I recall, as a young man, reading a line in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and saying to myself: “This is the truth! The plain and simple truth!” Wilde, the saint of dandies, wrote in that play that: “When one is in town amuses oneself. When one is in the country, one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.” This is exactly how I feel every time I leave the city. What am I going to do in the country or a town? I have never understood the “weekend getaway” or “the great outdoors.” Why must one get away from having lots of things to do to having nothing to do? As for the great outdoors, it can be found in many city parks.

I bring all of this up because Orcas Island is, yes, outside of the city, but it’s a place where one “amuses oneself”: it has great restaurants, bars

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