This just in: As the rest of the U.S. continues to sizzle in sweltering heat, tiny, ventilated Vashon Island, with average temperatures in the 60s and cloud cover you can count on, has become the go to place this summer for desperate citizens seeking relief from the insufferable sun.    

Not since the Oklahoma Land Rush has the U.S. witnessed such a frenzied migration. This surge of citizens to the shores of Vashon, has created  bottlenecks on the nation’s highways. Sad to say, reports of road rage are not uncommon on Fauntleroy Avenue, where it’s bumper to bumper all the way to the ferry terminal. Despite budget cutbacks, anger management therapists are providing curb-side counseling and vendors walk between the lines of stalled cars, selling ices, cold compresses and plastic bottles of water.  

“Why us?” invaded Vashonites are asking themselves. After all, there are colder places in the country, like Alaska. But we are not just talking cold here. We are talking cool, Vashon cool, which is as much a question of temperament as temperature, making mercury measurement a primitive yard stick since it excludes internal, genetic factors unique to our Island.  

For most of the year we live in shadow and shade which renders us both detached and damp, subtle and subdued. It allows us to achieve what can only be described as Northwest noir. Film us in black and white, not California color. Cooling off is one thing, but being cool is another. This distinction was not lost on the influential climate blog “Sizzle & Drizzle,” which recently designated Vashon the “coolest place for the coolest people on planet Earth.”    

In anticipation of the fevered influx of overheated refugees to Vashon, tents and Quonset huts have been hastily erected on our shores, and there is speculation that the abandoned K2 building will be rezoned once again, but this time as a dormitory and processing center for new arrivals seeking sanctuary from the sun.  

So who are these overheated refugees? Let’s put a face on the sweaty influx. A typical arrival is Ester Pierce, a paralegal, formerly of Chicago, who told this correspondent that after a week of triple digit temperatures, she abandoned her “toaster oven” apartment, put everything she owned in her car and “just kept driving north by northwest, right through Seattle, until I felt the first cooling breezes on the ferry to Vashon Island.” Rather than wait for the ferry to dock, Ester vaulted over the ship’s railing into the frigid waters of the Puget Sound, thus bringing her body temperature down to an acceptable level even before she reached shore.  

The audacity of Ester’s pre-emptive initiative inspired Vashon Health Center providers to adopt what is now known as the Total Emersion Technique (TET), whereby the body temperature of really hot people can be dramatically reduced with a full dunk into Puget’s 40-degree waters, a baptism-like procedure, also referred to as the Puget Plunge or PP. Island entrepreneurs immediately grasped the potential in Puget Sound baths and some waterfront homes already feature TET tubs.  

As refugees from the heat continue to flood to our shores, Vashon has responded in predictably artful fashion. The only way to achieve permanent residency here is to audition. What we are looking for are people who can do more than just sweat; not that there is anything wrong with sweating. I mean it’s natural, which is close to organic, and on this island that’s sacred. But deep in February, traditionally a month without hope on Vashon, someone who can play the harmonica or sing “Sweet Georgia Brown” (no relation) is to be cherished.  

Finally a 60-foot pylon has been erected just outside the ferry boat arrival dock. This cement pedestal (gravel quarried at the old Glacier site) will support a Statue of Liberty type monument of a mermaid with her tattooed arms open and outstretched.  

The mermaid’s tail restrains her legs from achieving that position as well. Stone carvers are currently working on an inscription which reads as follows: “Come to me you hot, dehydrated masses of sweltering humanity, yearning to be cool.” What could be more Vashon?

— Brian Brown is a freelance writer who lives on Vashon and writes at the Roasterie.