Chimacum, WA

I watched a blazing sun vault over a mountain and leave such a path of glory behind that the windows of mountain homes like ours glowed blood red until dark... Every window of our home framed a vista so magnificent that our ruffled curtains were as inappropriate frames as tattered edges on a Van Gogh.
—Betty MacDonald,
The Egg and I

In 1945, when Betty MacDonald penned The Egg and I, an endearing classic about her experiences running a chicken farm in the Pacific Northwest, she couldn’t know it would become a national best seller. The book was made into a film starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray and launched a popular series of Ma and Pa Kettle movies. MacDonald also could not know that the road in Chimacum, Wash., that led to her chicken farm would one day be named after the book.

Primarily a farming community, much of Chimacum’s activity begins before the first light. A morning chore break at one of the local cafes or the feed store prompts exchanges of neighborhood news and old tales.

Egg and I Road meanders off Route 19 on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Tangled blackberry vines and mossy-roofed barns catapult one’s imagination back to a time when MacDonald herself must have trudged through thick green moss and dense underbrush, the author leading no doubt with her trademark sense of humor: a chin-up attitude that always seemed in great need of a face-lift. Today, the old road weaves past and present together in seamless charm.

A settled white farmhouse sits behind protective trees. Sleeping dogs clutter the driveway. The front porch stands ready for every generation’s grandma with a plate of warm cookies. Across the road a huddle of black and white cows with synchronized tails munch through a range of hay. A bearded farmer in faded overalls rides a chugging tractor over rolling hills right down the middle of the road. He waves to a neighbor mending his panel fence. Each bend along the way offers a menu of country aromas: wood-burning stoves, freshly mowed lawns, newly turned earth, firs sprinkled with rain.

The road darkens as it snakes through tall evergreens so thick that in spots the sky disappears. At the end of the pine grove, the majestic Olympic Mountains—their great expanse of snowy peaks cradling the foothills that once sustained the old egg farm—seize the eye.

Since 1976, Jess and Pat Bondurant have made their home on 20 acres of MacDonald’s original 40-acre egg farm. “But, we don’t do chickens,” says Pat, a retired teacher. The Bondurants operate a beef farm. When they purchased their property, the fields were overgrown with tall grass. They bought a few cows to graze and control the growth. “The next thing we knew, we had 22 cows,” says Jess, Chimacum’s 1st District fire commissioner. Jess likes the peaceful quiet on Egg and I road. “I could stay right here forever,” he says. “People on this road are pretty private.” The many rambling dirt driveways that disappear into the wooded greenery of the road confirm his observation.

In her book, MacDonald wrote with humorous dismay about visiting relatives raving over her good fortune to live in such beauty, while she plodded from one chore to another. Today, Clinton Johnson revels in both the beauty and the work of running a business on Egg and I Road. Johnson, who grew up on Egg and I, recently bought Woodside Gardens, a nursery formerly owned by his mother. “When my mom’s place was up for sale, I just didn’t want to see anyone else have it,” says Johnson. “I have roots here, and as a business owner I have respect for the land and its value.” Johnson remembers having room to run and play as a boy. “Not many people had this kind of space, with horses, sheep, a fish pond,” he recalls. “It was a great place to grow up. It had everything a kid needed.”

From a high point on the road, the vistas of ageless green forests, productive fields and towering mountains paint a timeless backdrop for a place holding fast to hometown values. Egg and I Road may yet have everything a kid (of any age) would need.

(Opening excerpt from The Egg and I, by Betty MacDonald, J.B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1945)

Carole Marshall is a freelance writer from Port Townsend, Wash.

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