Kayaking off the shore of Bainbridge Island

"You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward."

~Steve Jobs

Bainbridge Island

My 2026 Adventure has taken me to beautiful Bainbridge Island, where I find myself melding into the community in ways I never imagined.

Since arriving just ten short days ago, I've been invited to dine on fresh oysters and champagne on Fletcher Bay. I've met many new people simply by spending time popping in and out of shops on the main street. Barry, at the nail salon. Mia, at a little clothing boutique. Frank, the jeweler in town, who replaced the battery in my watch and told me his story.

I experienced First Friday, an Art Walk and social gathering where several of the businesses open their doors offering wine, food, shopping, and of course art. At the Saturday Farmers Market, I met several of the local farmers, listened to their stories, and was invited to attend a special screening of Strawberry Fields Forever, a history of the berry farmers on Bainbridge during the internment years of World War II. And I joined some new friends for an afternoon kayak paddle to explore the island from the water.

I have loved every moment of being here. The people are friendly, the views are spectacular, and it's just a short ferry ride to downtown Seattle.

Sixteen years ago, my life felt like it was upside down with divorce and the feeling that the earth was constantly moving under my feet. If you had told me then that beyond all that perpetual panic and state of survival, I would find such peace and serenity all these years later on an island I grew up looking at and wondering what was over there, I would have been the first to roll my eyes at you.

That's the same response I couldn't shake while I sat watching that documentary about the berry fields a few nights later.

The people in it were just children when all of it was happening. They picked, pruned, and planted through the fall, winter, and spring so the summer harvest would come in, doing whatever the season required because that was simply what their families needed. Nobody was thinking about legacy while they were living it. Legacy only found them decades later, when someone finally asked them to sit down and remember.

I was in my own field too, sixteen years ago. Just trying to get through one season so I could get to the next. I could not have told you what any of it was building. I certainly could not have told you it would build to an afternoon on the water, or a jeweler who knows me by name after one visit, or a market conversation that turns into an invitation to a place I never would have thought to go on my own.

That is the part nobody tells you about the golden thread running through a life. You do not get to see it while you are standing inside it. You only get to see it from here, the way those elders finally got to see what their childhood in the fields had actually been. Not just hard seasons. A whole story, running the entire time, whether or not anyone was watching for it.

So if you are in the middle of something right now that does not make sense yet, a divorce, a diagnosis, a decision you cannot see past, I am not going to tell you it will all become clear soon. It might not, not for years. But somewhere down the road, someone may ask you what you remember about this particular season, and you may be surprised by what you find yourself able to tell them.

Sixteen years ago, I would have rolled my eyes at this whole story. Now I'm staying on the island I used to watch from my childhood window, wondering what was over there. The thread was already running between here and there. I just couldn't see it yet.

Love and Light,

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