I know there is some historical claptrap about how our Island is supposedly named for the English explorer Vancouver’s Royal Navy pal, Vashon.

But if you ask me, the whole Vancouver-Puget-Vashon thing is suspect. I mean, really: vahn-cou-vair, poo-jay, vash-uhn? Don’t those names sound French to you?

Of course they do. So don’t try to get me to believe those guys were English — or that they found our island. Nonsense. Native Americans were here first and what they called it in the S’Homamish language translates as: place where, even though it’s cold and rainy most of the time, people sweat a lot.

You heard it here first. Sure, English settlers showed up eventually and cut down all the trees (not to mention the Native Americans) and nobody really knows when the acronym was created or what those other letters stand for (although I’m working on that), but that “V” is for Vigorous. History is very clear about this: the S’Homamish and their brethren came to our Island every year, during the two weeks of reliable sun, for exercise and athletic contests, like war canoe races. Yes, they did. And they ate a lot of oysters to keep them going.

How do we know this? The beach at Jensen Point is white because it is an ancient oyster shell “midden,” which is a fancy archeology word for trash dump. Normally, there’d be a lot of beer cans there, too, and little plastic cups of cocktail sauce, but they hadn’t been invented yet.

Today, perhaps two thousand years later, that vigorous tradition lives on, and Jensen Point is still its epicenter. If you go to Greece, you can see the place where the first Olympic Games were held. Don’t bother. Airfares are sky high, if you’ll permit the pun, and let’s face it: Greece is in such financial trouble it probably won’t last through next week. And anyway, there’s Jensen Point, site of ancient games! The war canoes are long gone, of course, but they’ve been replaced by rowing shells.

Vashon’s crew teams are famous, especially the men’s Master Crew Team. “Master” is a fancy sports word for old guys who haven’t yet figured out they should stay home in their La-Z-Boys drinking beer and watching ESPN. They are a harmless enough group, though some of them perhaps should think twice before donning Spandex.

But at the Burton coffee stand it’s another story. Every Saturday, and on unpredictable weekdays, the rower trash, as we affectionately call them through gritted teeth, show up en mass at 8 a.m. and throw a monkey wrench into the well-oiled machinery and flawless efficiency of our baristas Kathy and Anna.

If this were New York, such an invasion would lead to fisticuffs, but, this being patient and polite Vashon, the coffee stand regulars take the long line with good humor: We tell the rower trash we have a ferry to catch, go to the head of the line, get our coffee, then recline amiably in the Adirondack chairs beneath the awning.

You have to wonder about the sanity of these characters, too. I mean think about it: It’s barely light outside and these guys clamber into skinny little plastic boats, grab the oars, and row hell-for-leather… backwards!

That’s right, they have no idea where they are going, sometimes with amusing consequences, like crashing into grey whales. To make matters worse, they’re often accompanied by a coach in an outboard who, in the dim morning light, yells at them continuously through a bullhorn. I don’t know about you, but I can get this kind of treatment right in the comfort of my own home, for free.

The rowers aren’t alone, of course; everyone on Vashon seems compelled to be vigorous. The roads are clogged with teams of cyclists in eye-popping jerseys and shoppers who bicycle to Thriftway, bless their right-thinking little hearts.

There are dog walkers and easy amblers. There are speed walkers herky-jerking along the side roads carrying little weights in their hands, presumably to fend of the startled deer. There are sweat-soaked jogging young moms pushing three-wheeled prams with infants whose still-developing brains are being jostled into Jell-o.

And then there is my friend Jack. Jack likes to run. A lot. Jack runs until he reaches the end of the island and then he turns around and heads for the other end. He’s like that movie character Forrest Gump, who started running and then saw no reason to stop. Jack is the epitome of Vigorous Vashon.

There’s only one problem: Jack is somewhere between 80 and 110 years of age; it’s hard to tell. Whenever he effortlessly rockets past me, mimicking a smoker begging for a cigarette, it’s everything I can do to keep from shoving him into the shrubbery. The guy’s disgraceful.

It’s vigorous people like Jack and the rower trash who make me want to adopt my friend Bad Michael’s philosophy. He describes himself as an “avid indoorsman.”

My aging knees like the sound of that.

— Will North is a Vashon novelist. His next novel is set on the Island.