Hello!
I'm Steven Thomas. I live in Seattle. I've been a mefite since August 3rd. I spend a lot of time there.
I started writing when I was ten. I wrote and illustrated a series of tiny story books for my younger sister (who gave me my username, btw). "Bear and Rabbit" did various highly derivative things, the author having grown up on a steady diet of Milne, Potter, and Sendak. In high school, I was a prolific hack, contributing reams of shockingly bad sudden gore, nothing longer than a thousand words. I studied fiction writing at Evergreen and graduated there in in 1996. The stories I wrote there were longer, but still very contrived. I haven't written any fiction since.
In short, I don't consider myself a successful fiction writer.
I am, however, a good tech writer, and smart enough. I also know that for me, I have to write a bunch of crap, and then sort through it for the good stuff. I apparently have no clue when inspiration will strike, so when it does, I need to be ready. The way to do that is to practice.
Which brings me to a question: how refined are the pieces we post supposed to be?
Back in the early nineties, I worked at Lake Crescent Lodge as a waiter/bartender/cook. I moved directly there from Birmingham, Alabama. I was not prepared for the magnificence of the Olympic Peninsula.
Lake Crescent is located on the northern edge of Olympic National Park. Highway 101 runs along its southern shore. Once part of the Elwha River watershed, Lake Crescent was hit by a massive landslide some 10,000 years ago, originating from Mount Storm King. To the east of this landslide lies shallow, privately-owned Lake Sutherland (which does have a few public beaches and boat launches), and to the west lies eight mile long, two mile wide, 632 feet deep Lake Crescent. There are a few private residences that were grandfathered when the park was formed in 1938. These will all eventually become public, but the owners seem to be in no hurry to facilitate that process.
Bounded on the south by the 5,000+ foot Aurora Ridge, on the north by 3,000 foot Pyramid Mountain, on the east by 4,000+ Storm King, on the west by Mount Muller, and drained by the Lyre River, Lake Crescent sits 585 feet above sea level. It is filled with runoff from the surrounding terrain, mostly via Barnes Creek.
Barnes Creek is magical. Lake Crescent Lodge and the Olympic Park Institute both sit on its delta, which comprises most of the land situated between Highway 101 and the lake (a notable exception being the promontory at La Poel). The creek's headwaters gather at Lookout Dome, itself ten miles from the lake shore. There's a trail that more or less follows the creek from delta to source, and the entire delta is easily explored.
Let's take a photo journey up the creek from the lake to Marymere Falls, a waterfall roughly a mile upstream. These pictures were all taken in 1992 using a disposable camera.
Lake Crescent
The water is cold and clear, and the sides drop away quite steeply. Lake Crescent fills a deep valley left behind by the Cordilleran ice sheet.
The sun always rises over Aurora Ridge, and in winter it sets there too. The top of the ridge is decidedly subalpine.
And here we see the lodge. That's the dining room in the foreground, including a covered porch. The veranda further back was part of the bar.
Red Alders love the creek. They thrive in disturbed soil, and every year the creek bed changes.
One last look at the lake before heading upstream.
You can tell I took this photo in September, there's hardly any water! I think in the end it's a good thing, because I got some interesting pictures that would have been impossible in high water.
Like this one. The water here is actually over a foot deep, and moving briskly. In April, you can't see these rocks, because the water is huge, and you can't get even close to them.
This magnificent Douglasfir stands over 200 feet tall and is hundreds of years old. It grows on an older part of the delta a few yards from the creek. It is part of a mature stand of virgin old-growth that dates from a fire that occurred approximately 400 years ago.
Here's a deep hole behind the root system of a fallen tree near the huge Doug fir. The creek changes course every year, usually in small increments like this.
This is the only picture I have of the old foot bridge, now gone and replaced with a bigger, accessible bridge slightly upstream. The bridge was an old, footworn Doug fir trunk with a rickety handrail nailed on. It had serious charm. The new bridge is better, but I miss the old one.
Another montage, this one a little better. It's an enormous Bigleaf maple. Each of those trunks is about three feet in diameter. The crown is high and huge. It's sitting on the edge of the high-water channel. The old foot bridge is behind me.
This is the view from the old foot bridge, looking upstream. A Bigleaf maple, dripping with licorice fern grows nearly horizontal across the creek.
Here we look upstream from under the Old Highway 101 bridge over Barnes Creek. The bridge was built in 1945.
This Grand Fir is almost 200 feet tall, and still pretty young. It grows on the side of Old 101, yards from the bridge.
Here we see a Dipper in its natural habitat. Or rather, we don't. It's in the rapids, looking for nymphs or something.
The same area, back a bit. Dippers walk around underwater like it's nothing, and I didn't want to lose him.
Finally! Barely visible, the Dipper is just left of center, in the water.
More soon...
Haller Lake is a small urban lake not far from my apartment. It boasts three public beaches, all of which are tiny. Last September, I took my camera with me on an excursion to one of them. These pictures are the best I took on the journey. Click on the image above to view all of the Haller Lake pictures, or keep reading to see them in order, with some commentary. There are a few pictures in the narrative that aren't in the collection.
Starting Out
As I left my apartment, I realized I had to take a picture of the shoes. Unrelated to Haller Lake, yet it was part of my journey that day.
A friend of mine had just lost the lease on her consignment shop, and it was quite a mess. There were tons of unmatched shoes in huge piles. We started pairing them up and bagging them, but we ran out of time and garbage bags well before we ran out of shoes. Into the truck bed they went.
It rained the next morning.
But on to Haller Lake.
Rain in September means fall is coming in Seattle. Just across the street, some big mushrooms had sprung up.
The Swale
You can walk along surface streets to get to Haller Lake, but there are also trails, which of course I prefer. At the head of the trail I chose grew another mushroom, much smaller than the first, but still a fine harbinger of autumn.
Looking up from this very spot, there is a lovely swale.
This swale fills partially during winter, and doesn't dry out until summer. The sides are grassy, but the bottom is mostly a mix of mint and shrubs. The post marks the corner of a private lot that abuts the swale, which is surrounded on three sides by houses. The fourth side is the trail, and on the outside of the trail there's a metal fence that encloses some public compound.
Halfway down the trail, I took another picture of the swale. Just out of the frame, down and to the right, there's a picnic table on flattened area of the swale bank. There were people picnicking, so I left it out of the shot. A bit further, the trail, and the swale, end, and I'm on N 125th Street.
The Lake
Just around the corner and down the street a little, and there it is.
This is Haller Lake, from about halfway down one of the beach trails. I'm surprised there's no one here, but it is a bit chilly, and there's nowhere to sit but the ground.
At the time, there were blackberry thickets on either side of the trail, all the way up to the beach. People hollowed out little areas in them for privacy. This shot is looking across the beach from the edge of one such hollow. The beach is along the bottom right, and is perhaps fifteen feet wide.
The beach used to have a big tree, and several submerged and partially submerged logs and stumps that made a crude trail out along the shore. There were some ducks swimming around, but apparently they weren't very urbanized. This is as close as they got to me.
So I cheated with a digital zoom.
The water at my feet was at best a city kind of pretty.
Turning left to look across the tiny cove, there is an old fence marking the property line. Someone tagged it long ago, but I can't make it out. The fence sticks way out into the water for some reason.
It's likely that the house on the other side has a private dock; many of the Haller Lake houses do.
All that photography left me a mite peckish. Good thing there were snacks nearby.
Neighborhood
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Recent Comments
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owhydididoit said:
An LBM in the mulch at the head of the trail around the swale. read more
on Little brown mushroom -
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owhydididoit said:
The trail down to Haller Lake. Most of the shore is on private property, but this trail and tiny beach... read more
on The beach trail
Thanks for the site, pictures and info. I homeschool and the kids read more
on Barnes Creek and Lake Crescent