During Wednesday, the interregnum between Days 3 and 4 of the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation, the Sieverts let me use their home to rest and regroup. I spent much of the day using Daniel’s computer to make my enormous blog entry for Day 3.
Taking over Daniel's computer. Daniel, whose room I invaded to do this, was incredibly kind about it, much kinder than I would have been in the same situation, especially since I kept extending the amount of time I claimed to need to finish up. He was particularly patient, I thought, after I succeeded in destroying his internet access and making a mess of the plugs and sockets he uses to power the various devices in his room, which he didn’t get back till 11 pm. As he headed back upstairs to reclaim his room, Daniel was heard to comment in amazement to his mom, “I thought blogs were supposed to be short.”
Gary Sievert on the sofa
Pam Russell and daughter Julia
Susan came over and hung out in the Jacuzzi a while. Gary helped untangle the mess I made of Daniel’s internet access; Julia was solicitous of my walk and helped me understand why people are so compelled by this new TV series about Iraq. Pam made sure I ate and persuaded me there are reasonable considerations behind why a church might not want to let a total stranger stay over night in their building. She also promised I wouldn’t go to Hell even though I’m Jewish. She said at worst I’ll have to live in New Jersey. Well, that was my interpretation. She said it much more eloquently than that. Kidding aside, she is a strong and persuasive advocate for her faith. My humble opinion: the Lutherans are lucky to have her. Lisa came over and got to chat with Pam and Gary while I was laboring away on Day 3. They offered to let her stay over too, but she decided to go back to Magnolia. I took a shower and finally went to bed around 11:30 or midnight.
I’d set the bedside alarm for 6 am, but woke up naturally after a restful sleep before it rang. These last few days, the first thing I thought about as soon as I began directing my thoughts in the morning was my feet. Upon waking, they were always comfortable. Over night they’d find a resting position and nothing was being demanded of them. I would first slightly curl my ankles to see if they were limber. They were normally a bit stiff. Then I’d clinch my toes to see if I could feel any blisters or muscle tightness. After the second day I could always feel the painless mushiness of the blister behind my big and second toes on the bottom of my right foot, and the slight discomfort of the tightness in the muscles below my toes on the bottom of my left foot.
I moved my feet around under the covers, reawakening the muscles in my legs. Doing so was slightly uncomfortable but also satisfying as they stretched. It echoed at once the thrashing my feet and legs had taken as well as the accomplishment they’d achieved. I calculated I’d walked at least 80 miles thus far and had covered about three-quarters of the Circumnavigation. I also knew that as comfortable as my feet may feel in bed, the real test would be when I first sought to stand.
It was scheduled to be the final day of the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation, and it would be a long one. Besides deciding whether to go back to capture the sections I’d bypassed the night of Magnuson Park fiasco, the walk required traipsing up the final three or so miles to get to the Northeast corner of Seattle; curling around through the steep streets of southern Lake Forest Park to get to NE 145th St; which defines Seattle’s northern border, getting around the immense gated Highlands community above the city’s northwest corner; walking six or seven miles down the city’s west side along Puget Sound to Shilshole Bay either--depending on the tide--on the narrow coast line or illegally along the Burlington Northern railroad tracks; down Salmon Bay to the Ballard Locks; then all the way around Discovery Park, which at 512 acres is the largest of Seattle’s nearly 400 parks; back through Magnolia along Perkins Lane to the southern staircase in Magnolia Park and then up its 140 steps to the finish point.
No one was awake in the Sievert/Russell residence. I rose from the bed in the comfortable family room and set my feet upon the floor. They were sensitive; if they felt this way touching the ground the rest of the day there’d be no way I could make it, but I knew it was just the morning readjustment. I knew that once on the road, my feet would again achieve a kind of stasis between discomfort and functionality. I am told that the whole sequence during which sore feet are recalled to action at the start of another day of work, to the point when they at last reach this stasis while moving, is so familiar a phenomenon to hikers, walkers and runners that to dwell on it is to betray my amateur status. I have no trouble with this. It is a remarkable thing about the body with which I was completely unaware. I’d never have had the doubts I had after the second day about being able to complete the walk if I had known how reliably one can count on this process.
Moreover, this achieving of “a kind of stasis” of the feet seemed to me an eloquent metaphor for the entire Circumnavigation effort itself. It is the paradox that through exertion, one achieves moderation; that by persisting, one achieves balance.
Perhaps that was what allowed me to proceed this morning with such purpose. On my two-day test walk in late July, I had to stop as I reached the I-90 bridge. This second attempt, with the key difference of skipping every other day, had brought me at last beyond that point. I was in new territory and could feel it both geographically and spiritually. A subtle but distinct peacefulness had set in around me.
Moreover, I was now so familiar with all the steps that I did them without uncertainly or extraneous gestures, like a ritual. Checking the status of wounds on my feet for possible treatment. Touching with solicitous care all corners of each foot for sensitivities. Patiently measuring, cutting and peeling moleskin from the pad and applying it to deserving areas. Rubbing on talcum powder. Gently pulling on a sock so as not to disturb the moleskin and making sure any seams are correctly positioned.
I had the night before laid out my final day’s outfit. A fresh pair of so-called boxer briefs. The same sport shorts I’d worn each day. And today, a dark blue tank top—perhaps not the most attractive item, but one that would free much of my upper body to the elements. Liberal amounts of suntan lotion to the arms, face and shoulders; and finally, the incredible anti-chaffing roll on.
My bag too was ready. Since I had no more nights to go, I was able to remove some items and set them aside in another bag to be picked up later.
Lisa had loaned me her cell phone since mine had disappeared. I'd charged it over night and now inserted it in my pocket.
I drank some water, walked through the living room and at 6:22 am stepped out the door. For the first time since the first day, I was out before sunrise. The final day of the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation was under way.
But not actually. I had terminated the Circumnavigation back at the warehouse outside the NOAA campus back on the Magnuson Park Peninsula. In my “rush” to get to Pam & Gary’s, I had bypassed both the final corner of the former navy facility and the route to and through Mathews Beach north of there. To pick up those areas I would have to back track about three miles, do them and then retrace many of the steps I had taken just over 30 hours earlier. I had struggled over whether to do this during the previous rest day. I could rely on “foot stasis” to some degree, but I knew I was slowing down and this backtracking, in the name of purity and being true to the municipal line, would add as much as two hours to what was already to be a very full day of walking. Late the night before I had all but resolved to skip those sections. I mentioned this to Lisa. She replied without missing a beat that she did not for a second believe I would do that. “I know you too well,” she said. I enjoyed the huge vote of confidence in my character she was offering, but at the same time felt hypocritical because at that moment I really didn’t think I would do it.
But while my toe and blister hurt as I walked out the door, I was feeling extremely good. I didn’t actually have to make a final decision until I got back to Sand Point Way NE. Pam had shown me on the map how she recommended I get back so as to avoid the interminable slope of NE 95th St and I took this advice.
As I tootled along I thought about the walk to come. It would be quite interesting for several reasons. First of all, unlike all the other sections, I had not fully done this portion before. I’d walked up to NE 145th from I-90 some time ago, and I had walked the length of 145 St—Seattle’s northern border, back and forth once. Separately, I had walked a portion of the route along the west side from Carkeek Park to the Highlands when I went on my search for a way to get through that gated community. I had once done the stretch between Golden Gardens and the Locks, and the week before the Circumnavigation began I did about two-third of the walk from the Locks through Discovery Park. But I had never done the whole route and didn’t know how long it would actually take, especially since I was already traveling slower than average and would presumably slow down even more as the day wore on. In addition, my attempts to measure the distance on the map kept giving me different results. One time it looked like 15 miles, another time it came out to 25. If it was the high end, the walk itself—not counting breaks—would take me at least nine hours, and that was without picking up the stretch lost at the end of the Day 3. After the loss of purity to the line, the extra two hours to pick up the lost sections was a major driver in my leaning towards skipping it. I really wanted to get done before it was too late. There were additional reason for this as well—once I got back I would still have to walk another 1.5 miles or so to my home, and coming in late meant being in Discovery Park in the dark, something I knew I didn’t want, especially after my experience in Magnuson. Compounding these considerations was the one section of the walk that I truly had never tried out at all was a steep path along the south side of Discovery that is truest to the municipal line. I thought this was somewhat ironic since it was really all but the last leg of the walk. I’d seen it on the map, but I didn’t know if it was actually there, or if it was, if it was passable, or if it was passable, how much effort it would take since on the contour map it looked pretty steep, albeit relatively short. I would not have the answers to any of these questions until it was too late to do anything about them.
But as I headed down toward Sand Point Way I didn’t worry about any of this. I noticed something else entirely. The last few days I’d seen various political signs—the primary is coming up in September. But even as the blackberries were at or past their peak, it seemed the political signs were still on the rise. Before they’d been background noise, but now they seemed to be everywhere. Ross, Ferguson, Fuda, Edmonds, Jolley; Port, councilman, commissioner, sheriff.
I followed the bend in NE 104th St as it turned into 45th Ave NE. I walked the couple blocks to NE 97th St and turned left. Sand Point was up ahead. I could walk over it along 97th to Lake Shore Blvd and head north, bypassing the dreaded Magnuson peninsula and sacrificing purity; or I could turn right to face my fears outside the NOAA compound.
I decided to turn right. I could still chicken out and just go down the short distance to pick up Mathews Beach.
I was psyched up for the sidewalkless wasteland of Sand Point Way NE. With a day-and-a-half’s rest, the arch of the street did not bother me as much as when I came up it, but it was morning and much busier than it had been when I’d been walking along it at 11 pm. Long chains of cars, trucks and buses zoomed by uncomfortably close. It felt like some sort of asphalt jail. About two third along the way Sand Point did start giving back a little. There were some blackberry bushes with some ripe fruit. They were all but untouched since normally no human being would actually come by here on foot. I had only several, but they were refreshing; I’d not eaten anything before leaving. I would not normally have done that but I had it in my head that my first eating opportunity was only three hours off, at the Taco Bell on 145th and Lake City Way NE. However that assumed I was not going back to pick up the lost sections. But that was no longer the case: Lisa was right. I could not bring myself to bypass the skipped sections.
Fortunately I was moving faster than when I had traveled this road before. In fact I realized it took me 68 minutes that night to go something like 2.5 miles, well below my already below-average speed of about 2.8 miles per hour. I took some satisfaction in knowing I was making better time on the way back.
At 7:11 am I turned left on NE NOAA Dr, a road with a fence on either side that leads directly over a bridge to the gate guarding the fish biologists and weather predictors. I explained to the guard my mission and how I only wanted to walk briefly through to where I had left off the night before last. He looked mildly interested but waived me off nonetheless. It turned out I'd made a mistake; I couldn't get where I wanted to go even if he had let me in. The gate I left through before was further down and not guarded since it is adjacent to but not part of the NOAA compound. This was a nuisance, albeit a minor one. So I walked back and not much further down Sand Point was the unguarded gate. But instead I took a little staircase that that allows for a slight shortcut. It is just south of the underpass over which NE NOAA Dr passes.
As I headed toward where I’d left off, I stopped for the second or third time to remove a rock from my shoe. Removing rocks is a noble but disruptive activity. I was surprised how many times I’d already had to do it in the short period I’d been walking that morning. I tried to figure out what was going on. I was still wearing my trusty, five-year-old, $20 shoes. As I visualized them in my head, I recalled they were most worn in the back soles, in fact the rubber was actually completely gone in places. I must have crossed some threshold in hole size past which small rocks could actually enter from the bottom of my shoes, as opposed to being kicked in over the sides along my heels. This could be quite a problem.
At 7:22 am I sat down for four minutes at a staircase outside the entry to one of the many buildings around the campus and at once realized the solution. All the time I had been carrying with me and frequently using these blister treatment pads known to hikers as Second Skin. They are extremely sticky, oval-shaped pads that are laid over the blister to prevent friction and promote heeling. They are so sticky that it is really hard to get them off even after a couple of days. I decided to turn Second Skin into Second Sole. I used two each on each sole and beat the rock problem. I was devilishly pleased with myself for coming up with this solution.
Shortly thereafter, I spotted the warehouse where I’d borrowed a cell phone from the city worker to call Pam the evening of Day 3. I decided to walk back to the outside corner of the Sand Point Activity Center building where I rested after finding my way out of Magnuson Park and through the off-leash area and pea patch. I considered then that I had at last officially rejoined the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation. It was 7:33 am.
I walked along the south perimeter of NOAA and turned on 63rd Ave NE (which is still inside the public portion of the compound), on the east side of which is the restricted NOAA area. This road runs perpendicularly into the fence on the south side of NE NOAA Dr, which I had accidentally walked down a little earlier. I followed the fence to the opening in the underpass, which leads to a huge paved dock on Pontiac Bay. To be true to the line I had to follow the fence on the north side of NE NOAA Dr, which leads along the south side of the Sand Point Events Center, an area that is little used, although there are doors and a couple short staircases. I continued on around the parking lot there 'till I was almost at the guardhouse I’d been stopped at earlier, but this time on the other side of the fence. The fence then turns north and then one must walk along a lot of parked water devices and round up the edge of the paved dock. I complained earlier that NOAA takes up the best spot on Pontiac Bay, which is true, but it is also true that there is public access to this part of the Bay, from which the unique view it offers can also be had. The land here sticks out into Lake Washington and so looking north you can see both sides of the lake. Seattle proper continues up the waterfront about two thirds of the way up; beyond that is the city of Lake Forest Park. On the east side is Bothell, Inglewood and Juanita and most notably the giant green patch of Saint Edward State Park along the shore. It was very satisfying to think that I could now see the third major geographical milestone of the walk—the northeast corner of Seattle, off in the distance. Its actual location of course was indistinguishable among the small splotches of color that are the expensive homes along the waterfront, but in my mind I could see it clearly. I would be there in less than two hours.
But there was the matter of finishing up the North Shore Recreation Area. The northwest corner of what I have been calling the Magnuson Peninsula is a little strip of land between NE Sand Point Way and the water.
Friendship Grove is in the northwest portion of the diagram. When I came through on my test walk, I was able to walk through this area, which begins with a wooden boat house floating along a pier off the paved dock and then reaches up to a charming and unassuming little wooded spot called Friendship Grove.
To be true to the line, it is necessary to walk all the way out on to the pier and back through the boathouse, which ends at a point providing access to the path to the Grove. I walked to the end of the vacant pier, which sometimes has a folding chair at the very end, and then back to the boathouse, but it was locked. This was too bad since walking though it before had been quite fun, as it requires tip-toeing along the service areas around the floating boats, but I knew that my earlier trip through had probably been a mistake on the part of whoever is supposed to lock up. I made it back to the start of the pier and took a short cut to the path to the grove.
As I approached, I could plainly see there was something going on there. There was a mass of temporary new wire fencing all about and a pile or two of gravel and other landscaping material. It was still early, but as I approached I heard voices. I could see that there was still a way through one of the fences and I ambled toward it, but as I did a man in a hardhat appeared and, without looking at me, began to move a portion of the fence that acted as a gate into a position that, at least from the direction I was approaching from, looked as though it would make it impossible to get through.
As I came within range of the man he informed me the area was closed. I asked if it wasn’t possible that I just be allowed to walk briefly up to the grove and back; wouldn’t take 10 minutes. But he said no, not unless I had a hardhat, steel toe shoes and an orange safety jacket. I think when he began the sentence he was going to stop at hardhat, but warmed up to the concept of adding obstacles as he considered how I might follow up with a request to borrow these very items. “If it were up to me, I’d let you in, but the city won’t allow it.”
I don’t ordinarily question such comments on their face, but I felt that even it were up to him, he would not let me in. He seemed to be getting a disproportionate share of satisfaction out of this unexpected opportunity to control the movements of another human being. He did at last explain that the city was working to build “a whole new park”, but that until then it was off limits due to safety concerns. There’s all this equipment on the site, he explained. It could be dangerous.
Actually there was only one tractor--its engine off--that looked as though it had not been moved in a week. The idea that it would somehow be unsafe to walk through for five minutes was completely preposterous, the outgrown of some city risk manager’s wildly disproportionate liability fantasy. But what was real was that this fellow was actively placing a fence between me and the grove as we spoke. I gave it a few more shots, trying to fast talk my way on, but it was no use.
Under the rules of the Circumnavigation, if a right-of-way is not reasonably publicly accessible, it is excluded from the walk. This rule applied here, albeit in the narrow sense that it was true only for the moment--not a week (or arguably even five minutes) before, or in all likelihood a month later--but public access is a moving target. It ebbs and flows; sometimes more is created; seemingly more often it is permanently shut off. I wanted to fight this injustice, not least of all because the grove is so pleasant and I had taken extra effort to get back here, but my peaceful stasis--along with my strict interpretation of the Circumnavigation rules--overcame my raw annoyance. It didn’t hurt either that this little kerfuffle would save me some time and put that much less stress on my feet. By the time I departed I was content that purity had been preserved.
I continued past Building 11, a row of wooden buildings offering various pier services, and then at last back under the NE NOAA Dr underpass to the small staircase along Sand Point which I had come in on earlier. By 8:02 am, some 35 hours after first arriving, I had at last conquered the NOAA Compound/Magnuson Park morass. There are many stretches of the Circumnavigation to which I look forward to returning. This is not one of them.
I headed along NE Sand Point Way for the third time, now fully reconciled to its lack of hospitality. I pulled out an earlier route map I had made marking the way up to NE 145th St. Published as part of the GM Johnson City Map Series, it was still very crisp and clean. This map also has the unique and lovely feature of representing roads as white lines outlined in blue, enabling it to show streets and intersections much more distinctively than other maps, which simply use a single line to represent a street (this does not however mean that--like other maps--it is not free of errors). I was enjoying this crispness when I needed to grab something from my bag and absently put the map between my right side and right arm.
This was a big mistake. Despite the waning coolness of the morning, I was already sweating. When I looked at the map next there was moisture all over the area I was heading toward. In and of itself this is not fatal, but the moisture makes the map much more likely to tear if it is handled, even delicately. So I immediately set out to dry it by unfolding it nearly all the way and waving it gently in front of me as I walked. This all seemed perfectly reasonable to me, but I can only imagine what people in passing cars must have thought. I deliberately tried to wave it in the direction of the homes along the street so it would not appear I was trying to flag down cars or catch their attention, but it was harder to manage this way and it was more important to me to dry the map than to leave drivers unconfused. Anyway it didn’t work very well as a drying technique. But the only damage was minor and to a stretch where the route is a single, nearly straight line, so no harm was done.
It wasn’t long before I reached NE 90th Pl, the shortcut to the south end of Mathews Beach. The park is shaped roughly like Florida with Lake Washington on the Pacific side of the trunk and 51st Ave N separating the trunk from the Gulf of Mexico. There is a little loop path inside the trunk which I walked around and a bench in Naples where I sat for a minute to make a shoe adjustment. A path leads through a forested section to the panhandle.
This early on a weekday, there was hardly anyone there. In fact the only ones wading in the small waves along the shore were ducks. I walked close to the beach up to Jacksonville and then west to Tallahassee where there is a shortcut—returning to Seattle names—to a secluded section at the south end of NE Riviera Pl. Although Seattle’s famed Burke-Gilman bike trail runs parallel to and on the west side of Sand Point Way, it is here that you can--with the exception of a brief entry point along Sand Point near NE 77th St--for the first time see the trail from the Seattle Circumnavigation route. While popping in and out here and there, it mostly parallels the route the rest of the way up to NE 145th, where it then continues on north through Lake Forest Park while the Circumnavigation route heads, with an initial twist, west along NE 145th to the Highlands.
From here the route is a simply a hike up Riviera Pl NE, which along some stretches is called Edgewater Lane NE. There is a greenbelt between Riviera Pl and the Burke-Gilman trail, with occasional access paths for the cars of the folks whose homes are between Riviera and the water. The most remarkable thing here, besides the bikes rushing past on the west and large amount of remodeling—the primary consequence of which is a proliferation of portable outhouses--is the narrowness of Riviera Pl. There is at least one sign along the way insisting that a 10-foot right-of-way “must be maintained” but between the parked cars, overgrown shrubs and outhouses, I don’t think this is always adhered to. For some reason the only thing I kept thinking about was how do the sanitation trucks get through here? It’s wide enough, I guess--though just barely—but I bet many a resident has had to wait patiently in their car for their neighbors’ trash to be picked up before they could get on with their day. At the risk of putting my petty class envy on display again, I can only say I hope they have to wait a long time.
But seriously there is no doubt this is an incredibly quaint street. I can think of no other I have seen that is similar. It has the feel of a English country lane filled in with the varied and colorful architecture that is much too expensive to be as authentically bohemian as it at first appears.
It is also one of the many areas of Seattle that commits what I consider to be the mortal sin of allowing private beach property. I think I already gave this rant during the description of the walk through West Seattle, so I won’t dwell on it again, other than just to say it is just wrong. Well, actually I will dwell on it. Beaches should be for everyone, especially in a region where so much coastline has been sold out to industrial interests, shipping operations, logging complexes or endless railways, and where beaches are extra precious because so much of the ocean coast line is difficult to access because it is forested or beneath high cliffs or set off in Indian reserves. Seattle justifiably brags of the park legacy left to it by the Olmstead Brothers, and so it should. But the main reason the parks are so important here—and I mean the principal reason--is because the powers that be have cut off the city’s coastline from its people. This is especially odious and negligent because, near as I can tell, coastline represents a larger percentage of Seattle’s boundary than any major US city except possibly San Francisco, New York or New Orleans. Wake up people! Beaches are for everyone.
Anyhow.
Once I got to NE 106th St at 8:40 am, I was at last at the same latitude as Pam and Gary’s house and was therefore finally fully back on track after having to break off the Circumnavigation in the Magnuson morass. I believe it did add fully two hours to the day’s walk, but I knew I would make good time from here to the Highlands.
NE 145th St does not go through all the way to the water. Along Riviera PL/Edgewater LN, there is no sign saying you are entering or leaving Seattle or Lake Forest Park. But I wanted to know so when I got to an address along the street that was above 14300, I asked a guy who happened to be outside his garage and he told me the city line was two houses up, on the other side of the house whose address was 14370. I arrived there at 9:25 am. This was the third geographic milestone--the northeast corner of Seattle where it meets Lake Forest Park.
But as I said there is no way to turn left here. One must continue about another quarter mile into Lake Forest Park, which is the third of the four incorporated cities along the Circumnavigation route. Then you make the first left and climb a series of incredibly steep streets that are very confusingly named, have unmarked dead ends, multiple switchbacks and which every map I have has at least somewhat wrong. It’s not that big a detour by statute mile, but the steepness makes you feel you’ve been to another country by the time you make your way south on 37th Ave NE and are finally allowed to turn right onto NE 145th St for the straight shot across Seattle’s top.
Besides its straightness in direction, the only other significant feature of NE 145th is that it is a series of three or four hills, so the shape of the walk is like a roller coaster.
From 37th Ave NE you walk down three steep blocks to reach Lake City Way NE, which north of here becomes Bothell Way NE. It is here that Seattle’s short border with Lake Forest Park ends. From here on, I will straddle the border between Seattle and the final city on the route, ten-year old Shoreline. On the northeast corner of 145th and Bothell is a Taco Bell, which was my first designated stop on this Fourth Day of the Circumnavigation. I got there at 9:55 am.
I went first to the Walgreen’s across the street to buy a couple throw away cameras, as I did not have the new digital Lisa had bought (she didn’t trust me with it yet, which I can understand—well, sorta); I had just used the last shot of my last throw away, and had to be conservative coming up the east side, so I didn’t get as many pictures as I’d have liked which is sad because it is a very pretty walk.
Anyhow I was glad to get to Taco Bell. I know most people who read this will be disgusted that I would stop at a Taco Bell, but what can I say? I had a steak gordida baja, two crispy taco supremes and a huge soda. It was enormously satisfying. I called Lisa, who was still back at my place in Magnolia. I told here I thought I was about 90 minutes from our planned rendezvous point at 145th and Greenwood Ave N.
Normally I would have taken my shoes off to give my feet a chance to breath. But in recent days I had noticed that when I did so, getting them back on was an unpleasant process, I guess because they expand and maybe have the idea the walk's over. So they really rebel when you try to stuff them back into shoes. Then I have to walk for a solid 15 or 20 minutes before they reach stasis again. Still it seemed counterintuitive to keep my shoes on while I was at rest.
At 10:42 am I left Taco Bell and headed across the street to Shoreline. The signal at that intersection is painfully long.
Even though NE 145th is, because of the traffic and narrow sidewalks, probably one of the most unpleasant parts of the Circumnavigation, it is an interesting street. In the south end, all the main road arteries come in at their own pace and angle, along various sundry sections of the jagged boarder. NE 145th is notable not only because it is the northern “output” where all these arterials are aligned and sent on their way into Shoreline, it is also where they all seem to come close together. The stretch between Greenwood and Lake City Way is about two-and-a-half miles. Anywhere else in city where you’d travel that distance you might hit an arterial or two, or even three, but mostly you’ll drive down or past streets you’ve never heard of, run into dead ends or freeway barriers or retaining walls. But traveling NE 145th is like taking the Reader’s Digest tour of all of Seattle’s major boulevards. First of course is Lake City Way, the major thoroughfare through northeast Seattle. Shortly thereafter is 25 Ave W, which is a main route in some parts of the city, as is 23rd Ave W; then comes 15th Ave and the daddy of them all, I-5. Then the pace picks up: first there is 1st Ave N, then in quick succession Meridian, Wallingford, Aurora, Fremont and Greenwood Avenues North.
At about 11:00 am I stopped at the Prince of Peace, where Pam is Pastor. She was not there however. I rang the bell and the secretary came but when she saw me she paused. Because I was wearing the tank top, my hairy arms were fully on display. Lisa told me later these garments are called tank tops when worn by women, but donned by men they become “wife beater tops.” Plus I had not shaven in many days, and I was sweaty and possibly a bit disheveled looking. So I could understand why she hesitated before letting me in. I told her who I was and invited me to leave a note for Pam, which I did.
There are a lot of churches and golf courses along 145th. Most of the churches are on the Shoreline side.
When I got to the west side of Aurora Ave at 11:43 am, I felt more at home. I guess it’s because of the familiarity; this side of town is the one I live on; this portion of the street I have driven along many times. I had crossed over to east side of Seattle many days before back when I climbed the gravel hill after crossing the S 100th St pipeline access and saw the imperial downtown skyline from afar through a break in the trees. That was a long time ago. Even though I had a long way to go and some unfamiliar territory ahead, I was at the beginning of the home stretch.
Soon I passed the entry to the Shoreline Interurban Trail, a very pleasant little spot that is reminiscent of a European train station with statues and a garden.
At 11:55 am, I came to Greenwood Ave, where I’d arranged to meet Lisa and John and to have one of my designated breaks. I went into a Sub shop there, Georgios, to await them and had a soda. While waiting I decided to try calling the TV station that had covered the beginning of the Circumnavigation. I felt a little self-conscious doing this, but did it anyhow. I got a number and when someone answered, I explained who I was and that I thought we’d be getting to the end of the walk in the early evening, possibly between 7 or 8 pm. The person who answered said OK I’ll transfer you to an editor. I was on hold for about five minutes, during which time they played a tape in which one their magazine personalities comes on and repeatedly insists he is looking for someone to talk to you. While I was on the phone, Lisa and John arrived. They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t in the coffee shop nearby. I can’t say I noticed it. John went over there to get coffee and Lisa went to the counter to get a sandwich.
I was getting a little pissed off waiting for the TV folks to answer the phone and finally decided if they didn’t answer in 30 seconds I’d hang up. At 28, someone came on the line. I explained again about the imminent completion of the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation. The woman I spoke to said OK, we’ll leave a note for the evening people. I knew then they’d lost interest and my wave of fame was over. After only six days, I was all washed up!
At Georgio's, trying unsuccessfully to talk King 5 into covering the end of the CircumnavigationLisa finished her sandwich and I checked my maps. It was time for the biggest detour of the Circumnavigation. You see 145th does not reach the water on east side or on the west side. On the west end it peters out in a gravel residential parking area beyond which there is an unmarked city park and unmarked path that goes through some very pretty woods and comes out at a dead-end at the end of an exclusive road in the Bitterlake neighborhood, which takes up the entire northwest corner of the city with no way to walk through. The best you can do to get back to the line is to take a very circuitous trip through various intersections that all join long, winding sidewalkless lanes that ultimately lead to dead ends with no pedestrian access beyond them. At best, you can make your way to 8th Ave NW and go south to NW 132nd St, turning left on 12 Ave NW and bypassing a series of loops and dead ends until you get to Carkeek Park, which after a long walk will get you to the water. By then you have had to traverse a mile or two of side streets, none of which are on or really even near the municipal line, or in this case, the coast along Puget Sound. Hence there are hundreds of acres of municipal Seattle which you cannot walk around. The only alternative is to try to get to the coastline north of this ragged mess. In attempting to be true to municipal line, it is better to go outside the city and rejoin it than to go inside the city to relocate it. Otherwise, you are not circumnavigating the city.
On the north side of NE 145th, there is an equally troublesome problem: the Highlands. This immense gated community takes up a huge corner of southwest Shoreline, closing off the entire area to public access. So both sides of the city border at the west end of NE 145th are anchored by huge residential communities that have no public access to the beach and would just as soon you stay the hell out anyway; the Highlands shamelessly with actual barriers; Haller Lake with greater subtly by taking you like a mouse down long roads that ultimately dead end, forcing you to go all they way back.
Since I would generally prefer to go around an obstacle outside the city to get back to the city line than cut through the city to do so, the question became: What is the best route to get past the Highlands and reach the water, whereupon I can then walk down the coast. To answer this question, I had a few weeks earlier walked up from Carkeek Park along the Burlington Northern railroad tracks that line Seattle’s northwest coastline between NE 145th to Golden Gardens.
Parenthetically I should say that this is by far the most egregious use of a coastline I have ever seen, not just because a railroad, which clearly cannot appreciate the inspiring view of the Olympic Mountains or the beauty of a sunset, dominates the beach for miles—that is true, sadly, at a number of places along the West Coast—but because it is traverses through an allegedly self-respecting and major incorporated city in which hundreds of thousands of people live. It is already a sufficient travesty that so much Seattle coastline is available only to wealthy people who can afford to “buy” shoreline; but the soullessness required to allow a railroad to be constructed along the shore seems to bespeak an even deeper societal depravity. It is hard for me to determine which is more appalling.
Glad I got that out of my system. Back to question at hand. So to determine how far up the coast one must go beyond the city line to find access back to NE 145th, I had several weeks before walked the tracks from Carkeek Park. The tracks are on a berm made of boulders about 10 or 15 feet up from the high water mark. At high tide the water laps against this wall of rock, leaving only a few feet of beach here and there. On the east side of the tracks is a trough, typically covered in brush or bog, beyond which is a bluff which ranges in height anywhere from, I would guess, 50 to 100 feet, most of it on the high end of that. It is completely overgrown and impenetrable. All along the way I carefully spied this bluff for any access to the tracks from the homes above the bluff. From Carkeek to about a quarter mile below Richmond Beach in Shoreline, I saw only one: an overgrown staircase the went all the way up the bluff, posted with a sign warning that the gate at the top was locked. I was tempted to verify this for myself, but did not. I was stunned to find that this really was the only route. For fully a mile up from the city line, except for this one staircase, none of the homes of the Highlands have access to the water. This just floors me. What the heck are they paying for?
Anyhow, it had looked like I would have to go all the way to Richmond Beach. Then just as I was preparing to turn around I came across an opening in the woods. Although it was plastered with private property and no trespassing signs, I walked up it quite a ways and would have gone further but I dropped my annotated map and had to back track to find it. Anyway I was certain I knew where it led, namely, into the Highlands where I would ultimately run into a guarded gate. I came back down and continued up the tracks a bit further, at last passing some beach on the west side of the tracks and even a few citizens out enjoying the water. I turned around and headed back.
As I was approaching the path I’d seen before, I saw in the corner of my eye on the water side of the tracks a concrete structure coming from beneath the tracks. I might just as easily have missed it but for the random angle of my gaze as I was heading south. My antenna said this structure might be a staircase, so I looked down from the tracks for a closer look.
It was not a staircase. I was disappointed, but as I went down to inspect it, I saw this was actually something much more exciting. A concrete culvert running underneath the tracks, and a trickle of water flowing through it. The opening was tall enough to walk through, with a slab of concrete along the regulated water way to make doing so easy. Beyond it appeared there was another path going into the forest. In all probability there was a trail following the creek up to some civilized location. I had made eye contact with a couple teenagers on the beach and approached them. One told me that the trail did indeed go through, but that it led to a locked gate and private property. Of course this did not dispel me.
The trail was particularly lovely, as nice and lush as any trail in the forests outside. The trail indeed led to a gate which led to a road which led to NW Innis Arden Way, a long and steep boulevard that goes past Richmond Highlands Park and Shoreline Community College and emptying out on Greenwood Avenue N about three quarters of a mile north of NE 145th.
Now as I waited for Lisa to finisher her sandwich at Georgios, I was preparing to take the route I had discovered in reverse. Lisa, John and some other friends said they wanted to come along on this part of the journey. I was uncomfortable with this because I knew we would probably have to walk the tracks much if not all of the way. This I have been told is illegal and can be dangerous. I specifically did not seek permission from Burlington Northern because I knew they would decline and that would make going out there even more risky. Some advised me against going this route. I had no desire to put myself at risk, but the only other alternative meant cutting into the purity of the walk to a degree that I could just not abide.
This whole Circumnavigation thing is of course and mischievous lark and all my talk of purity and truth just a gag. Still, I did not really think the risk of getting hit by a train was very high. When I had surveyed the route earlier, three trains did in fact go by, and in all cases I spotted them in advance and was able to get far enough away, despite the narrowness of the right-of-way between the top of the rocks and the bottom of the bluff. Moreover there are actually two sets of tracks, leaving an additional margin of safety besides the narrow shoulders. One time on the earlier walk a train did come on a little suddenly, and I resolved that would make a point of regularly checking the tracks in both directions and scan constantly for places to escape to in the event one came on in a hurry. For much of the way, the track is visible far into the distance and trains can be seen long before they arrive. There are however a few spots where the tracks go around curves where the trains cannot be seen much in advance. Nor do they make as much sound as I had imagined. The lesson was to take special caution.
But I could not bring myself to consent to allowing others to take this risk. I wanted publicity for the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation, but I did not want a headline about my sister, friends and I being scraped off the tracks. I told everyone I was not taking anyone with me on this segment.
But John said he wanted to go. This surprised me a bit because he was one of the ones who I had talked to earlier about this leg. He is a risk averse kinda guy and it was clear to me he wanted to no part of this plan, even though he had in the past walked portions of the track between the parks on the west side of the city. Now he had done an about face and wanted to go. Well, I thought, I couldn’t really turn him down. After all, John is the walking guru. I knew his sensibilities would be to stay safe; I knew he had done the tracks before and that it would be fun to have him along. I also knew that for the first time in the Circumnavigation the tide was going to work for us. We would be starting out toward the coast as the tide was receding and we would be on the tracks during the second low tide of the day—not the lowest, which was a 0.7 foot at 3:57 am that morning--but the second low tide of the day, a 5.4 foot tide that would peak at 3:48 pm. My only quandary was that I did not really know how low the tide has to be to make walking on the beach possible. I had never been out there during a low tide and I had no way to find out, although I had heard that at low tide you can walk the beach from Carkeek to Golden Gardens. I agreed to have John join me. Octalthorpe could probably use a new lead singer anyhow.
Meantime Lisa and Susan planned to meet us at the north end of Golden Gardens later that afternoon. First though, Lisa came with John and I when, at 1:10 pm, we left Georgio's and started heading north along Greenwood Ave past the Seattle Golf Club course. After a bit, Lisa broke off to head back down in preparation to hook up with Susan for the rendezvous at Golden Gardens.
John and I headed down Innis Arden past the community college and the park. It is a long walk and there are of course no sidewalks. John said he’d ridden his bike this way a number of times on his way to Edmonds.
I won’t give the exact location of the road we took or the gate because the man who owns the home near the gate gave me special permission the week before to go over his property to get through, for which I am suitably grateful. But he really does not like people doing it, so I don’t want to start any trends. However I can say that he is not in the Highlands and the purpose and ownership of the gate are unclear to me. If he doesn’t want people going over this property to get to the trail that leads to the culvert, then he should open, or better yet remove, the damn gate.
The trail, as I have said, is lovely. Lisa had decided I could be trusted with the digital so I am adding a number of photos bearing this out. I promised her I would keep it a very deep pocket.
I want to inject here a little rap on pockets. I cannot stress enough how important, for me at least, it was to maintain “pocket purity.” Most of my stuff was in my shoulder bag, but there were a number of things I wanted faster access to: my map, my pen, my hand towel, my camera and wallet and notepad. Unfortunately the sport shirt I bought for the trip had no pockets, but the shorts had five. I was always careful to keep the same items in the same pockets so that I could quickly locate whatever I needed, and so if I was missing anything I would know immediately. Maybe this isn't that big a deal, but it was all part of the stasis that enabled me to keep my mind on the joy of the Circumnavigation.
Anyway we reached the gate and I stopped at the house to tell the owner we were here and were exercising the permission he’d granted me. He wasn’t there but a relative was and the fact I knew his relative’s name I think was enough for him to believe me. They had a dog in the front yard which had apparently had some injury to its ears, which were rapped in bandages. This made the dog look like some alien creature with a helmet and antennas.
We walked around the gate and down the incredibly beautiful path, arriving at the culvert at 2:10 pm.
John stands in the culvert
The water was at the rocks; we had to walk the tracks. Only about five minutes later, the first train came along. It was an extremely long south-bounder. About 45 minutes later, another came through, also south-bound. Both times I spotted them well in advance and John and I removed ourselves in plenty of time to locations along or just beneath the top of the rock wall.
Walking on the tracks was difficult. The spacing of the ties did not match my stride so there was no stepping from tie to tie. The rails themselves I would not have even considered. The tracks are laid on a plain of lava rock that is uneven to the foot. Over the course of several minutes, one is compelled to move from the tracks, to the portion of the ties outside the rails, to the rocks along the tracks, to shoulder created by the boulders making up the berm, back and forth between these as the soles of one's foot demands. John had a technique that worked well for him, though.
My feet were working but I was slow. This was made even more obvious to me after about an hour when John started pulling so far ahead of me that he looked like little more than an orange dot way down the tracks.
Before an hour had gone by John realized there was enough beach to walk on and climbed down the rockery to continue there. I followed him. For the first time John was not wearing sandals but real shoes.
It was a real pleasure to walk on the beach. We were able to go quite a distance, even though the water wasn’t really that far out. But we were the only ones out there and the day was clear and the view unbeatable. It felt so good I just wanted to stop and lie on the beach for a while. It was great to be able to walk along a west facing beach without having to go to the Olympic Peninsula, the Oregon coast or California. As a former Californian who grew up near the beach, it was especially enchanting. And to have the whole beach to ourselves--albeit only six or ten feet wide--and on such a lovely day, was a luxury I do not recall ever having had before.
It was also a huge relief to realize that this segment of the walk, while a solid four miles or so, would be pretty straight forward. We had to return to the tracks a little ahead of Golden Gardens and then got back to the beach just as we reached it. A couple of times John sat and waited a long time for me to catch up with him. The walk was very tranquil.
At 3:42 pm we took a brief break at the beach at Carkeek Park where a dozen or so other folks were enjoying the shore. Right then I got a call on the cell. It was Ray. I couldn’t hear clearly so I asked again who it was. I thought it was Ray Lane, the local TV reporter who’d interviewed us earlier. He wanted to know when we were going to arrive and where. I tried to give him my current estimate, which was now between 8 an 9 pm, and then he asked to talk to John. I had mentioned that John was with me and figured he just wanted to talk to the other party on the walk. But it turned out it was not Ray Lane, but John’s friend Ray Freeman, who was planning to meet us at the end point. John got a big laugh outa that. Obviously, I still hadn’t accepted that I was a has been.
The whole thing with the low tide was working out perfectly. At 4:05 pm, we passed Blue Ridge, which has a private community beach access point between Carkeek and Golden Gardens, and where another small group of folks were enjoying the sun and sand. I stopped there for five minutes because the blister between the big and second toe on my left foot had popped and needed to be cleaned and patched with Second Skin. John waited patiently.
We continued on. The beach turned to rocks and the rocks got a little tricky so I climbed back on the railroad, but John took off his shoes and stayed on the rocks. It gave me a chance to catch up with him just as we got to Golden Gardens.
We got to the north end of Golden Gardens at 4:36 pm. Just as we arrived, Susan called me. She said she was worried about Lisa because she was supposed to have heard from her at 3:00 pm so they could plan the logistics of meeting us at Golden Gardens. But she had heard nothing. This worried me too and I called my condo in Magnolia, which was the only place I could think she might be, even though Susan had already tried there. I was just getting ready to call the police to inquire about accidents when Lisa called. It was a huge relief.
We rearranged the rendezvous for the Lock Spot, a pub by the Hiram Chittenden Locks in Ballard that allow ships to pass through Salmon Bay and on to Lake Union, Lake Washington and beyond. We were still about two miles from there and at the rate I was going, Lisa would have plenty of time to get there.
It turned out, by the way, that she had been off tying to get Miles’ sun visor and steering column fixed as a gift for me. The visor broke months ago when the automatic seat belt challenged it to a duel; and the plastic on the steering column had become loose shortly after being “repaired” last year by a guy who was supposed to fix the damage done by a car thief. Lisa had been crawling through junk yards finding parts, persuading wandering mechanics to help her get the parts installed and lost track of time. If you’re thinking
you'd like a sister like Lisa, you're right, you would. But you can’t have mine.
From the beach at Golden Garden we could see Magnolia Bluff and the green of Discovery Park on its north side. I’d caught a few glimpses of Magnolia from up the coast, but it was far in the distance. Now, for the first time since we’d begun the walk six days earlier, it was principal feature in our field of view. I had made it all they way around the rest of Seattle and was heading for the final push around Discovery Park, and ultimately to my home. It would be relief to be home, but it was also a little sad to think the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation would soon be over.
But it wasn’t over yet. It was late and we still needed to get a break in before making the final push around Discovery. I was worried about it getting dark. If it got dark before we made it around the West Point Lighthouse at the tip of Discovery Park, things could get a little ugly.
We called Bridget to come meet us at the Lock Spot. John and I finally reached the pavement at Golden Gardens and then headed down toward the Shilshole Bay Marina. I was not in pain exactly, but I was limping along and taking only moderate steps. All at once John, who had been ragging me about some of the extra walking we’d done to maintain purity to the municipal line around the UW, started leading me through the Marina. Although I had walked to Golden Gardens from Magnolia before, I had not scoped this segment of the walk specifically for the Circumnavigation, whereas John was very familiar with the marina. He led me along walkways and fences that I had not known of and which were closer to the shore and truer to the line. John had been bitten by the bug. I was delighted. There was a lot of construction going on out there and it was difficult to know how to go. John led me through like a circumnavigating pro.
I was losing power and momentum as we walked under the railroad bridge and over the last mile to the Lock Spot. Lisa had arrived there and called me. She started walking up NW 54th St to meet us.
We finally got to the Lock Spot at 5:46 pm. Bridget called back to say she was having difficulty getting a cab. But the line went dead as Lisa’s cell finally ran out of juice. A dead cell phone and a setting sun ahead of a walk through a huge park. The déjà vu was palpable. I did not want another experience like the one through Magnuson. We asked the waitress for a place to charge the phone, but it was not clear that we would be there long enough to get it enough power to sustain our needs through the length of Discovery Park.
We had a good meal. Bridget finally arrived and also had something to eat.
Ben and Bridget Killoran at the Mill SpotI estimated we had three miles to get to and then through Discovery Park, after which we would head toward Perkins Lane for the final walk to the bottom of the southern staircase in Magnolia Park. Normally three miles would take about an hour. But I was moving slow and we would be on park trails, sand and rocks, so it would probably take at least two hours. It was 6:45 pm so we had already run out of margin to ensure we would get through the trickiest part of Discovery before we’d lose the light. Stupidly I had not asked Lisa to buy a flashlight. I guess because I thought I’d be back to the finish before darkness, something that was clearly no longer in the cards.
I was getting quite anxious about all this and insisted we get moving. We left the Lock Spot at 6:47 pm. Lisa would come along, but Bridget decided not to go.
The food and drink was refreshing but I was still slow. I’d let my feet out of the shoes and so I had a readjustment period to achieve stasis. The first part of the walk was as simple as it was pretty, crossing over the Ballard Locks, which is always exhilarating. Lisa was taking a lot of pictures and I wanted to be able to linger and point things out but as I say we really had no margin and so I pushed on, which was hard considering that both Lisa and John were taking faster and longer strides than I!
We got across the Locks and headed up W Commodore Way towards the Lawton neighborhood. It was about this time that Kristin and John Morrison called. They wanted to join us for the walk through Discovery but my directions were so poor they ended up lost in Magnolia. They decided instead to await our emergence from the southern entrance to Discovery Park along with their friend Lincoln and Susan, who didn’t make it to Golden Gardens because of the Lisa snafu. My friend Chris Rapcewicz also called and agreed to meet us at the same place.
Lawton is another neighborhood that most maps do not seem to get right. Where most maps indicate some of the half dozen or so short streets that make up the neighborhood connect, in fact not all do. The only way to get there is to go north on 40th Ave W from Commodore. This leads to two, long north-south streets joined at the south end and the middle by short segments but by nothing at the north end. So to be true to the line, we had to walk up 39th Ave W, turn left on Sheridan and then come down 40th again and follow it out of the neighborhood. This is one of those situations that under the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation rules might be ruled a glorified dead end and so ignored. But there are enough mitigating factors that I could not bring myself to do this. The main one is that Lawton stretches up to the north end of Magnolia Bluff and affords the few people who can afford to live there extraordinary views of the south side of Salmon Bay and all the ships heading from and to the Locks. It would just be too important a section of city to ignore.
Along the east side of 40th Ave W were a mass of blackberry bushes that were at their peak. It was tough to resist slowing down for them. I grabbed a few and Lisa went on a mission to harvest a few large handfuls for John and I. They were the last blackberries we ate on the Circumnavigation, and they were GOOD!
The south end of 40th is an extremely odd intersection. There are three or four streets that come together there, depending on how you count. Besides 40th there is a long dead end--42nd Ave W--which, after going through a barren part of Discovery Park, makes up what is essentially the eastern edge of Lawton. Another, W Lawton, heads in one direction toward the park and in the other along the northern end of the Army Reserve area. The fourth, Lawtonwood Rd W, is the only route into the even more exclusive Lawtonwood neighborhood which many people do not even know exists. I don’t know if there is a rivalry between Lawton and Lawtonwood, but I do know the latter got the wood.
We took the road into Lawtonwood, which for about a half mile through the park is completely forested. At the end is a little wooden entryway and map showing the location of the dozen or two homes tucked away here. The homes here, as one real-estate website puts it, “present themselves as estates,” and that is not a bad description. As we walked past one, John uttered, “Oh, Versailles.” Lisa was cringing to see the view they have of Shilshole Bay, but it was futile. The lots are so huge you cannot even glimpse the view.
Anyway we walked along W Cramer St on the south side of Lawtonwood and went through a gate in the fence there that I had discovered on an earlier scoping trip. This gate leads into the park or, more specifically, the part of the park that was--according to its website--“invaded and occupied” in 1970 by a Colville Confederated Tribe member and upon which was established the Daybreak Star Cultural Center.
Our route through the Lawton neighborhoods and Discovery Park is the somewhat hard to see purple line. And so it was that around 7:30 pm we finally entered Discovery Park. We walked along the shore in front of Daybreak and then followed a squirrelly trail that goes along the high bluff through a deeply forested area. It is as wild a trail as any on the Circumnavigation. At times I lost my way and had to backtrack. When we came to a 15 foot, 80 degree slope that one had to descend carefully on one’s ass, my co-circumnavigators inquired whether this met the “reasonable public access” standard on which I harp so much. No comment. My step mother, Kathleen Roche-Tansey, rang Lisa’s cell at this point and they began to chat but I asked Lisa to hang up because this trail requires having both hands free, ready to grab on to a tree branch or to help steady oneself over tricky passages.
The reward of course is that through occasional breaks in the trees the view Lisa wanted to see from Lawtonwood is available for infinity less than the multimillions paid for homes there. And while in terms of our prospects for getting through to the south side of the park it was unfortunate that the sun was setting, this same fact made the walk down the trail that much more inspiring. You could see across Shilshole Bay and the Puget Sound to islands, peninsulas and mountains beyond, framed by ships floating serenely on placid waters, the deep multiple hues of sunset and receding lines of mountain silhouettes.
This trail leads ultimately to a clearing which we promptly crossed and then entered an extremely magical section of the park which unfolds under the forest canopy with a long and winding set of wooden staircases and landings, each leading you along different at angles deeper into the forest. Your senses perk up and time seems to slow as you float through this forest labyrinth. Slowly you recognize the sound of waves and like a dream the trail lowers you effortlessly onto a quiet, peaceful beach.
From there, I opted to climb along the rocks to the rejoin the trailhead which then goes for a mile along the water until it reaches the lighthouse that is also Seattle’s most western point—yes even further west than the lighthouse at Alki in West Seattle. Here there is a 270 degree-plus panoramic view, one of only three along the Circumnavigation, the others being Alki and Webster Point in Laurelhurst. Under the rules of the Circumnavigation, parties must stop here and admire the scene, even if they are racing against a setting sun.
It is worth mentioning that immediately inland from this trail is a major municipal sewage treatment plant. It is testimony to the skill of the design of this facility that unless you know of it in advance, or have seen the satellite images of the park, you would never know it is there, for neither its scent nor its works are detectable by any of the senses.
Once around the lighthouse we saw Elliot Bay, the lights of downtown and those of West Seattle—the coastline we walked on the first day. Our trip was almost complete. As we reached a parking lot, we found a water fountain from which Lisa and I drank.
It was as we were walking through parking lot next to the lighthouse on our way to the trailhead along the south side of the park that I told Lisa and John that we were approaching the one section of the Circumnavigation that I had never been on and that it was a steep trail through the woods.
It was already getting sufficiently dark that we could not see more than 300 feet ahead of us up the forest-lined paved road that leads from the parking lot to the old military homes at the center of the park. When we got to the trailhead, I looked down and saw that it was pitch black. I don’t mind the occasional risk but this seemed too much. The question of the wisdom of taking an unknown and probably difficult trail in total darkness was a no brainer. Obviously, under those conditions, it could not be considered a reasonable public access.
We bypassed it and lumbered on up the steep roadway. It was strenuous. The road leads to the military housing of Fort Lawton. There, using what light was offered by lampposts, I referred to my map of the park and deigned that we should turn right along a path that appeared to be as true to municipal line as we could be having bypassed the dark trail, and which describes the western edge of the housing plat. It too was darkening and I had not been on it before, but John had, so we at least knew it led somewhere useful. In time it took us to the clearing in the middle of the park where small amounts of reflected sunset light go a little further. We were through the worst of it. We were going to make it out of Discovery Park.
We reached the southern fence and followed the trail along it. At 9:07 pm, we at last came to the gate offering entry to park’s southern parking lot. About 2000 feet down the road was the lot where we knew Kristin, John M, Lincoln, Susan and Chris were hopefully still awaiting us in their cars. But by now Lisa’s cell phone was almost dead. We were worried that the park might have closed at 9 pm and they’d all been ushered out, unable to reach us to make a new rendezvous point. I dialed John M’s cell phone but the line crapped out before anything could be said. Tired as we were, we opted to walk to the parking lot to see if they were there. Like the ending to a happy movie, the headlights of two cars approached and then slowed as they neared us. I knew instantly it was them, even though we could see only the whites of their lights.
We spent a few moments in greeting and then made a plan for the final segment of the walk along Perkins Lane. Lisa, John, Kristin and I would walk directly down to the Lane, which is along Magnolia’s waterfront, while the others would drive down and meet us there for the final mile and a half stroll. Unfortunately I gave them bad directions and sent them down a one-way street. In addition, the route to the waterfront lane was trickier than I realized.
At 9:18, we started walking down the residential streets in western Magnolia. After two short blocks, John saw a street we'd past and asked me if it wasn’t truer to the line. I at first said no because I thought I had looked carefully enough on the map, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. I had at the last minute made a straight out error impinging on the purity of the Circumnavigation. We were far enough past it at that point that no one, not even me, lobbied to back track.
At last we reached Perkins Lane. The others had not arrived. The four of us began down the street. After about 15 minutes, Susan and then the others located us and parked their cars. So it was that seven of us—Lisa, John, Kristin, John M., Susan, Chris, Lincoln and I--came together for the long final mile of the walk. I can’t help but think it was the largest crowd that’s walked down Perkins Lane any time in the recent past. It was a great way to finish the walk and I truly thank everyone who came out for the finale.
I was feeling a lot of things during this final and longest mile. Foremost was the feeling of friendship from those who had joined me for the big finale. I can think of no other thing I have done that drew this kind of support from friends.
Next was the sense of accomplishment. I still think of the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation as an immense lark that started out as a whim and ended up taking over my summer. I can’t write “Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation” without laughing or at least smiling, because it is really so absurd. But there is a serious side. It was all about exercise and setting a measured goal and satisfying a set of my peculiar interests.
I have of late come to be more cognizant of two strong parts of myself; the fanciful and optimistic one and the morose, fatalist one. I now realize that both of these parts of me were wrapped up in the TSC. The former one dreamed it up and thought I could do it; the latter one was represented by the serious doubts I had about whether I could actually do it.
When he interviewed me at the beginning of the walk, the TV guy asked how I felt. I told him, somewhat to my surprise, that I thought I was going to make it. This came out of my mouth even as a large part of me really did not believe it. Those two consecutive walking days in late July, when I had chopped up my feet and been almost unable to walk for nearly eight days, seemed adequate proof of that. The adjustment to one day on and one day off was a theory, a compromise to tempt fate and one that my podiatrist had recommended against. The one part of me would not have beat me up if I hadn’t made it; but the other surely would have. I don’t have a split personality; these are metaphors. But I have been working to reconcile these conflicting drives and I guess more than anything else, even beyond the whim that made the big time, for me personally, that is what the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation has been all about.
For much of the last mile John was ahead of the pack. I told him I wanted to be first up the stairs but after the group came together I realized I wanted to be last, so that there would be people waiting for me. I knew John was anxious to get through and so was I, but as we approached the end of Perkins Lane I remembered that there is a very beautiful view spot just beyond the end of the street and thought people might enjoy seeing it. I led them out there but missed the cutoff in the brush that led to it, and instead ended up in a small clearing where the weeds were really too high to see much. I think it was Kristin and John M’s friend Lincoln who found the path and redeemed this diversion. It was a beautiful sight. Elliot Bay at night; the lights gleaming all around the still water; the ships going by; the quiet of nighttime.
Then it was time. We walked back to the bottom of the staircase and took some pictures.
Lisa Tansey, John Ambrosavage, Ben Tansey, Kristin Klatt, John Morrison and Susan Albrecht just before ascending the southern staircase along Perkins Lane I sent everyone up ahead of me. I paused for a moment to give them time to get a ways up and to give me time to feel this moment. I had thought a lot about this final push. I love Seattle’s public staircases.
I loved the idea that by going up one of them, I would at same time complete another project. I had imagined that I would be tired for this last bit and that for that reason it might have been a mistake to have the last push be a 140 step staircase. My feet did hurt. I had slowed the entire group down considerably along the last mile. I was taking incredibly small steps. It had taken over three hours to get here from the Ballard Locks, much longer than I estimated. My body was tired, but I was not. I launched myself up the stairs, savoring every step without effort. I got to the top at 10:02 pm.
When I reached the top of the stairs, Ray C. Freeman III (stage name: Spud) presented me with a colorful plastic lei and a blue ribbon donated by his daughter Laura that says “Orca Elementary School—I am a runner” with “runner” crossed out and “walker” etched in (Thanks Laura!). Our friend Barry was also there.
Ray C. Freeman III (aka Spud) presents the Orca Elementy walker award. There were no media present; I guess the press has moved on. That’s why I’m thinking about issuing a press release denying that I used any performance-enhancing drugs during the walk. But as Lisa pointed out, anyone who saw me limp to the end point would have no trouble accepting my denial, so it may not be a very effective ploy.
We stood at the top of the steps for a while, chatting and laughing. At last the group decided to go celebrate at a local pub.
I had always planned that when I returned, I would walk back to my home in Magnolia about 1.5 miles from the start point. I was pretty tired—after all I had been walking since about 6:30 am, my feet were very, very achy and I had promised them a soaking as soon as possible. Nor did I really feel up to celebrating in a bar.
I slowly walked toward downtown Magnolia. I must have looked quite pathetic for a city bus driver pulled his bus next to me, stopped, opened the door and asked if I needed a ride somewhere. I thanked him but waived him off. I made it home at 11:08 pm and slipped my feet into a tub of warm water from which they did not emerge for quite some time.
I felt bad though that I had not gone to the pub. So the next night, Friday, I invited folks over for the official Post Seattle Circumnavigation Party. I had an artifact room with many of the important mementoes of the walk—the Broadmoor golf peg and golf balls; the new shoes that made the cover of the paper but only did the first 28 miles of the walk; the old $20 shoes that finished the job; my packing list and notes from my podiatrist; the map I used to mark the route; the P-I article; Lisa’s broken digital camera; a collection of moleskin and blister treatment packages and the giant, laminated Kroll’s wall map that was the key inspiration for the trip.
On Saturday morning I had the sad duty of taking Lisa to the airport for her flight home to San Diego. She took lots of photos which I still mean to post in this entry. She did a huge number of things to support me and the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation—like providing the camera (well, two actually….); ferrying supplies to and from my condo; buying all the blister treatment pads in the Magnolia Bartels (sorry to any hikers who went to the store for supplies that day); let me use her cell phone; made sure I had plenty of diet raspberry soda; was nice to my friends; came with me on long segments of the Circumnavigation; bought lots of meals; made creature comfort repairs to my car; bitched about Seattle’s road signage; and took off extra time from work to do all of these things. When were both aching with pain on the walk to Seward Park, she looked at me and asked, “Are you sure this is a vacation?” It’s not much, but I am going to send her a Rand McNally map showing which parts of the Circumnavigation she joined—it looks like she did about 45 miles in total--pretty damn good considering she had done no training.
I’m also going to prepare a similar map for John, who I estimate came along for about two-third of the walk, making it much, much more enjoyable for me, even if he did start walking way ahead of me down the railroad tracks. Hmmm…
My initial calculations show that the total actual walking time for the Circumnavigation (not counting stops for food, rest or mole skin and shoe adjustments) was 35 hours and 50 minutes, and my preliminary estimate of the distance covered is 100.8 miles. Adding what I call the “to and fro” time--that is, the time and miles I logged getting to and from points between where I left the trail and the various places I freeloaded accommodations--bumps the duration to exactly 40 hours and the distance to approximately 110 miles. These figures are amazingly close to my pre-circumnavigation estimates. However, I still have some refining to do of the figures.
I have already described some of my reflections on the meaning and sensations surrounding the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation. Although it is over, I have a real sense that things have changed. Not dramatically perhaps, but undeniably. I intend that this change should be a catalyst for me going forward. It is symbolized by something that happened minutes after the Circumnavigation finished.
The others had gone off to the pub, and I began to limp across the parking lot to the greenbelt separating it from the road. I followed a concrete path that led across the greenbelt to the street. From here I expected to turn onto Magnolia Blvd and continue down familiar streets to my home. I had surveyed fully a 100 miles of Seattle in preparation for this trip; I knew every road, every path, every staircase along the route. Like a vacation, half the fun was in the planning and anticipation.
Now as I reached the street and was just about to turn right, something caught the corner of my eye. Despite the darkness, I could see there was an opening between two of the houses across the street from the greenbelt. It was a public right-of-way, previously unknown to me, lit by a friendly lamppost about 20 feet deep within the block. It emitted an aura of raw entreaty. Such charming, unexpected walkways are typical of the landscape of Seattle, open to anyone with an eye for them. The sentiment behind them is the thing I most love about this city.
So, only moments after finishing the Tremendous Seattle Circumnavigation, I had already discovered an interesting new path to follow.
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