* This is the first story in an occasional series following islanders who are living and doing interesting work elsewhere.
For the children who grow up on Vashon, the forest and cold Puget Sound waters are their backyard. Even after moving off the island to attend college, take a job or start their lives elsewhere, the experiences had here have a way of sticking around and, for some, impact the direction their lives take. For islander Aleythea Dolstad, that is exactly what happened.
Dolstad, 30, is a fifth-generation islander who grew up in Burton. With the harbor there and family land on Colvos Passage, the water was a constant and Dolstad’s father’s involvement in the wooden boat community and Vashon’s Pure Sound Society — an environmental education organization of the 1970s and 80s — meant plenty of time out on it. The society focused its efforts on wetland preservation and built replicas of early explorers’ longboats, which had one or two masts and up to 14 oars. According to a March 2016 article in the sailing magazine “48° North,” the Longboat Discovery, now owned by The Center for Wooden Boats, was built for the Vashon-based organization and launched for the first time in 1987.
Aleythea’s father, Doug Dolstad, said Aleythea was “on and around boats her whole life.”
“I learned how to walk on those boats,” Aleythea said. “That was what I thought was a normal childhood. I lived in a house on the water and grew up playing with whatever the waters brought: logs, leaves and whatever else. You learn to work with the water and the wind and learn there’s no way to control it. It’s going to be there and do what it wants. You learn how to use it and go with it.”
The Puget Sound wooden boat movement of Aleythea’s childhood was inspired by folk singer Pete Seeger who helped to raise awareness and create action around pollution in New York’s Hudson River. Through his funding of the construction of a replica 19th-century sloop called the Clearwater, residents along the Hudson could be taken out onto the river and reminded of its beauty and the need to save it.
“I’d known about the Clearwater because it was started by Pete Seeger. It’s kind of known in our (wooden boat) community,” Aleythea said. “The Clearwater was launched in 1969 with the intention to clean up the Hudson. It didn’t have a set program, just a crazy idea to clean up a river with music money. Their idea was to bring people on the water and develop the connection between people and the place they live.”
Aleythea says that approach hasn’t changed, she should know because she is one of the Clearwater’s two captains.
As a self-proclaimed activist, Aleythea said the Clearwater is rare in that it, and those who support its mission, have a strong history of “standing up for things and being successful at it.”
“They (the Clearwater and supporters) are OK with saying those uncomfortable things and taking a stand. They’re actively working to clean up the river and change legislation and through that are inspiring people all over the place,” Aleythea said. “It’s got a legacy. It’s really important. Being able to interact with people whose lives have been altered because of the Clearwater’s existence and telling stories about how when they were little and couldn’t swim in the Hudson and now you can, that’s powerful.”
Aleythea has been at the Clearwater’s helm for just over a year. Starting on the ship as a boson — the lead deckhand in charge of maintaining the rigging — in 2010, Aleythea became a first mate before taking over as captain. But there has been little time in the young captain’s life not spent on boats. As a child there were excursions in the Pure Sound Society’s longboats before sailing on the tall ship schooner Adventuress, an educational vessel owned by Port Townsend’s Sound Experience.
“I saw a poster up at the hallway in the Harbor School, made a copy and took it home and said, ‘I’m going on this,’” Aleythea recalled. ” I did a week-long overnight on the ship and kept coming back.”
Soon after, the middle schooler started as a junior apprentice.
“Not a participant in the program, but not quite crew. Interesting, not that glamorous,” is how Aleythea described it. “My time there got longer and longer until I was working in the yard in Port Townsend. I did StudentLink starting partway through sophomore year, which gave me a lot more time to do what I was actually interested in. I used some of that time to be out on the water.”
But despite all of the work on boats, there was never a desire to be a sailor, especially a captain.
“I never wanted to be … in a leadership position. I tried to avoid being on boats, because I didn’t want to be a sailor, I just wanted to work,” Aleythea said. “But it became apparent Clearwater needed a captain and was in danger. It was clear that I needed to do it, and I could try.”
The reluctant skipper credits her upbringing with embedding this attitude of “not letting stuff pass by” and making sure the world is a better place for those who come after. Beyond the Clearwater, Aleythea has participated in numerous protests, such as stringing a large banner up at Niagara Falls in September of 2009 to protest Canadian oil drilling.
“That (attitude) was baseline for growing up on the island. I realized later other people did not think like that,” Aleythea said. “I can’t fight stuff on the legal side, but I can be the physical presence out there and talk to people about what I care about.”
Father Doug Dolstad agrees. He says Aleythea is a doer.
“She does things,” he said. “She really picked up on the scent of something and followed it.”
While making a difference and speaking up for beliefs are passions for Aleythea, The Beachcomber’s conversations with her and her father turned to her deep-rooted passion for dance. Aleythea spent many years as a child in the studio at Vashon Dance Academy, a place that has taught invaluable lessons that still resonate as a sailor today.
“From dance, I learned how to use my body, how to push past where I thought I had to stop and find that I am capable of so much more,” she said.
The lessons also translated to spacial awareness, something that Aleythea said is crucial on a boat where everything can be dangerous.
“Spacial awareness is a must. This is a skill that I feel many island kids take for granted. There are so many opportunities on-island to do some kind of physical group activity: dance, theater, sports, scouting through the woods, just plain running wild is important to learning those limits as well. I have had to try and teach many of the new crew how to feel what is around them and not get hurt.”
Looking ahead, Aleythea plans on staying with the Clearwater to bring continuity to a position that has a high turnover rate, yet she longs to find a way to bring dance back to her life and to come back to the island she desperately misses.
“I miss dance, I miss movement, that was a huge part of my growing up. I need to incorporate that somewhere,” Aleythea said. “I don’t count myself as a ‘former islander.’ I’m an islander. That’s who I am. That’s where I live, I’m just not present right now. Whenever I talk about Vashon here, people think it’s like some magical land, but people visit and notice it really is magical.”
