I wrote a book about 20 years ago on the art of varnishing boats, and in an effort to lend my unproven words a little gravitas I introduced each chapter with a quote by some “bona fide thinker.”

The section on maintaining and repairing varnished finishes started with a little quip I had once read in one of George Will’s newspaper columns: “Nothing lasts. Even the continents drift.”

Those six words summed up not only the varnisher’s dilemma but most of the relationships I’d witnessed to that point, and have since become something of a mental epitaph whenever I witness the passing of a sacred aspect of the world around me.

I was thinking about those six words recently as I enjoyed a tour around our sacred islands aboard the steamer Virginia V. It was the Vashon Maury Island Heritage Association’s annual circumnavigation, sponsored in collaboration with Vashon College.

The excursion affords a capacity crowd of passengers each summer the chance to view our shorelines from an educational perspective both modern and antique.

The cruise always sells out, and it was immediately apparent why. The manner of conveyance made an informative voyage that much more authentic, giving tales of long forgotten crossings aboard such vessels the neat trick of literal time travel.

You could easily imagine the commuter’s experience of old as you run your hands over the same teak cap rails and hear the same steam whistles, smell the same salt-perfumed air and watch the same undulating wake peeling away from the bow of the boat — a vessel that, in those earlier times, had actually done the scurrying back and forth across the Sound.

The last surviving ship in a once considerable fleet of steam-powered vessels, buzzing like so many mosquitoes around Puget Sound, the Virginia V seems to have defied George Will’s law of transience. She’s an 86-year-old marvel, more elegant and certainly more authentic than any other dame who’s had so much major cosmetic surgery.

Like any fully functioning octogenarian, she’s had some parts replaced and needs constant attention and a good deal of lubrication to keep her joints moving. But she’s a beauty nonetheless, and she’s worth every penny (or actually $6 million-plus) of her restoration fund as well as every devoted man-hour that goes into keeping her afloat.

The crisp white paint, highly polished fittings and bright finished woods tugged at my old varnisher’s heart, but the engine of the Virginia V was really the centerpiece of the vessel and, for me, the star of the show.

I was torn between listening to the historic narratives by Tom DeVries and Bruce Haulman and the desire to watch a miniature theme park of engineering in action. For a good portion of the beautiful afternoon cruise the engine won the toss.

Exposed from three sides for the enjoyment of all who walked the lower decks, the main engine in all its glory was elevated to deck level and stood there like a giant heart, beating rhythmically and powerfully. Surrounding the chugging hulk was a network of oil lines and pistons and all manner of hardware that looked like something the set geniuses at Disney might have rigged up for the nutty professor.

What was not readily apparent but proudly hastened by both the chief engineer and the fireman — the constantly busy team that kept the engine running, oil cans in hand — was that the main engine could not function at all without the support of 10 smaller steam-powered engines scattered throughout the belly of the ship.

The power to propel the beautiful Virginia V all rested on the brilliant interdependence of those engines, and the failure of even one could make a mockery of any call for power from the wheelhouse, bringing the entire ship to a standstill.

When I did manage to take in the wonderful Vashon College narrative, I was struck by the one statement that Vashon and Maury had, 100 years ago, boasted 27 docks where hundreds of erstwhile steam-powered vessels tied up and served the Islands’ once disparate communities.

Isolated and proudly independent of one another, each of those Island communities had cultivated an identity along with the ability to sustain a self-directed way of life.

The residents of Dockton were as unlikely to seek services from the Cove folks as the uptown people were inclined to approve their daughters courting an Ellisport boy. The little steamers played a role in that isolated way of peaceful but separate Island coexistence — by delivering goods to communities’ doorsteps and providing ready escape to a larger world across the waters in moments of greater need.

But nothing lasts, and in time and with inexorable drifts of the economy, the little communities either lost their self-sustaining base or their viability, and the Mosquito Fleet dwindled in numbers.

Cars made it possible to abandon the home fires, and drive not just across but completely off the islands.

A century later we see the same shape of the shoreline but a much different configuration of its once flourishing communities. Where once stood so many docks serving thriving pockets of society named Dockton and Cove and Ellisport and Heights and Glen Acres and Dilworth, there are now only ghosts of pilings, if even that. In their stead we now claim two jumbo ferry docks that still send people to the big city for what they can’t find here, which in many cases is their entire livelihood.

Today, with these areas settled by many who don’t know the history that anchors their neighborhood names, we see ourselves collectively, one big community all within the single, amalgamated populace, a land bridge creating an inextricable hyphen between the once fiercely distinct Vashon and Maury Islands.

As Dockton defined itself by its amazing maritime culture, how do we define the character of our collective community? One high school, one central business core, one highway joining north ferry dock to south; independence and isolation given way to interdependence and common cause. But what exactly is that common cause, and is it immutable?

Those of us who looked at the contemporary shoreline and listened to stories of the fragile balance of its nature can’t miss the fragile balance of the modern community within the terra firma of these Islands.

From the distance, and in theory, this community looks to be a cohesive, self-contained way of life just like those little communities of old. But with the loss of each human ecosystem — one less working farm, one more essential business closed, one more petty crime shrugged off as a rite of passage, one more chunk of land developed without regard to the sensitive nature of the place — we face the risk of seeing George Will’s words materialize.

Tension brought on by a shift in demographics, a shift helped along by the rising values of the land beneath us, brings its own potential for communal failure as people come seeking private outposts with little intention of becoming a sleeves-rolled-up part of the community.

I look at the faces of all the people who live on Vashon and Maury Islands, and I see their similarity to the brilliant interdependent engines of Virginia V. Without each little support component, she and her big beating heart of steam-driven power would just be a massive thing unable to move forward.

I hope we make a point to look at ourselves and really define what this community is in the here and now, what makes it a treasure. I want us, individually, to identify the actions we can take to make sure the thing we love about this place lasts.

We are not a continent; we’re an island. And within that island we are truly one community. We don’t have to drift. We can move forward purposefully, as a beautiful vessel that has all its support engines fully engaged.

— Rebecca Wittman is an Island writer with a keen interest in local history.