By JOSEPH MEEKER

For The Beachcomber

Water is Vashon’s boundary, the permeable edge that makes it an island.

We may use it for travel or for fishing or perhaps to contemplate the depths that surround us. It is where our way of life ends and another begins, on and under the surface of salt water. Walking the shore is an experience of home on one hand and something entirely different on the other, pulsing with a tidal rhythm of its own.

Mainland cities have always been built near dependable fresh water sources: large rivers, lakes, snowcapped mountains. Small islands rarely enjoy such luxuries but depend upon rainfall to replenish their wells and creeks. Like Vashon, most islands are sole-source aquifers with nothing but juicy clouds to wet their whistles.

Where water is scarce, communities tend to spread out rather than congregate in dense towns and cities.

Vashon has formalized this habit by adopting a five- and 10-acre zoning plan for the high-re-charge areas of the Island, plus restrictions on paved surfaces that allow maximum percolation of rainfall into the ground water and minimum runoff. Water conservation must be both habit and law on a small island like ours.

Scarcity of water is one of the factors that keeps our human population low. New housing and business developments must struggle for the water shares they need to operate, and some are abandoned for lack of water.

The few streams on our Island support wildlife as well as human needs. Of the scores of rivers and streams that empty into Puget Sound, Vashon’s two main watersheds, Judd and Shinglemill, are among the few remaining unobstructed by dams, sewage plants and industrial usage.

That is why those streams still support healthy salmon runs, why Vashon road crews have installed larger culverts to aid spawning salmon and why they have been beneficiaries of vigorous watershed protection by Island conservation groups such as the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust.

Rain may seem inconvenient to sun worshippers. Scarce water seems inconvenient to developers. But these features we share with other small islands of the world save us from becoming like the messes we see on the mainland.

— Joseph Meeker, a professor emeritus of comparative literature, will co-lead a seminar on island studies at Vashon College in spring 2009. Water on small islands will be one of the topics explored in the seminar.