'It’s a complicated world but this is simple' – Inside Bainbridge's mailbox in the woods

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND — Clarence Moriwaki sits down on a bench in a clearing in the woods on the south end of Bainbridge Island, burdened by thoughts of loss and grief. He’s just watched the laying of a friend’s headstone, the fulfillment of a final promise. The mother of another longtime friend recently died, and the thought of losing his own mother about a decade back still lingers.

After searching for a bit in Fort Ward Park, he finds what he’s looking for: a mailbox planted in the woods, far from any roads or homes. He pulls out a journal from the mailbox to write. Settling in, he hears a noise and looks up to find a fawn munching on some leaves just a few feet away.

The moment seems to stretch out forever.

“We stared at each other for a minute of silent calm, then she turned around and walked out of view. My heart is pounding, but in a good way,” he writes in the journal, referencing those he’s lost. “I think their spirits just paid me a visit, and the thought gives me peace. Kindred spirit indeed.”

Reflecting on the moment later, Moriwaki describes the animal’s gentle eyes and almost a caring presence.

“It felt like, well, it felt like a kindred spirit,” he says. “I started feeling better.”

The Kindred Spirit Mailbox, installed in the park in May at the prompting of islander Denise Stoughton, is a place for moments like this. Here, some sit and reflect on the moment. Some record life’s demands and joys in a communal journal. Some sketch and leave behind art. Here, a child moving on to a new school. There, a person reconnecting with an old friend. Those who aren’t particularly happy that the mailbox even exists are part of the story too. A second, shorter mailbox offers a similar space for children of a younger age to record their thoughts too.

Sunlight spears through the towering trees down into the clearing. Off in the distance, the tides flow through Rich Passage. Two benches offer a space to rest.

Inside the original journal placed at the mailbox, Stoughton wrote inviting all to record their thoughts, quoting the poet William Wordsworth: “Fill your paper with all the breathings of your heart.”

“I really hope it’s a place of contemplation and reflection and to connect to yourself, to connect to your thoughts and feelings,” Stoughton said, standing in the quiet clearing.

She added: “People are writing notes of gratitude, thankfulness for the parks and the beauty and some more heart wrenching entries about love and loss. It kind of runs the gamut of human emotion, what you’ll find here in the mailbox. But ultimately it’s a place for people to have a quiet moment, reflect, commune with nature and be able to write. I do think there’s something very cathartic and healing about writing your thoughts and releasing them.”

One writer notes the view and the solitude, the company of a dog named Bentley: “It’s a complicated world but this is simple,” they write of the mailbox.

“I hope you get to see a great friend,” a young writer scrawls across the next page in an entry signed “unomous.”

Stoughton is in the midst of work on a book about quirky mailboxes on the island and last fall a friend told her about the original Kindred Spirit Mailbox, a similar installation that for years has stood on a beach on North Carolina’s Bird Island, collecting stories there, and that mailbox became the inspiration for the addition at the Bainbridge park. The idea resonated with Stoughton, and she set to making it happen in her own community.

Local artist Dick Strom crafted an ornate metal base for the mailboxes, and the installation went into place in May with the approval of the Bainbridge Island Metropolitan Park and Recreation District, which owns the park property. And last week, a similar outpost mailbox was installed at the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum, which will archive all the journals as they fill up as slice-of-life looks at history on the island, like the University of North Carolina Wilmington does for the notebooks collected at the Bird Island location.

The Bainbridge museum will bring the journals into its collection and make them available for researchers or other people who might want to read through them, said Lindsay Ogles, the director of exhibits and engagement at the museum.

“Really right now we’re entering what’s called the ‘Digital Dark Ages,’ it’s what a lot of academicians have started to call it, because so many of the source materials that we turn to are really just nonexistent anymore,” she said. “People aren’t writing letters. People aren’t really writing handmade diaries. So the things that we have used for generations to document lived experiences around the world are slowly disappearing. You’ve got photos that never get printed, because it’s all in your phone or it’s in the cloud, and so we’re worried now as historians in the field that we’re going to start losing those tactile parts of our history. This is a great way of bringing people back, letting them have almost a meditation as they write, as they see the journal, as they sit in a beautiful spot. It just gives us the chance to bridge that gap in a really creative and beautiful way.”

Stoughton, who makes regular trips out to the Fort Ward site to watch over it, to write, hopes that people are transformed by the space: “I hope they come feeling one way, but maybe feel better when they leave, or if they’re coming to celebrate something, that it meant something that they wrote it down and shared it with others. It’s called the 'Kindred Spirit,' meaning that we are all kindred spirits, and we share the same feelings and emotions. We might have different circumstances, but those basic human emotions are shared. That feeling that you’re able to share it with somebody else, maybe for their benefit too, if that provides a good feeling to anybody, I’m happy. That’s why it’s here.”

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Bainbridge Island's Kindred Spirit Mailbox invites reflection