The rush of the mainland melts away here. Space to return back into yourself. Saturn’s Return is nestled in San Juan Island’s West Valley at the head of the Garrison Bay watershed, where forest, wetland, and pasture converge. Our stream is home to the island’s only native population of trout, just 10 feet from the Inn. Bald eagles, great horned owls, red foxes, fawns, and adorable little green frogs. These 42 acres are buzzing with life and all yours to explore.
Walk the meandering trails through forest and meadow. Gather eggs or join us for our morning harvest. Lend a hand in the flower garden or help us plant new fruit trees. Browse our food, agriculture, and philosophy library. Read by the babbling stream. Join a seasonal workshop (like spring foraging or autumn preservation). Catch a community dinner or guest chef residency.
42 acres: Flower, vegetable, and herb gardens. Young orchard and acres of pasture. Wetland, creek, and pond. 2 miles of walking trails through 22 acres of forest and meadow.
Campus: Inn with bedrooms, living room, dining room, and sunroom. Arena (6400 ft²) for covered events. Barn, lofted classroom space, and stables. Workshop and laundry. Co-working office. Fast fiber internet.
Proximity: Around the bend to English Camp National Historical Park and Young Hill. Short drive to Lime Kiln Point State Park and Deadman Bay — beautiful despite the name. Town is a 12-minute drive away.
Buzz: Breakfast daily, and an array of self-serve snacks and provisions. If you wish, farm work: bees, chickens, flowers, herbs, vegetables, orchard. Seasonal workshops, community dinners, and guest chef residencies.
Rooms
The Inn features several cozy rooms and spaces, full of fresh flowers and furnished with love. Add the island’s ample sunshine (we're in the Olympic Rain Shadow!) and healing ocean air, and it’s easy to get your best rest.
The Deluxe King's floor-to-ceiling windows welcome in expansive views of West Valley, Young Hill, and the wetlands. Best enjoyed from the comfort of your organic Avocado King mattress and Coyuchi bed linens. The room features our largest en suite bathroom with a walk-in shower and organic Baina bath linens. Our favorite room for an indulgent getaway.
The Deluxe Queen is in the heart of the original one-room schoolhouse, featuring its 1915 fireplace and Douglas fir floors. Enjoy views of Garrison Creek and our flower field from your organic Avocado Queen mattress, Coyuchi bed linens, and Fir Oak Farm wool duvet insert. Its private bathroom next door has a shower-bath, organic Baina bath linens, and bathrobes from Block Shop Textiles.
The Queen bedroom with en suite bathroom features a comfortable bed with organic Coyuchi linens, a Fir Oak Farm wool duvet insert, and windows that let in birdsong and views of the farm or Garrison Creek. Its small en suite bathroom has a walk-in shower and organic Baina bath linens.
The second-floor Double Full bedroom is perfect for friends or children, with two beds overlooking Garrison Creek, organic Coyuchi linens, and Fir Oak Farm wool duvet inserts. It shares a generous bathroom with the Queen bedroom next door, appointed with organic Baina bath linens and bathrobes from Block Shop Textiles. If your family or friends book both rooms as a suite, you'll have your own exterior entrance and private living room.
The second-floor Queen bedroom with shared bathroom looks out over farm and forest. Catch golden sunlight through the south-facing window from your cozy bed with organic Coyuchi linens and a Fir Oak Farm wool duvet insert. It shares a generous bathroom with the Double Full bedroom next door, appointed with organic Baina bath linens and bathrobes from Block Shop Textiles. If your family or friends book both rooms as a suite, you'll have your own exterior entrance and private living room.
Amenities from real, high-integrity sources. Coyuchi organic bed linens. Baina organic bath linens. Fir Oak Farm wool duvet inserts from sheep down the road. Block Shop Textiles organic bathrobes. PlantPaper tree-free toilet paper. Sangre de Fruta organic toiletries from Bowen Island.
Breakfast - Optional Service for your Book-Out
A daily expression of our islands’ seasonal bounty. Every room’s price includes ample, unrushed breakfast, coffee, and tea, along with an array of self-serve snacks and provisions. We believe in intertwining purpose and pleasure and source organically, regeneratively grown ingredients that burst with flavor:
Eggs and vegetables (and flowers) from our land.
Produce, mushrooms, meats, and cheeses from our farmer friends.
Remarkable local yoghurt and granolas.
Citrus, avocados, and olive oil from our favorite California farms.
Sourdough breads and bagels from island-grown grains.
Locally roasted coffee and herbal teas.
Our Purpose
Saturn’s Return is where we gather in celebration of abundance and return to ourselves. We believe agriculture and community, philosophy and practice, economy and ecology, pleasure and purpose are all strongest intertwined. And more fun.
Eating with the fullest pleasure—pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance—is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.
"The Pleasures of Eating" — Wendell Berry
We first fell in love with good food. Then where it comes from. Then soil science and regenerative agriculture; resilient regional food economies and food sovereignty. We know many others will step into care and action for a sustainable, just food system through the same doorway we did — that first astounding bite of a new fruit. A breathtaking bouquet of flowers. Watching a smiling child reach down and pluck her first strawberry. Pleasure that does not depend on ignorance. Enacting our connection with the world. Celebrating our dependence and gratitude. For we are living from mystery.
The Farm
Over the coming five years, we’ll plant over two thousand berries, fruit trees, nut trees, perennial flowers and herbs. Between the perennials, our focus will be storage and staple crops, like beans, polenta corn, and squash, filling gaps in the islands’ winter food supply. Plus, vegetable gardens, laying hens, and honey bees to supply our busy kitchen. Lots of drying, canning, fermenting, and otherwise preserving of peak-season flavor.
But right now, it’s year one, and we’re just beginning. Instead of planting fencerow to fencerow, we’re slowing down and observing the land through a full year of its seasonal rhythms. Our first guests — that’s you, we hope! — will enjoy open grassy fields and the fruits (well, actually the flowers, eggs, and vegetables) of a sub-acre farm and the ambitious inklings of a much larger one.
Trials: Agroforestry trial block of young chestnuts, plums, persimmons, figs, and currants. Bean and polenta corn variety trials, uniquely adapted to the Pacific Northwest. Shiitake mushroom forest grove.
Food & flowers for the Inn: Layer flock of 100 hens, rotating in a mobile coop. Honey bee hives. Kitchen garden of vegetables and herbs. An indulgent mix of narcissi, tulips, cosmos, poppies, dahlias, and more.
The Name
Saturn completes its cycle around the Sun every 29.5 years, returning to the same position it was at your birth. Many wisdom traditions say that in the year preceding your Saturn return, your soul gets antsy and yearns to reconcile any misalignment between your current path and your essence. It can be a time of great turbulence but also of great discovery, healing, and action. We committed to this land and project during our own Saturn returns and hope to play host to countless others as they return to their source.
We can't wait to meet you!
— Emma & Wiley
