A Hike in Northgate, part I

Dear Diary,

How are you today?  I'm hoping to burden you with at least five more pages, finishing Wednesday's hikes, and then a couple more on my next plans, so I hope you're doing well.

When I first planned the hikes for the region between I-5 and Lake City Way NE in Seattle, there was this scary hike featuring way too many sites.  So I split it up.  There's less distance between this hike and the next than between any of the other pairs in the region - yes, that's right, the walk from Hubbard Homestead to the Seattle Public Library's Northgate branch is longer than the walk across Roosevelt Way NE, or perhaps more to the point, the walk from Beaver Pond Natural Area to Victory Creek Park.

But this one featured lots more photos, because I documented Beaver Pond fairly fully, but wimped out on both Victory Creek Park and Kingfisher Natural Area.  So this one has to be split into two parts.

A map (for both parts; A through C are in this one, D through F in the other, and yes, that means I'm splitting Beaver Pond up):

The Seattle Public Library, Northgate branch

The postcard shot:

The mostly closed doors:

Northgate Park and Community Center

I assume the Community Center is still closed to the public, but don't know, because it's been closed to the public.  Let me start the explanation with this photo:

There's still a "sanican" in Northgate Park, although it was supposed to be so "temporary" that it didn't deserve a place on a winter hygiene map.  It's still from the main company Seattle uses.  But this time, unlike January, it's locked.  Presumably the people who have the keys are the people it was put there for, the employees of the Curative testing site in the park.

Curative is a company founded in California in January 2020 which quickly turned to become mainly a COVID-19 testing company.  For their one-year anniversary, the FDA announced that their tests were prone to false negatives, that is, to telling (specifically) asymptomatic carriers of the disease that they didn't have it.  Nevertheless, since that time they've felt confident enough to shut off large parts of Northgate Park.  Not the playground:

and not the water fountain, which for a second year in a row isn't running:

But Curative is comfortable blocking both doors of the Community Center:

and making access to the notice board dubious:

One basically has to choose, when arriving at the park, between the lawn, and the (largely blocked) paved access to various places:

And while I was there Wednesday, they had a mild-mannered, lab-coated, but very large man there to enforce all these rules.

The Jackson Park Golf Course pays Seattle rent.  Does Curative?  And if so, was the rent calculated to include blocking public access to so much of the park, and all of the community center?

It's interesting that at a time when everyone else is moving towards looser rules, this park is moving in the other direction.  For how long does Curative get to do this?  For how many more months, or years?

Beaver Pond Natural Area

For "South to and from Northgate" last year, I walked the southwestern block of this park pretty fully, and then completely ignored the northeastern block.  This page includes my photos of the southwestern block, but I didn't turn toward the northeastern block until after visiting two more places, one of which gave me the clue I needed to find a way into that block.

So OK.  The southwestern half of Beaver Pond Natural Area is essentially a single trail built around the South Fork of Thornton Creek, and it's right across the street from Northgate Mall, so it's pretty popular, and pretty littered.  (As a Natural Area, of course, it offers no trash cans.)  It connects to four entrances, three of which include stairs:

These entrances, which are marked with dots on the map above, are on NE 103rd and 104th Streets east of 5th Ave NE, and on NE 104th and 105th Streets west of 8th Ave NE.  The 105th entrance is the one without stairs.

One doesn't always feel present in a primæval wilderness there.

It also has a surprising number of trees evidently not felled by beavers:

But parts of it can feel pretty natural:

And it does, in particular, get the hiker pretty close to the creek:

However, there's a warning about that creek:

so don't get too close.

I have a few more pictures of the other half ready for the next page.  Until then, dear Diary.  I intend to work until 10 P.M., and then resume at 8 A.M. tomorrow.