One of the big reasons guests stay with us is to live vicariously through our escapist attitude.
Many of you want to know how we managed to chuck our big city life and attitudes and down-size to a pastoral paradise.
Well folks — it ain’t always easy, but here’s a slice of island life to give you a feel for the community spirit of the roughly 4,500 residents that live here year round.

This weekend kicked off with the annual Christmas Tree Lighting on the Village Green Friday night.
If you come to Orcas in the summer, you’ll notice this tree as the one standing at the entrance to the farmer’s market.
We don’t need to worry about getting a new tree and adding branches to it (did I say Westlake Center debaucle?) We just keep using the same one that’s been growing there for decades.
It’s just a simple string of colored lights on the tree.
The Orcas Community Band wasn’t altogether that loud, but given it was 34 degrees who could blame them?
The innkeepers treated the community to cookies and hot cider while Santa handed out candy canes and listened to Christmas Wish Lists.

It was a bit too chilly to hang around all night singing carols, so we headed home to our white farmhouse to enjoy the rest of the night with friends and family.

Happy Holidays from our little community to yours!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Orcas Island, winter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.