There is a legacy that stands at the center of the island, a gift of heart and hard work given by one man to Vashon’s community of people and plants, birds and animals. That man was Bill Fisher, and his gift was the 90 acres that make up the natural ecosystem of Fisher Pond.
Over the years, countless birders have spotted wood ducks and blue heron, bald eagles and barred owls on the pond and surrounding woods. The well-trodden path along the waters’ circumference hosts walkers in all seasons, while children and adults alike don ice skates to skim across the pond’s frozen top on the happy occasions of its freezing. Most islanders know the refuge once belonged to Fisher, but stories about his life have run the risk of dissipation over time. Now, in a new book, “On Fisher Pond: Memories of Bill Fisher and His Gift to Vashon Island,” Laurie Bevin Stewart created Fisher’s portrait — his philosophy, ethics and actions — by weaving islanders’ remembrances with her own poignant experiences to create a poetic essay and tribute to Fisher’s stewardship and remarkable generosity. The author will read from her new book at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 20, at Vashon Bookshop.
Stewart first met Fisher shortly after she, her husband and their two sons moved to Vashon in 1994. They bought a house up the road from the green metal barn, where Fisher lived next to the pond, and met him at a neighbor’s potluck. Stewart said her family had just moved from Seattle, so everything seemed charming, and Fisher seemed like a charming character she wanted to befriend.
“I was taken with his demeanor and old-fashioned friendliness,” she said. “He was gracious and always seemed happy to see us. I wanted my kids to know their neighbors, and he was sort of like an uncle. We would bring him things from our garden. Our dog would swim in the pond, and it was a great place to bring our young boys.”
Over time, the friendship developed, and Stewart, who had worked as an environmental paralegal and science writer, would occasionally jot down in a journal her visits with Fisher, partially as a way to remember events in her boys’ childhood. In a self-deprecating manner, Stewart said they were never particularly close, that she didn’t know him as well as others on the island. But at his memorial in 2002, Stewart said the stories friends told about the man they revered but also might not have really known resonated with her own experiences, and the seed for writing the book was planted.
“Ann Spiers (island poet and friend of Fisher’s) and I were standing by the pie table at the memorial,” Stewart recalled. “I said, ‘Someone should be writing these down or recording these stories.’ She said, ‘Yes, I think someone should.’ And she looked right at me.”
So began a year-long process of interviewing and transcribing then figuring what themes might be pulled out — where comments and stories coincided.
“I moved them around like puzzle pieces until there was a structure, an overlap, thematically grouped along with a chronological arc of the history of the pond,” Stewart said. “Then I was done and put it away.”
Until last February, that is, when Stewart asked island writer and publisher Jean Davis Okimoto if she would read her manuscript. Stewart is the manager of Vashon Bookshop, and for the past nine years, Okimoto has led a weekly memoir group in the store.
“I loved it and felt it would be important to preserve this history, especially in the way Laurie did it with the love of her community, her appreciation of Fisher and her reverence for nature,” Okimoto said. “Vashon is changing, and it seems important to preserve this very beautiful community history, the early days of the Land Trust and how people came together for the first picnic to honor him. I wanted to preserve that unique sense of community and the reverence for place and nature.”
As a publisher, Okimoto said she would have printed the book as it was, but as a writer, she thought it could use a different structure, one that involved Stewart narrating the story.
“I pass by Fisher Pond every day on my way to town,” Stewart writes at the opening of her book, beginning the story of Fisher’s stewardship of the pond — Vashon’s largest body of water and headwaters of Shinglemill Creek — since 1966.
A few paragraphs later she writes, “I used to sit here with Bill, watching the birds and talking. He liked the pond best in early morning when sunrise turned the clouds flame — fire in the sky, he called it.”
“On Fisher Pond” fills in the outlines of a man who was both private, a bachelor who liked his time alone, and someone “whose easy familiarity was the way he collected people.” He worked for a telephone company, but lived frugally, buying over time the several parcels of land that comprised his final 90 acres. An independent thinker, Fisher wasn’t particularly interested in consulting with experts about what he might do with his land. Rather, it was his curiosity about the workings of the natural world that piqued his interest.
“He wanted to see what was happening in the pond everyday,” Stewart said, “how it was changing, maybe even in a way some conservation ecologists might not approve of, but it was his place, and he did what he pleased or what tickled his fancy. He created a space for wildlife here.”
When Dave Warren, then director of the Land Trust, and Rayna Holtz, whose land abutted Fisher Pond, volunteered to plant 500 saplings, the result was dismal. Stewart quotes Warren saying, “He’d already tried it before us. While we were all enthusiastic, Bill was saying, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll see.”
Jay Holtz, Rayna’s husband, remarks that “Bill had a keen sense of human fallibility and would often look aside with a wry smile while someone was pontificating. He knew we have a tendency to make big proclamations about saving this or that. Meanwhile, he’d actually been protecting his land on his own for all those years.
He also knew he wanted the land protected in perpetuity. His healthy skepticism meant the Land Trust had to prove its mettle before he donated his beloved pond, but eventually he agreed to a complex arrangement that involved many cool island heads to figure out the contract. The property sold for more than $1.5 million. Fisher then created a trust for the stewardship of the pond using half the proceeds, which he gave to the Land Trust.
“He didn’t care about the monetary value of this place,” Stewart said. “It was obvious that money was not a driving factor; he saw the value here in a different way.”
Next year will be the 20th anniversary of Fisher’s donation to the Land Trust. For Stewart, his presence is still felt throughout the land, but particularly at the pond. Sitting at the picnic table at the pond’s western edge, a spot where she and Fisher would often sit and talk, Stewart quietly offered up:
“It feels like he’s here. It still feels very much like his place. It is not overrun with people and feels like this is still his. Even though he gave it away, it will always be his place.”
