By MARGOT BOYER

For The Beachcomber

Yvonne Pitrof was a city girl when she came to Vashon 16 years ago, hoping to live in a yurt in the woods. The yurt was delayed, so she borrowed a tent.

Her first night living outdoors, she lay awake, listening to the rustling in the bushes. An owl hooting overhead gave her a scare.

But eventually she realized, she said, “that none of these sounds were people — it was all deer, owls. It turned out that hearing an owl at night is one of the most soothing things I could possibly hear.”

Today Pitrof lives in a 100-year-old house near Vashon Center, hung with prayer flags and decorated with her own oil paintings. The large brightly colored canvases portray human figures in natural settings.

A painting of a boy on a mountaintop, surrounded by blue sky and brown hills, hangs on the living room wall. Despite a jar of artist’s brushes nearby, she doesn’t have time to paint these days.

Easy to talk with and quick to laugh, Pitrof has inquisitive blue eyes set in a youthful face. She also has a serious side. Asked about her painting, she reflected, “Work is huge; it’s good work, so I feel good about that, but finding the balance with my creative side is hard.”

Pitrof’s “huge” work is directing the Vashon Maury Community Food Bank — always a challenging job, and harder than ever these days.

Pitrof, 41, grew up in Evanston, Ill., and lived on the north side of Chicago after graduating from high school.

She started college at Loyola University and came to Seattle to pursue a degree in East Asian studies and international relations. Her focus shifted to Russian studies. She learned Russian, Uzbek, French and Indonesian.

Of the several Seattle neighborhoods where Pitrof lived, her memories of an artist studio in Pioneer Square are most vivid.

“It was raw living, fun for walking around,” she said. “Living in an artist hangout got me painting, having that space and supportive energy.”

She picked up tips on oil painting from her neighbors, taught Tai Chi and went to school. But she burned out on college and on the city, and wanted to move to a greener spot.

A friend invited Pitrof to his wedding on Vashon, and driving off the ferry she thought, “This is it.” She made friends at the wedding — something that seems to come easily to her — and someone offered her a place to set up a yurt.

Fall of 1992 was Pitrof’s first season on the Island.

In those days, she woke up in her tent, put on her city clothes and took the ferry to Seattle to jobs in a bank and to teach Tai Chi classes.

She was falling in love with Vashon, and the contradiction of living in a tent and working in a bank soon became “too weird!”

Pitrof’s face was animated as she described the series of odd jobs that followed.

“I worked at Sound Food — like everyone else did their stint at the old Sound Food — and worked at the coffee stand in Burton when it first opened up,” she said.

After having a baby in 1995, she stayed home with him for a few years, until her partnership with the baby’s father ended. She recalled this as a challenging time.

“Becoming a single mom threw me into having to provide for my son.”

She had nearly earned a bachelor’s degree, but there were a few loose ends, so Pitrof returned to the University of Washington to finish a degree in comparative history of ideas. She looked for a job, but it was the fall of 2001, “that post 9-11, when everything was horrendous.”

Pitrof landed a temporary receptionist position at Northwest Harvest, a statewide agency devoted to providing food for the hungry.

It wasn’t commensurate with her skills and intellect, but supporting herself and her young son was crucial.

The job, however, paid little — and Pitrof found herself having to turn to the lifeline she now directs: She became a client at the Vashon food bank.

When the food drive and benefit coordinator position opened up at Northwest Harvest, Pitrof took it gladly.

But between the job and the commute, she realized, “I had only an hour and a half of waking time with my child every day.” When she heard about the position to head the Vashon food bank, she jumped on it.

As a single mother struggling to support a small child, was she ever tempted to leave Vashon, to go where the work was?

“I was, very much. It’s hard going through any kind of family transition on the Island. As much as I love Vashon, that was when I had the most mixed feelings about it.”

Today she has a home, with old apple trees and a garden out back, shared with her now 13-year-old son. Her days are filled with the complex needs of the food bank.

She pours her energy into relationships with all the people and organizations that keep it going. In these hard economic times, some people who used to give freely have cut back, but others have appeared.

Pitrof reflected, “Food is a basic. There are people coming out of the woodwork, and they’re saying, ‘My God, I’m giving my check to the food bank this year.’”

Asked about her own future, Pitrof grew thoughtful. “I love the food bank — it’s very meaningful. And it’s challenged me and made me grow; it’s made me develop some personal skills that are really valuable. It continues to do that.”

She mused on the need for balance in her life — time to garden, to paint, to meditate, to read French novels and learn Spanish. As intellectually curious as Pitrof is, she sees the local food bank in a larger context.

“I get really passionate about the underlying causes that bring people to stand in a food bank line,” she said. “Part of me would love to work on that level, to dive more into the advocacy. Hunger is a symptom. You see people hungry, with lack of affordable housing, lack of medical insurance, all these issues that are really entwined.”

“You hear the word poverty less and less, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. We need a more humane system. … It’s disturbing that in large part, healthy choices become economic considerations. They’re driven by personal finances, rather than choosing safe healthy food.”

Pitrof has moved from the edge to the center, from bare survival to helping others.

It’s easy to imagine her taking on larger challenges, from regional and global food needs to bigger paintings.

As she talked about painting and Tai Chi and healthy food for everyone, her energy and warmth filled the room.

— Margot Boyer is a freelance writer living on Vashon.