Slowing down on Blake Island time

The city seemed a thousand miles away from the Blake Island beach. Only lapping waves broke the silence; the only action was a bald eagle spiraling lazily overhead. I sat in the sun-warmed sand, leaning against driftwood, and tried to stay awake.

Finally rousing myself, I kept walking along the beach and rounded the northern tip of Blake. Bye-bye wilderness: The high-rises of downtown Seattle glittered in the afternoon sunlight, just eight miles east across Puget Sound.

Even though it's not a complete escape from the sight of the city, Blake is an oasis of peacefulness. And you don't have to fight traffic to get there.

The only way to get to Blake, whose 475 acres of forest and beach are preserved as a state park, is by private boat or tour boats from Seattle.

In summer, the daily boats are packed with kids on summer-camp outings and tourists bound for the salmon buffet and Native American song-and-dance cultural performance at Tillicum Village, a concession on the island that's been going strong since the early 1960s. The rest of the year it's much quieter; boat service and Tillicum Village hours already are sharply cut back for the season.

Yet even on the busiest days, walk a few hundred yards from Tillicum and you'll leave most people behind. Many island visitors — — the little island gets about 145,000 a year, according to Washington State Parks — don't stray far from Tillicum or the park dock next to it where boaters can moor overnight.

Overindulging at Tillicum

Tillicum, housed in a longhouse-style building on the waterfront, is what brings most people to Blake. Opened in the early 1960s, it's become a favorite place to take out-of-towners. But it's not just a tourist place. The buffet is abundant and tasty — steamed clams, salmon (baked on cedar stakes), a salad bar and a molasses-flavored sweet brown bread that's impossible to stop eating.

The show, portraying Northwest coastal Indian myths through traditional costumes, chanting and dancing, is sweetly done (look closely and you may spot your servers as performers). Although the performance is a melange of native cultures, the thickly forested island has its own long Indian history. It was an ancestral area of the Suquamish tribe, and Chief Seattle is believed to have been born on Blake in the 1780s.

I've overindulged on Tillicum's buffet before, so this visit I built in extra time to explore Blake on the five-mile path, once a service road, that encircles the island. It's ideal for a companionable stroll, a mostly flat path that's wide enough for two or three people to walk abreast. Narrower trails criss-cross the center of the island.

This isn't a walk in pristine nature. Blake was heavily logged in the 19th century; scrubby alder and second-growth fir cover much of it, although there are a few imposing pockets of stately cedars. But with no roads, no cars, and no buildings on the island except for Tillicum and a ranger's house/office, it makes a remarkably restorative and quick getaway.

Views and history

I set out clockwise on the around-the-island path, and soon stopped to ogle the jaw-dropping panorama of Mount Rainier, looming to the south across Puget Sound.

I meandered around a walk-in campground on a grassy point, scouting out my perfect "must return to" tent site with a drop-dead view of Rainier and a tree for shade and kids to climb.

The forest has encroached on what was once a grand house built on Blake in the early 1900s by William Pitt Trimble, a Seattle real-estate tycoon who bought the whole island. Now only the foundations remain; Trimble abandoned it after the early death of his wife and eventually the house was ransacked and burned.

Tillicum Village

The season is winding down, with boat trips and Tillicum Village dining/show scheduled only for Saturdays in November and early December. It will pick up again in the spring (after a January-February closure). You can buy a package that includes Tillicum Village and the boat ride from downtown Seattle or simply transport. 206-933-8600 or www.tillicumvillage.com

Blake Island State Park

The park is open year-round, although accessible only by private boat when the Tillicum Village tour boat isn't operating. Washington State Parks info: 360-902-8844 or

www.parks.wa.gov

I kept walking. Several deer, so placid I could practically have petted them, ambled by me. I heard woodpeckers tapping and smelled a skunk. Veering off the trail to sandy beaches on the south and east side of the island, I watched a heron fish in the shallows and skinny-legged seabirds skitter along the sand.

A cheery park ranger strolled along the walk-in (or kayak-in) beachfront campground, stopping to chat with a kayaking couple, the only campers.

I kept walking and found what became my favorite spot on Blake, a sandy point on the northeast tip just a few hundred yards across. Storms have stacked driftwood almost thigh-high in places; I sat sheltered by a log from the whistling wind. To the west arose the craggy Olympics, to the east the high-rises of Seattle. I didn't want to be anywhere but on Blake, happily doing nothing on island time.

Kristin Jackson: 206-464-2271 or kjackson@seattletimes.com