Eastsound village. 7.48 mi. 269 ft ascent
Killebrew Lake. 5.26mi. 590 ft ascent
Deer Harbor (Estuary aka Frank Richardson Preserve and Shoreline Preserve). 5.19mi. 252 ft ascent.
Obstruction Pass state Park. 1.86mi 294 ascent
Coho Preserve. .87 mi. 160 ascent.
Days total: 20.66 mi. 1565 ft ascent.
Dear Trail Friends
Here we are again. May this blog as well as the walk be a prayer for our world and all beings. As I began yesterday’s (Wednesday’s) walk I was praying for all the endangered species (including our own) that we be held in the loving hands, seen with the loving eyes of the great music and the great dance. It occurs to me as I write that we all could be like abandoned gold mines and broken branches - all the species and the earth as we knew it - all of us cut off before our full leafing and flowering.
Grief about our own and each other’s personal mortality - even when death comes much too soon (I think of my niece who died in young adulthood, and the many children who die even younger) - personal grief seems different from grief for our whole species, or for the earth as we have known it. There is a solace in knowing that we die and those we love die but there is a future for a larger “us” that we identify with, and are part of, that endures. I guess part of my prayer is to free myself from the obligation to save and protect what I cannot save and protect - and to place myself in the hands of a larger “us” that will go on being, and dancing - even when our species and the earth/wilderness/Nature as we have known it becomes an abandoned gold mine or a broken branch.
Yadda yadda yadda.
I began the Eastsound village hike (the first of the “bouquet” of 5 hikes all over the island) at 6am on the little hike from Crescent Beach to Mt Baker Road, then walked through Buck Park into town and back then to North Beach and back to East Sound and around the public part of Madrona point back to Crescent Beach. I was aware of the crescent moon and how it changed in the changing morning light. (Photo 1 composite) I especially liked seeing it behind the “Wildlife Cycles” sign at the bicycle store as I thought of all the wild cycles - sunrise, sunset, seasons, moon phases, tides - that I feel so close to when I pray and hike.
Whenever I walk this loop I am moved that I get to walk along the island’s shorelines both in the north (North Beach) and in the south (shoreline park and Crescent Beach) in a single walk. There is something magical and awesome about the place where land and ocean water meet anyway - but to be able to step on two “opposite” shores in one walk seems truly amazing to me. Then during Wednesday’s hike I realized that I walk on four shorelines - North, South, West and East - on this hike. North and South on the Eastsound village walk, West in Deer Harbor, and East at Obstruction Pass. I guess it’s time to show you a map if the island and my walks. Photo 2. I am embarrassed to say as I assembled the map (apologies for the gold arrow that shows my location - my home here - couldn’t figure out how to get the map without it) I realized that Obstruction Pass is not in the East at all but the far south. Oh well I imagined I was saluting the four corners of the island’s shorelines in one day and it gave me a thrill. And tomorrow Friday I will make a point of including Doe Bay in my hike do I willing will pay my respects to the East shore too. In the photo you see the Eastsound village walk, where I started, in the center. In the west ring of the island, the East part, is the Killebrew Lake walk, my second. Further west is Deer Harbor and way over on East side of the island is Obstruction Pass at the southern tip and Coho preserve slightly north.
I’m getting tired and may not get to write much more. I do want to tell you about Killebrew Lake. As I was finishing my walk around lake I was thinking about Peter Downing and wondering where the other hikes (other than the lake loop) might be, hiked that he always talks about showing me but we’ve never gotten around to making it happen. Then there was Peter walking toward me! He had seen my car parked at the lake and come to show me a couple of the hikes he loves.
The first was more bushwhacking than trail following - though not any bushes to whack but plenty of logs and branches to stumble along. Because my sense of direction is so bad I tend to stay on trails (even so I often go in the wrong direction) but with Peter to follow, it was great fun. Later he explained - and I realized - we had been hiking up the water shed and I almost believed I could hike it again without getting lost. Peter notices things I don’t always notice and I love that. He doesn’t just notice the giant boulders but observes that they must have tumbled down the steep cliff edge and bounced over and across a ditch. He notices the stream that goes underground and then springs up again further down the water shed (except in very wet years). He notices the debris that mark where the flood waters passed. He points out a cedar tree with the center of the trunk hollowed long ago by a fire and finds a walkable off-trail path we can take so I can stand in the middle. He notices a tree that is the perfect circumference to hug, another tree gnawed by beavers to fall but held up by neighboring trees, a trunk that curves itself into a chaise for sitting at the side of the lake. Walking behind Orter was a real adventure and the place came even more fully to life in his presence. Oh! And an antique rusted car covered by a collection of trees falling from different directions on top of it. Let’s make that photo 3.
And I absolutely have to show you the cedar that I stood inside - photo 4 the tree, photo 5 the inside (with the shadow of my hat - and a deer skull - inside it).
There is so much I want to show you. But I am tired and it is late and if there is one simple truth my body and especially my feet have been trying to teach me it is that less is more.
I so want to show you where water touches land at each of the shorelines I visited. I want to show you the magic and beauty of each of the places I walked. It’s so hard to settle for an imperfect and incomplete blog post. Yet another branch broken off before the leaves opened, goldmine abandoned without any gold.
But I will close with a photo from Deer Harbor of daffodils near the water. It fits with the theme of spring and also of places where land and water meet.
I keep going through the photos saying just one more, just one more... but it’s time to let go. It was a beautiful day on so many beautiful parts of this beautiful island that help me to know that we are all a part of a really beautiful dance that moves to a really beautiful music, part of a beautiful accidental design that in some way makes it possible for me to say and even believe - in the midst of this pandemic and plummeting financial markets - that everything is going to be alright. Even if everything is not alright, it’s going to be alright.
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