for a stint in the Israeli army before opening his studio seven years ago.

Maritz, who according to his wife Gayle Picken is “bird crazy,” was off falconing when we stopped by, so Picken showed us his bronze birds and wildlife.

“He’s sort of known for getting a lot of life and movement in his sculpture,” she says. “People who collect his work really love the movement and freedom.”

The gallery mounts four or five shows a year, featuring a number of artists.

“Artists are drawn to islands,” Picken says. “There’s a sense of being away from mainline society, a more laid-back atmosphere. You just can’t go wrong with an island.”

The nearby History of the World Fine Art Gallery further proves her point, with its collection of paintings, mixed media pieces, sculpture and more. Every year, the gallery puts on a glass show for the staff of the famed Pilchuk Glass School, 89 artists in all.

Nature’s artwork gets the spotlight at Out on a Limb Orchids/Camano Island Lavender Farm. Co-owner Mark Bamber took us to visit just a few of the 350,000 orchid plants – representing 300 varieties – and 5,000 lavender plants in residence on his 29 acres.

Bamber throws several open houses a year – including a lavender festival with music, food and craft vendors in early July – and the rest of the time, you can call for an appointment.

Be prepared to stock up on lavender goods. He’s got lavender sachets, lavender lotions, dried bundles of lavender, and sometimes even lavender sugar cookies and lavender lemonade.

He’s been known to suggest a lavender margarita, lavender cheesecake and lavender shortbread, too.

“You don’t know until you try it,” he says. “But the weeding is a nightmare. Growing lavender is all about weeding.”

Lest you think he’s just a two-trick pony, be assured that Bamber’s enthusiasm extends beyond lavender and orchids.

“As soon as I drove across the bridge and saw the pasture, I knew this was my farm,” he says. “The population on the island has doubled since we’ve been here. But it’s a pretty cool place still.”