The park bench that has been placed down at the lagoon startles me nearly every time I see it.

It has a dedication to someone, someone’s father, who loved the area, but here my selfishness kicks in.

No one ever knew about this place until ten or fifteen years ago when the Land Trust turned it into a park, and now it’s a place where people congregate.

Who am I to be so selfish?  After all, this was all Salish land and sea, inhabited by the Puyallup tribe long before any of us got here.

Later on, in the early 1900’s, there was a road that wound along the lower bank and crossed over a bridge at the mouth of the lagoon, by a fish hatchery.  The road connected to the Dockton Road up the hill on the other side of the lagoon, but I didn’t learn about that until I was an adult.  The rumor was that the wealthy land owner, who owned all the land around it, burned down the hatchery, and of course he never got caught.  But that was long before I was ever here.

When I was six, and living across the street from my Nana’s house, where I currently live, my two friends, Ricky and Warren and I made our way down to the lagoon one day to play.  The paved road stopped at the old Sparrow estate, a dilapidated mansion like something from a gothic novel, with a tall white fence around it in need of paint.

Beyond that the dirt road ran straight for a hundred yards before twisting through the Scots broom and madrona trees down to the opening of the lagoon.

We crossed the outlet stream where at low tide the water from the lagoon trickled out onto the beach. We counted the starfish there and startled a heron, as we made our way to the enormous stump and roots of a tree washed up on the shore on the opposite side.  The magnificent roots sprawled upward, creating a perfect place to climb.  It was our pirate ship and we played there all day long.

When we turned to go home, the tide had come in, and we were blocked from getting back across the channel.  The slow trickle of a stream was gone, and now the water rushing into the lagoon was now six feet deep and twelve feet wide with a strong current.  Since we couldn’t get across we decided to hike around.

The outlet poured onto the beach, which was rocky, but the shores of the lagoon were mud and clay.  It was nothing but a mudflat at low tide.  The soft mud went deep and sucked at our shoes. We took them off to carry them instead.

Part way around, a woman came down from her house to yell at us, saying that we were scaring her horses.  So we decided to wade across, the three of us.  Three six year old kids.

I remember holding my shoes up over my head.  The mud and clay came up to my knees, and the water came up to my chest.   I’m amazed that we made it home.

There’s a park bench there now, on the west side of the lagoon toward the beach.  A green grassy area often crowded with geese or kayakers slopes gently down to the lagoon, which has been dredged out to keep the water deep enough for boaters.  But it’s just not the same.