I have to admit that unlike for
some people, long distance walking has become my preferred mode of
transportation, rather than a paralyzing prospect. Although I have a driver’s
license, for one reason or another I’ve decided that the cost/benefit equation
of just owning a car is not practical. I’ve found that it is much cheaper to
depend upon my own two legs than to drive or even take a bus if it all possible
to go to where I need. Some people find the option of walking even one block
too onerous an exertion, but for me a one or even two-hour walk passes without
comment as long as the point of it is accomplished. I’ve acclimated my mind to
accept the physical (even in the event of cold or rain), and to a certain
extent I’ve remained more or less outwardly healthy because of these marathon
exertions.
However, there are times when I
walk long distances for “pleasure.” Take for instance on a particular Labor Day
that I didn’t have anything to do, and I decided to take a long stroll somewhere
where I could “relax” and think about
the world and my place in. There must be some suitably accessible trail around
here; there is the Interurban Trail, with its scenic drainage ditches, picturesque
industrial parks traverse by Lance Armstrong phonies adorned in those ridiculous
skin-tight bicycle outfits, with only the occasional rabbit to share my
bemusement. There was, however, an alternative that I had for years promised
myself that I would avail myself to, but failed to do alternatively out of
sloth or poor timing. Now I had the time, and the weather had just returned to
its summer state after a weekend of rain.
At 6:30 AM I entered at a point
in Kent. According to a posting on the trail, “The Green River Trail follows
the Green River through industrial lands at the Duwamish Waterways in Tukwila
to the broad Green River Valley. The trail provides excellent views and access
to the Green River and the surrounding river valley. To the north, the GRT
passes industrial areas and manicured office parks, which gives way to open
fields and hedgerows.” To be frank, the Green River is called “green” for a
reason, and hardly a pleasing shade to look at. If my sarcasm was not evident
in my previous note of the fact, “industrial” views in the area are not ancient
curiosities of the past, but dull warehouses that feature all the architectural
imagination of a cardboard box.
Thus the initial portion of the
trail failed to entertain me, which didn’t matter since it had nothing to do
with the motivation for the trip, although I sensed by an inspection of the map
of the course that this wouldn’t be a short one. To pass the time more quickly,
I listened to a sports station on a Walkman radio. Two hosts of a national
sports network were going off topic after one mentioned that he was an addict
of the soap opera “General Hospital.” It’s odd, but back in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, that soap actually did have a following that went beyond the
housewife set; there were murder mysteries and a James Bond-type story line leading to a desert island where
two characters tried to stop some mad scientist from destroying the world, or
something. One of the studio crew dug-up and began playing the old “Hospital”
theme music; the host who claimed to have been a “fan” of the show expressed
annoyance at the music, admitting to having no idea what it was or where it
came from. His partner chided him for not knowing the theme music for a show he
claimed to know better than the actors themselves, advising that he should stick
to his day job.
One thing about the Sony
Walkman’s is that you never know if the battery is going dead on it; the radio
sounded strong and then just died. Apparently, once its internal power settings
sense that there is not enough battery life for maximum efficiency, it automatically
cuts off, rather allowing a slow drain where the device continues to function
at diminishing efficiency, like most electronic devices. Thus my contact with
the outside world was at an end. It was also at this point that huge sandbags,
that were supposed to block the advance of flooding that had been predicted for
the past two years but did not materializing despite heavier than normal
rainfall the previous years, instead merely partially or completely blocked the
trail. These were indeed large sand bags underneath the tarp, about 5 feet
tall; the amount of sand needed to fill them, stretching over several miles and
more, was surely enormous by any standard. This part of the trail left no room
for annoying bike riders, and some sections could only be traversed by
pedestrians through thick brush.
At a certain point things started
to become interesting. For about a
hundred yards lining the route there were huge tree trunks, some of them at
least 12 feet in circumference; I would later attempt to ascertain the species
of trees they might have been. These trees must have lined this route for
hundreds or thousands of years before they were cut down; it would interest me
to learn why they were cut, or to find some old photographs to see how majestic
they must have appeared at one time. A
search on the internet revealed no answers, and to solve this conundrum I later
made an inquiry on the King County parks website. Someone named Robert was kind
enough to supply this information:
King County doesn’t maintain the Green River Trail in Kent, so you
could try checking with the City for a more definitive answer. We are willing
to make some educated guesses, though.
I had some of our staff take a best-guess on the species, and we came up with cottonwood or poplar as
the two most likely suspects since these types of trees are present along the
river north of Tukwila where we take care of the trail. 12’ circumference is
pretty big, but a multi-trunk cottonwood tree would be plausible. Maple trees
can have big trunks at ground level but we don’t see that many by the river. If
the trees look like they were planted in a row, then some variety of poplar
sounds more likely.
Poplar and cottonwood roots give us headaches along our trail corridors
because their roots buckle the asphalt trail. Poplars are hard to remove, the
roots send out suckers if the trunk is cut so we try to remove the roots and
stump or chemically treat them so that doesn’t happen. Cottonwoods don’t age
that well, they decay from the inside out and start dropping branches without
warning. They are probably the most common tree we have along the riverbanks.
But in the meantime I decided to
tackle this mystery for another day, and continued forth. I encountered a
Native American in an isolated picnic area. He was trying to keep himself elevated
off the ground with a long pole; he took no notice of me, and I wasn’t in the
mood to inquire about his condition anyways. From that point the trail remained
accessible without any off-road diversions. I encountered a small water
treatment plant, inspected it, saw nothing particularly fascinating about it,
and continued on.
Up ahead were people using weed
cutters to clear out some brush on the other side of the sandbag barrier; they
had to use a ladder to climb themselves and their equipment over it. There was
no apparent reason why this spot required care over any other. I suspected that
what they were doing wasn’t precisely legal; perhaps they were just clearing a
spot so they could camp out and do some fishing. Further down was an ancient bridge
over which was a stretch of railroad track. I suspected that when this bridge
was functional, the type of rail cars in operation were considerable less
substantial than the current variety; as I carefully tread the rickety wooden
planks that allowed a clear view of the river directly below, it seemed
unlikely that this bridge could even have sustained a subcompact car in its
prime. I kept an eye on two slim cables on one side of the bridge, reaching no
higher than my belt buckle to keep me from plunging into the river below with a
false step. It was no better on the other side, where there was no obstacle
from falling whatever. After traversing the bridge to its halfway point, my
curiosity was sufficiently sated, and I turned about and returned to dry land.
From there, I had to go off-trail
for a brief spell, where I noticed a sign warning of a petroleum pipe line,
adjacent to the river. I supposed I can’t be blamed for observing that this was
not perhaps the most propitious location to put an oil pipeline, next to a
river; but that must have been during a more “innocent” time. After that, the
trees grew thick and I lost all sense of where I was at; I briefly speculated that
Gary Ridgeway must have deposited some of his victims here, but these
speculations trailed off when I observed an old white man gazing intently at
something up ahead. That something was a group of Asian folks fishing on the
other side of the river. One of them noticed the old man; perhaps to ascertain
his intentions, he asked him if he saw any fish. The old man seemed to awaken
from a trance, and says oh yeah there over there. I look and saw nothing in the
polluted river; nevertheless, the fisherpeople took his word and moved a few
yards up-river. Further along was an
overpass, where another man was fishing. Supposedly the Green River contains
Steelhead Trout, but even under the bridge out of the sunlight where the water
was low to see to the bottom, there nothing to behold.
At I-5 and Christensen Road the
barrier of sand bags ended. There were a couple of kids fishing under another
overpass; I still didn’t see any fish, and nobody else seemed to be catching
any either. I continued on, and
presently I encountered a fork in the path; I took the one nearest the river. I
then encountered a dozen young men, white and a couple of guys from India; they
were all wearing the same uniform of red T-shirts and white shorts. I figured
they must be students from some exclusive prep school. I recall reading something about a Supreme
Court decision that ruled that a Sikh—who claimed that because he was
Caucasian, that whites-only covenants didn’t apply to him—was in fact not white, because while the Caucasian
classification included people of similar features, it didn’t necessarily
include people of dissimilar skin color.
I decided to divert to the other
side of the river, where the trail reopened, accessible from a bridge. I soon
regretted this decision, as the trail turned sharply, and was clearly meant to
be an entrance or exit point. I retraced my movements, past “Kid’s Town.” Hugh
Masekela’s Sixties instrumental hit “Grazing in the Grass” was playing on a
loudspeaker; I guess it sounds like a kid’s song. It’s odd, but I haven’t heard
an original pop instrumental hit since the mid-1980s. It just goes to show you
that the music part of music-making seems to have been lost. Instead of melody,
it is just a droning “beat” shoe-horned behind bizarre “singing” styles.
The trail was shaded on the other
side, which was good because I was starting to sweat from the humidity. It was
10:30 AM. Along the trail I saw someone slicing-up a large fish. Maybe it was a
Steelhead. They figured they wanted people to observe their good fortune,
although I noted that fish looked a bit too frostbitten. Up ahead there was a wide clearing with
several benches astride the trail. A woman was sitting on a bench reading a
book. She was wearing short shorts,
and showed a bit too much of her rather plumb thighs; maybe that was the
point. I tried to decipher the meaning
of her overly friendly expression when she looked up each time someone passed.
Was she letting people know she was open to conversation? Was she was providing
a subliminal message that she was “fishing” too, perhaps for some nice man with
an interest in books?
Up ahead there was a park where
kids were playing soccer; they all seemed to be white, and mainly girls, except
for a match being played by a white boys’ squad and a team supposedly from
Mexico, or immigrants from Mexico. There didn’t seem to be many people cheering
for them. At this point I probably
would have preferred a more “nature” than urban trail, but then again I was
learning so much here—the jungle of human existence.
Some further distance I
encountered a stone marker. It identified this spot as the “Black River Junction
Landing,” where flat-bottomed boats supposedly carried passengers and goods. I
looked around and decided that there was no useful reason why this particular
spot was chosen over any other. I walked past a golf course. An older woman who
was walking behind me with her dog passed me while I was writing down my
observations concerning the marker in a notebook; as I was passing her, she
told me without actually looking at me that she observed me writing, and
inquired as to my purpose. I wouldn’t say it was an exactly friendly inquiry; I had the sense that perhaps she thought I had
some evil terrorist-like design. I told her that I was just taking notes of the
things I saw—you’d be surprised by the things you learn about the world; she
pretended to agree.
I recalled this 2004 story about
this man who was taking pictures at the Ballard Locks when some suspicious
person called the police, because a black man (he was actually bi-racial) using
a camera is naturally suspicious. I have
no clue why the boring Ballard Locks would be a terrorist target, but there is
no accounting for taste, I suppose. A racist fear freak apparently called
Seattle police when he or she spotted the improbably-named Ian Spiers taking pictures
at the locks; he wasn’t doing it for fun, but for a photography course he was
taking at a community college. He was then followed by police and questioned at
his home. A month later, he set-up a camera tripod at the locks. Before you
could say Jack Johnson he was surrounded not just by local police, but by
federal agents—which goes to show how a paranoid “tip” leads to ignorant
assumptions. Spiers was questioned by Homeland
Security flunkies and told it was against the law to take pictures of the locks
without first notifying the government authorities. They could have also have noted that this
only applies to targeted minorities, because even while the suspect was being
questioned, white people were taking pictures without being hassled. In fact,
the Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the locks, has stated that it has
no “objections” to members of the public taking pictures. After this incident
became public, some locals gathered for a camera-in at the locks, but
apparently no one thought this “suspicious” enough to call police, or required
a permit.
The trail continued adjacent to
Interurban Ave. in Tukwila’s “gambling row”—a couple of large casinos that once
housed a bowling alley and a dance hall, and several smaller ones. There had
been a story in the paper about a movement afoot in Tukwila to close them down,
because, they don’t “fit-in” with the “family friendly” atmosphere of the city.
Why don’t they shut down the Southcenter Mall while they are at it? It’s the
only reason anyone gives a damn about Tukwila. Or why it exists all. From what
I can tell, it doesn’t attract any better grade of citizenry.
I also spied a 7-Eleven, and
decided to pick-up some supplies: Two slices of pizza and a diet coke. I
continued on. At Prosser Piano and Organ the trail moved temporarily out of the
urban environment and continued adjacent to the highway. The river was still
near, and I observed more people fishing, none of whom seemed to have notable
success. Frankly, I now could think of
better ways of taking advantage of a day-off, like sleeping.
Eventually the urban environment
reappeared. On my side of the river were the promised manicured office parks,
and on the other side were mostly ramshackle houses in need of paint jobs. One
particularly drab abode had a flagpole in the back yard; waving in the wind was
an American flag and a yellow flag with a curious emblem on it. On more minute
inspection it was revealed to be that symbol of “revolution,” the coiled snake
and “Don’t Tread On Me.” As I was making this observation, a white man with
long silver hair tied in a ponytail ventured outside to take note of this
person looking in his direction and taking notes. I waved at him and moved on;
I didn’t need to find out what this reactionary’s response was.
I saw nothing eventful for a long
while, except that a great blue heron flew ahead of me and alighted on the river
bank; unlike the skittish little blue heron, the great blue will not fly off
merely because its presence is discovered. I then saw a Boeing building, so I
knew the end was in sight; my legs were starting to ache. It was 12:12 PM. I
saw more Lance Armstrong wannabes in those stupid tights. Presently the United
States Postal Service main terminal came into view; the trail continued off to
the left. For some reason I thought that
the trail would eventually lead to the southern reaches of Elliot Bay. Instead,
the trail ended in the middle of absolutely nowhere. An “End of Trail” sign greeted
me next to some anonymous back road. It was 12:40 PM. There was nothing for me
to do but turn back to Tukwila a find a bus back to where I came from.
At 2:02 I reached the nearest
stop; I had been walking over 8 hours by now. I got on a bus and sat behind two
giggling Japanese girls, living in their technologically, hermetically-sealed
world, a couple of preppy-looking white guys with their self-satisfied, smug
expressions, and some rude people in the back playing their annoying noise
without the benefit of required headphones.
In other words, back in “civilization.”
