I heard my first rumors regarding the existence of the wetland way back in the year 2000. I remember reading a very short article about the park in the Federal Way Mirror and thinking that I didn't know we had a park like that so close to my apartment. This was the beginning of a very trying period in my life. My son had just graduated from high school and gone directly into the army, my mother had just been diagnosed with colon cancer, and there were rumors circulating that my employer was going to be forced to cut personnel by as much as 50%.
I lived in Federal Way, Washington and my mother lived in Maryland, 3,000 miles away. During the course of the next two years, I made numerous trips back and forth between the west coast and east coast to help my mother handle her affairs during her prolonged battle with cancer. The Twin Towers collapsed and the Pentagon was attacked. The United States went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. My son was among the first troops to enter Iraq and eventually ended up in Mosul. My daughter graduated from high school and followed her brother into the army. My mother passed away. And headquarters developed a computer program that was designed to perform my job, ending up in my entire branch being eliminated and me being forced into early retirement. I was nothing short of a basket case.
Throughout this tumultuous period in my life I continued to see short blurbs in this or that newspaper about this mysterious and most elusive wetland. I was doing a lot of walking at that time in an attempt to relieve some of the stress I was going through. If anyone needed the wetland, it was me. But, try hard as I could, I was unable to find it. I walked up and down S. W. Campus Drive, over and over again, and couldn't find hide nor hair of anything that even vaguely resembled a park.
Then, one day I was flipping through the Federal Way Mirror and ran across another very short article pertaining to the West Hylebos Wetland State Park. This article included a photograph of two log cabins. I got so excited when I saw that photo. I knew exactly where those log cabins were. The very next day I strapped on my running shoes and made a trip down to the cabins in search of this hidden wetland. I was determined to search every square inch of land between 1st Avenue and Pacific Highway South until I found the park. And that's exactly what I did. A thorough search finally led me to a gravel strewn field at the end of what appeared to be a tiny private driveway. The field looked like it was being used as a parking lot, although there was only one vehicle parked there at the time.
At the far end of this field stood a small wooden kiosk. Just to the right of the kiosk was a dark, narrow, overgrown, blue gravel trail leading into the woods. I stood at the mouth of that trail for a number of minutes, considering my odds. After all, I was a lone, unarmed, woman. I was a fair distance away from the main highway, about to follow a dark, overgrown trail into the woods. I had no idea where that trail led, I had no cell phone, nobody knew where I was going or what I was about to do. If I ran into trouble somewhere along that trail, no one would know where to look for me. I could die in there and they'd never find the body. All of these things ran through my mind, then I pushed aside the branches and started down the trail. No one in their right mind has ever accused me of being smart!
Not too far down the trail, the blue gravel gave way to a boardwalk made out of planks and old railroad ties that had a metal mesh screen tacked down the middle. This boardwalk was so overgrown that I was barely able to make my way down it. It was dark and lonely and absolutely silent on that trail. I felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. I was in Wonderland!
I hadn't been in the wetland more than half an hour when I ran into Chris Carrel coming down the trail from the opposite direction. I don't think I've ever told Chris anything that I just wrote, so this may come as a complete surprise to him. I wasn't the least frightened by him. He seemed to assume that I was a frequent visitor to the wetland and immediately started a conversation about the beauties and wonders therein. I wasn't about to let him know that I'd just walked into the wetland for the very first time and was completely, totally lost. Even though he seemed like a nice person, I didn't think it was wise to let him think that I didn't know where I was, where I was going, or what I was doing. I remember that we talked about how overgrown the boardwalk was and that he asked me if I'd be willing to join a work party that Saturday to help trim the eye-stabbers and ankle-grabbers back from the edges of the trail. I told him that I'd be glad to help, it sounded like fun. I really believed that, too, and was excited about meeting some other people who enjoyed the park, maybe making some new friends, and getting a good workout at the same time. I was very disappointed when Chris called me that Friday and said that the work party was cancelled because I was the only volunteer and he couldn't hold a work party with just one person. The fact that he couldn't canvas up enough volunteers in Federal Way who were willing to devote a few hours to help improve their community struck me as very sad.
After mulling the problem over for several days I decided to tackle the problem on my own. I'd made one visit to the wetland and wasn't finished exploring the place. It wouldn't take any skin off of my nose to simply tuck my garden clippers into my pocket and trim some of the eye-stabbers and ankle-grabbers back as I walked down the trail. So, that's exactly what I did.....and I got hooked. I ended up spending more and more time in the park, on my hands and knees, trimming back the overgrowth. Visiting once a week and trimming for an hour quickly turned into visiting three or four times a week and trimming for three or four hours a visit. I always visited the park early in the morning and, most mornings, I would be completely alone in the park for the entire three or four hours.
I moved very slowly and was very quiet. I had no radio. I wore no earbuds tucked into my ears. I had no cell phone. I had no job, so I had no other place to be. There was just me.....in the wetland, slowly, quietly moving along the edges of the boardwalk. The wetland became my sanctuary, my haven, my peaceful place. It's where I went to commune with the spirits, animals, and earth. It's where I came to find my center and purpose. It was the place I loved to be above all other places. And I needed a place just like that because my daughter ended up serving two tours in Baghdad and my son had gotten out of the army, but couldn't find a job.
In time, the animals grew used to me being there and started going about their business as if I wasn't there. The trees were full of birdsong. An entire orchestra of birds sang in amazing harmony for my entertainment. Rabbits and squirrels hopped across the trail or sat on the edges munching fir cones. Every now and then I'd see a weasel or muskrat. Sometimes, I'd take a short break to watch a great blue heron slowly, quietly stalk it's prey, then snap up it's dinner as quick as greased lightning. Plants began to bud, bloom, leaf-out, and grow berries. Frogs sang in the tree-wells and land snails slowly made their way from one side of the trail to the other. Coyotes would stop and stare at me, then vanish into the wilderness like smoke.
After I'd been doing this for a while, I ran into Adele Freeland coming down the trail. She stopped and asked me what I was doing and, when I told her, decided that she would join me in my effort. From that point on, Adele would trim the trail right along beside me at least once a week. We made a great team!
I was reporting my volunteer hours to The Friends Of The Hylebos Wetland and soon I began reporting the things I witnessed as well. Of course, I'm not an educated person, so I often didn't know or understand what I was seeing. Before I could tell someone else, I had to figure out what it was in the first place. That's when the research started and my stack of reference books began to challenge me in height. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn, and the more I wanted to share what I'd seen and learned with others.
In time, The Friends Of The Hylebos Wetland began publishing some of my observations in their newsletter. In 2004, I documented an entire year in the life of the West Hylebos Wetland, from March 2004 until March 2005. Then, I stopped. Many people asked me why I stopped writing and I told them that I'd documented a year in the life of the wetland and really couldn't see any good reason to repeat myself. After all, said I, March in the wetland is March in the wetland....one March is pretty much the same as the next.
And, that was the end of that until December 2009, when Chris Carrel once again asked me to contribute to The Blog From The Bog. I turned him down at first. Been there - done that, said I. Can't see any point in doing it again. That's when Chris asked me to please go back and look at my wetland file because it had been a very long time since I'd blogged the bog. I did, and to my utter surprise, I discovered that it had been six years since I'd written anything about the wetland. A lot of changes can occur in six years! Suddenly, the project piqued my interest again, so I promised Chris that I'd blog the bog for another year - from January 2010 until January 2011. The blogs you've been reading for the last twelve months are a result of that commitment.
Several months ago, people began asking me if I intended to turn the blog into a book. I think that they're really asking me whether this is ever going to turn into something they can put on their coffee tables. The answer to that question is no. I wouldn't know how to do that. What I do hope to do is go back over the blogs for the last year and compile them in such a way that there will be a single blog that records all of the events that happened in each single month of last year. In other words, a January blog, a February blog, a March blog, etc. If that works out, I might try to further compile the information into Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter blogs. I will also try to make a determined effort to visit the wetland once a week, or so, and detail whatever I find there.
This experience has been very exciting and one I've enjoyed very much. I hope that my readers have had as much fun with it as I have. I'm looking forward to sharing more adventures with you in 2011. It's a new year! Anything can happen!
Teri Lenfest
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