Dear Diary,
Hello again! My new laptop turns out not to want me to sign out of Google, so it crashes at least once a week when I finish writing a page or two in you. I hope it didn't hurt you this time.
Anyway, this page returns us to Jackson Park, but this time to the parts that, as far as I know, aren't leased to a private company, but are managed by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, which owns them. That is, the Jackson Park Perimeter Trail. I wrote in you already a whole page about this trail, to which I refer below. As noted in that page, a substantial part of the Trail is actually ordinary sidewalks, and I doubt very much that the parks department either owns or manages those parts. But I haven't included any photographs of those parts below, either.
One thing I have to announce, though; a digression of sorts. When I started to write you, dear Diary, including that page, I believed that the pandemic had led Seattle's mayor, Jenny Durkan, to put aside what appears to be her personal hatred for homeless people, which in turn made pretty much every city employee a probable enemy to me personally, for the greater good. She explicitly allowed us to camp in parks, in particular. She suddenly stopped what had been a torrent of no-notice sweeps, indulging in only one or two per season. She arranged for our trash to be collected and for us to get masks, although those two things bypassed me personally - I'd long tended to my own trash, and got masks elsewhere.
But in recent months, she's gradually been moving back toward her former dedication to destroying the lives of as many homeless people as possible. I find this movement hard to calibrate. When we get to downtown Lake City, we'll see examples of why; another example is that all of the recent park sweeps have had notice, allowing those who don't wish to participate to pack up and move out, as had usually been the case, after an agreement made by previous mayor Ed Murray, until Durkan took office. But, in particular, the recent uptick in sweeps amounts to a declaration that she no longer considers the recommendations of the CDC against sweeps, for fear of spreading COVID-19, a constraint.
I can't afford to get that calibration wrong. So although up 'til now I've written freely in you, dear Diary, about homeless people's presences in parks, I now have to assume that anything I write may be used against them. I've already, therefore, self-censored what I've written in you recently, and this will continue, as long as I keep writing you, at least until we have a Seattle mayor whose animus against homeless people, if any, lacks the personal edge Durkan's appears to have.
With that said, then, I'll get on with telling you, and showing you, about some aspects of the Jackson Park Perimeter Trail that don't have to do with the homeless.
A map:
In the previous page I showed you a standard parks sign that doesn't admit the trail even exists, focusing on the golf course the trail circumnavigates. But there is a sign announcing the trail near the same entrance:
The fourth line of that sign is obscured by leaves in this photo, but what it says is "Please use the trail at your own risk". This is explained more clearly in a sign nearby addressed to people who park in the adjacent lot:
I've hiked this trail at least four times now, each time I've visited, and have yet to see a single golf ball fly over the fence, or notice one near the trail; but perhaps if I walked it every day, I'd see plenty of them.
The first stages of the trail are pretty urban, what with that parking lot, fences, and all, but there are still some impressive trees:
Eventually the trail broadens out into a wide expanse of park that isn't behind the golf course's fence. This is part of the reason I think the parks department's division of the park into golf course and trail is misleading; it doesn't leave room for things like this:
Well, this is all well and good, but there are also clearer signals that one is nearing the entrance to the golf course. For one thing, an art work actually adjacent to the trail:
which, of course, comes with an artist's statement:
And not far south of the trail, a street sign:
As I noted in the previous page, at this point in the trail one should see cars heading for parking lots. Walk through the westernmost (leftmost) parking lot; at its far end from the trail, the path uphill to the buildings, in particular the restrooms and water fountains, begins. (I actually, on this visit, took the photos from the previous page and then walked the trail, before using those restrooms.)
If, however, the walker continues on the trail instead of succumbing to the lure of bodily relief, the reward comes soon: a map. With topographical lines, though I have no idea how well they came out in my photo.
Not far after that, for the first time the trail gets far enough both from the golf course fence on one side and from the houses on the other that for a little while I felt like I was really in the woods:
Not long after that, comes the first bridge over the North Fork of Thornton Creek:
The main thing I have to correct in the previous page is my comment on "the trail's only actual stairs, paved". I think I meant, there, that I think stairs have to be of artificial material, and these are. But there's one significant set of steps close together made of dirt and wood, not far from the paved stairs in the northeastern part of the trail, and plenty of steps elsewhere in the trail; it really isn't ADA-navigable for any significant distance.
I took a few other photos, but they have to do with abandoned campsites, so I'll leave them out.
Coming next: two parks and a P-Patch right next door to Jackson Park. Enjoy the time until that page, dear Diary.
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