Amy Carey’s home, a modest structure on a graceful sweep of land, reveals much about the life of a woman who has given over the last two years of her life to the Island’s biggest environmental battle.
Photos of her many dogs line the walls, and birds’ nests — like pieces of art — adorn a shelf. There are at least two pictures of Pres. Barack Obama in her small living room, as well as a framed photograph by Ray Pfortner of an orca breaching — a leap so high the whale’s almost completely airborne.
“It’s a member of J Pod,” she said, gazing at the dramatic picture, “but I’m not sure which one.”
If anyone could identify the exact individual, Carey could. By her own admission, it’s her love of orcas that catapulted her into the fight against Glacier Northwest, putting her at Preserve Our Islands’ helm during some of the most dramatic moments in the decade-long, David-versus-Goliath battle.
Carey, 42, follows the orcas’ movements with a passion. If they’re swimming past Point Robinson, chances are Carey’s on the cobble shoreline, binoculars in hand. She knows each pod well and can often identify the individuals. She also knows the state and federal laws — encyclopedically, it seems — that are meant to protect them.
Today, Carey, is relishing a victory that in recent months seemed elusive, at best. Two weeks ago, a U.S. District Court judge echoed words Carey has uttered often, saying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies failed to use science when they issued a critical permit to the mining corporation.
Some on the Island were surprised by the turn of events, an 11th-hour ruling that could have gone either way. Judge Ricardo Martinez, the federal judge who wrote the 28-page opinion, is considered an unpredictable jur-ist whose ideology is hard to categorize. What’s more, POI has pursued a course some Islanders considered controversial, choosing not to negotiate with the corporation even during the darkest stretches.
“It really seemed to be an all-or-nothing strategy. I hoped for the best but didn’t expect the best,” said Dan Chasan, an Island journalist who recently wrote a long piece about the ruling for Crosscut, an online news site.
Carey, self-confident and well-spoken, said she never had doubts. This denouement — a federal court ruling wholly in POI’s favor — is exactly how she and others in the organization expected the story would unfold, she said.
“It may have appeared to have been more of a high-wire act, but when this fight started, this is where we all knew it would end up. It was very calculated,” she said.
For years, some people have suggested negotiations were in order, she acknowledged.
“But the reality was that there was nothing to negotiate,” she said. “You had a company here that doesn’t negotiate in good faith, that would concede nothing.”
Speaking like the ardent conservationist she is, she added, “And frankly, you have, what, 15 years of environmental damage rather than 30? … That’s not really an option.”
Carey, a real estate agent, sat in an Adirondack chair in her large, sloping front yard as she talked. Her home, which she shares with her husband Hamish Todd, sits on a gravel lane off of Bank Road. It’s surrounded by towering conifers and silver snags and is nearly adjacent to the expansive Island Center Forest, a huge swath she helped to protect when she served as a board member for the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust.
Her five dogs offered up a raucous greeting party when a visitor arrived, but all of them — including the three she and Todd rescued during a trip to Baja Mexico — quickly settled down, a few at Carey’s feet. One, Mamacita, a tiny salt-and-pepper mutt from Mexico, climbed into her lap.
Carey acknowledged that the fight has been hard. It’s been a 24/7 effort, she said, made possible only because of the many strong leaders who came before her and the support Todd and other good friends have offered up along the way.
The sacrifices have been considerable. Carey, who works with Islander Emma Amiad as a buyer’s broker, has done very little real estate in the last two years, she said. Her position at POI is unpaid.
But Carey, described as competitive by some of her friends, tenacious by others, said she felt determined to bring the case to fruition — driven by both her love of orca whales and her fierce belief that she and other POI supporters were right.
Countless times, she said, she’s seen those whales pass by Maury Island some 10 feet from the shore. The thought of an industrial barging operation that could force the whales to leave Central Puget Sound was “certainly a personal driving force.”
She and Todd share a profound love of nature and a deep sense of place, she added.
“It’s what’s in every cell of our being.”
Carey, whose long blonde hair and snug jeans give her a Joni Mitchell look, doesn’t fit the image of a conservationist who savors the intricacies of federal law. Nor would her past suggest she’d land in such a position.
As soon as she turned 18, Carey, raised in the countryside outside of Ames, Iowa, headed to Chicago, where she tried to break into the music scene. She’d been to Seattle once, as a high school student, when she saw the ocean for the first time. She still remembers gazing at a purple seastar and being mesmerized by its beauty.
Seattle became a kind of Mecca for her, she said, and she visited often. Finally, it dawned on her that she was young and free enough to move here, and she stuffed her belongings into her Volvo. She arrived in Seattle on Election Day 1992, when Bill Clinton won his first term as president.
Carey, a guitarist and singer, quickly got involved in the Seattle music scene and soon met Todd, who was managing the popular alternative-rock club The Crocodile. She made a living in that kind of itinerant way of so many musicians — tending bar, getting some gigs and, in her case, doing voiceovers for radio.
Todd, who had lived on Vashon for six months as a child, had great memories of the Island, and the couple came out to visit. They camped at KVI Beach, where they fell in love with the Island.
In 1995, they moved to Vashon and a year later got married at KVI Beach. Their three dogs wore garlands during the ceremony, Carey said; one, their beloved Dunlap, acted as the ring-bearer.
A decade ago, she became a real estate agent and went to work for Amiad. It was a completing-the-circle kind of moment for her. Her father, who died a year later, had been a real estate agent. In that last year of his life, they talked shop a lot, she said.
Today, Carey is starting to do real estate again, thanks in part to the fact that business is beginning to pick up. But even with this victory behind her, she said, she’s hardly had a moment to celebrate or take stock.
Already, she said, she’s on to the next issues, examining Glacier’s various permits in light of Martinez’s opinion, determined to make sure public agencies comply with the ramifications of his ruling.
“My days are still very full,” she said. “It’s definitely a tremendous victory. But that doesn’t mean you suddenly get to be complacent.”
