Foolish Mortal Jumps into a Beaver's Pond

Dear Diary,

I'm very confused.

It's fairly clear that I've written about Beaver Pond Natural Area in your pages twice before, in the obvious places to look, the everything hikes.  In "South to and from Northgate" in May 2020, I wrote "The Natural Area extends northeast of the trail system, but I've found no entrances or maps".  In "A Hike in Northgate, part II" in May 2021, I wrote "And from here I was able to clamber up the embankment to Roosevelt Way NE".

Well, Beaver Pond Natural Area's full extent is from 5th Ave NE to Roosevelt Way NE.  (Also from NE 100th St to the level of NE 108th St.)  And my map dated 2019 shows that full extent.

So the mystery is not, as I'd thought, why I only learnt of this park in bits and pieces.  Rather, it's why I've twice now only remembered bits and pieces, and faulted my past self for knowing less than I actually had known.  And I think maybe it's because this park is being actively worked on.  In 2021 I clearly said I found nothing at the dead end of 9th Ave NE, but that wasn't the case this time at all.  So if I only visit it at long intervals and find everything changed, I'm inclined to blame my past knowledge, rather than assume a park, of all things, has changed while I wasn't looking.

Well, let me write about and show you, dear Diary, photos of the park of 2026, in hopes that next time I'll be kinder to myself.

Beaver Pond Natural Area consists of four city blocks diagonally arranged.  (It doesn't fully occupy most of those blocks, but anyway.)

Here's an OpenStreetMap map, stippled background courtesy of Microsoft Paint.

On August 4th I was proud of myself for quickly finding that there were official trails in those two southwestern blocks, and not just the shorter unofficial trail near the bus stop.

But then I got home, found out about the other two blocks, and promptly and wrongly blamed my past self.

So on August 7th, I went back determined to get to know the northeastern two blocks.  I found no entrance of more than a few feet into the third block, the one OSM puts an actual beaver pond into.

However, that was enough to take one of my most successful photos of water, maybe part of the pond.

Twenty minutes later, I reached the dead end of 9th, and what a difference five years make.

Since this fourth block is the only one fully included in the park, it has the most opportunity for trails and variety, and the Thornton Creek Alliance has delivered.  I wrote about the primaeval in 2021, and felt the same thing this time, because of the giant trees.

The park may not be done changing, since they evidently continue to monitor conditions:

Somehow I ended up finding a map last of all.  It's a bit unclear because the bright colour is the creek, not the trail, but maybe it's good enough.

 

And isn't that just like life, to find the map only when it's all done?  I still hope to write two more pages in you tonight, dear Diary, but we'll see.  Happiness until then, anyway.

Building a Baseline, part III: Around Northgate

Dear Diary,

Well, I've finished the spreadsheet, uploaded it and shared it, so if I'm extremely lucky, people can now read or download it from here:

Google Drive link 

The total places I'm trying to visit turn out to be 500 - 323 city owned, 126 from OpenStreetMap, and 51 from The Emerald City Resource Guide. 

Today I don't think I can hike at all; but I can write.  And it turns out, there's a lot of news - to me, at least - in this area.  Here's a map.  I should probably tell you, dear Diary, that while I'm writing on my phone, I'm doing most of the work on my Windows laptop.  (My Linux laptop, on which I'd written you for years, is broken.). So this map represents a learning curve.  It is, of course, based on OpenStreetMap.

I covered several of these places in two parts in the third series of regional hikes in May 2021, so I've felt free to not photograph everything this time.

And now to start, in hiking order:

August 4

The news didn't really start this day. 

Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel (A on map)

I've shown you this Seattle Public Utilities park, I think, several times now.  Its address is 330 NE 100th St, and it stretches north to 103rd, near the exit there from the transit station.  It's in the Thornton Place apartment complex.

This time I hiked all the trails, as promised, and found neither restrooms nor water fountains.  It does have lots of benches, and, being an SPU park, lots of explanatory signs.

So I just settled for two photos.  One sign, and one glimpse of the reason the park exists, the South Fork of Thornton Creek.

Maple Leaf Community Garden (B)

This is one of the two P-patches in North Seattle owned by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  Its address is 529 NE 103rd St.  It's really a P-patch, a shared garden, but has an interesting tower, which I've shown you before, dear Diary, so this time I settled for photographing a bench with words written on it whose sententiousness pleased me.

 

Beaver Pond Natural Area (C)

OK, this is sort of news.  Years ago, dear Diary, I told you about this park, and then told you I'd gotten it all wrong, and the park was actually twice as big as I'd thought.  So it's extremely humiliating to discover that I was wrong then too, and the park is actually four times as big as I'd originally thought, twice as big as my revised version.

As a result, I have much more to tell you, dear Diary, about this park, than will fit here, so see a separate page coming soon.

I should say, though, that my main memory of this park was that it had lots of litter, and I didn't find any this time.  Also, the part I found first is the basis of its address, 10300 5th Ave NE.  Right next to a bus stop.

Northgate Park (D)

I thought, on August 4th, that the water fountain in this quite bland lawn of a park (address for both the park and the community center below:  10510 5th Ave NE) was the only example of our core topic, water fountain or restroom, that I'd find in this area.  This turned out to be wrong.  That said, the fountain was running, and I refilled my bottle there.

Northgate Branch Library (E)

I verified that the restrooms were open and the water fountains running, and that was that.  Address:  10548 5th Ave NE.

Northgate Community Center (F)

The story is pretty much told in the recent part in "Under Construction".

Hubbard Homestead (G)

This one, too:  link.  With a link to a whole part about this park in the regional hike of May 2021.  Address:  11203 5th Ave NE.

Victory Creek Park (H)

The reason I had to tell you, dear Diary, about the strange absence of litter in Beaver Pond Natural Area, is the severe contrast with Victory Creek Park, whose address is 1056 NE Northgate Way.

This is a very weird park.  It's a few benches and a former playground versus a daylit creek, the titular one, a tributary of the South Fork.  As I mentioned in the "Under Construction" page about Hubbard Homestead, it's adjacent to a QFC, usually entered through the parking lot.  I'm not sure whether to admire Parks for sticking to the fact of the daylit creek, or pity the neighbours who might want a more conventional park.  But I can't help wondering whether the litter says what it isn't politically correct to say out loud, that nature isn't the only thing people want out of parks.

At any rate, I made one attempt to photograph the creek, and took a photo meant to illustrate what it's like walking this park's trails.

August 5

The news starts here. 

Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area (I)

This is one of 2 1/2 Seattle Parks parks in North Seattle that I couldn't find in 2020-2023, as I'm sure you, dear Diary, remember.  Well, this time it was easy.  The King County Parcel Viewer steered me right there, and the address, 1039 NE 108th St, slots this tiny park in right where it should be, between 1019 and 1223.

See, it's the property on that block that isn't just fenced, it's walled:

I trespassed a bit onto 1223's lawn to find the reason.  Someone had littered a boat there!

August 7

This was the day I spent on Beaver Pond Natural Area.

August 18

Northgate Mall's Central Park (J)

Over the years that Northgate Mall has seemed to consist mostly of construction fences, I've occasionally looked at the mall's  Central Park, but all I remember seeing was a concrete plaza where people were sitting on that trendy "bistro" furniture and presumably discussing shopping strategies.

This time, I decided I owed it to the mall, this odd neighbourhood's centerpiece, to look more carefully.  And lo and behold, one level down, there's a small playfield, there was a girls' team practicing there, 

and what was that behind them?

Now, dear Diary, for good reason it's been an article of faith for me that privately owned parks in North Seattle just don't do plumbing.  But the surprises didn't end there.

Look, ma!  It is possible!  A restroom whose door opens to the outside, not just near Northgate, but actually in Northgate Mall!

Who knows?  Come the next pandemic, this restroom may be open.

Well, a lost park found, and a privately owned outdoor restroom, surprises enough, but there's one more to come.

September 1

King County Veterans Program (K)

On page 137 of The Emerald City Resource Guide, 8th edition, in the chapter "Veteran Services", we read:

Provides emergency financial assistance, housing system coordination, case management, social work, and education and employment resources.  Documents required include proof of service (prior or current) as an active duty or reservist member, documentation of King County residency, and proof of income eligibility for financial assistance. 

This program is at 9725 3rd Ave NE, not at all far south of the transit station, but an office building much too swanky to have sidewalks.

This occasions a certain amount of culture clash with some of the program's clients:

Northgate Station (L)

On September 1st, I bought my bus pass at Roosevelt Station, and then explored the station looking for restrooms, for practice.  So it was a welcome surprise to find the ones at Northgate Station, one of whose addresses is 100 NE 103rd St, the first place I looked.

And, yes, the rules were as I'd vaguely remembered:

But the surprise came after I'd put this phone away.  I saw a security guard escorting a customer or two, no surprise given that procedure, but all the guard seemed to do was push the door open.

That mezzanine is not really outside, but if Sound Transit has actually given up on keeping restrooms locked by default, a pattern that goes way back to before Sound Transit itself existed, to when there used to be token restrooms in suburban transit centres, that's very good news.

Anyway, no more surprises, just an SPU property not big enough to be one of their best.

Northgate Pump Station (M)

Near as I can tell, the only example of SPU park style here, at 400 NE 115th St, is a couple of big, old trees.

But that isn't nothing.

Well, dear Diary, that's my baseline for Northgate:

Northgate Park - running water fountain

Northgate Mall - triple water fountain, the parts for humans and dogs running, the part for bottles not running; gendered single user stalls open

Northgate Station - ungendered single user stalls apparently open, and you may rest assured I'll be checking further on that

Let me rest some before explaining to you my career of error about Beaver Pond Natural Area.  Happy times until then.

Building a Baseline, part II: North Seattle Remit

Dear Diary,

Today I did a lot of hiking, and I have a lot to tell you about it.  I could tell you right now about what I found 1) near Northgate, 2) near Seattle's northwest corner, and 3) near Bitter Lake Reservoir.  But I have to go back to the neighbourhood 4) around Bitter Lake itself tomorrow, and then it's supposed to pour rain.

So I think I probably can't finish these hikes before the quarter begins September 21st, and I'm not sure how close I can come.  On the other hand, I have arguably five parks to tell you, dear Diary, about, that I've never told you about before.  So I think the way I'm doing this is worthwhile, and am unlikely to retrench much.

Especially since it's actually true that Seattle's parks are often in fairly inconvenient locations.  Much of my planning had as its goal interrupting boring long walks with other things for me to do.  I've pretty much succeeded.  Most of North Seattle is, on the maps I drew, full of interesting places to go.  So the purpose of this part of this page is to explain to you what I consider interesting.  Especially since it turns out I thought pretty much the same things were interesting when I planned regional hikes in 2021 and 2023.

So OK.  My maps have basically three sources:  real property reports; OpenStreetMap as constrained by the King County Parcel Viewer; and the 8th edition of The Emerald City Resource Guide.

Real Property Reports

First the easy stuff.  I started with the 2013 report, listing everything in it.  Then I went through comparing it with the 2025 report, since the city didn't release the actual spreadsheet this year.

Finally, I compared the result to the 2020 report, adding anything that had been acquired since 2013, or anything they hadn't thought to list in 2013.  One of the purpose of doing this is to find out how many of these properties listed in 2020, but not in 2025, these leases, easements, and whatnot, are actually showing signs of city involvement, and of similar purpose, today.  I don't know for how long the 2020 listings can remain good, and want a calibration.  If I have more money later, I can file a Public Records Act request, and get updates that way, but for now hiking is easier.

I did all this in spreadsheets, to make it easier to add data from other real property reports later. 

Anyway, most of the real property reports are sorted by department, and which department a property belongs to greatly influences whether I ended up listing it.

Let's start with the big and the obvious:

I'm going to every property listed in any of those three reports as belonging to the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.

Also, I list, and will go to, community centers and pools separately from the parks they occupy, and list and will visit all shoreline street ends and all waterways.  (But I know I already showed you, dear Diary, photographs of those last, one each of the waterways and three each of the street ends, so I probably won't photograph most of them this time.  This also applies regionally; I photographed much more in Bitter Lake than in Northgate, which I covered in a regional hike in May 2021.)

Beyond Parks, let's go through the departments in the 2013 report's order:

Department of Information Technology:  They only listed one site in Seattle, which I listed.

Department of Finance and Administrative Services:  They list tons of sites for tons of departments that don't pay attention to this stuff.  I listed fire and police stations, for example.  In 2021 I had qualms about photographing fire stations because firemen live there close to half the time, but the first one I came to offered the public blood pressure tests, so I went ahead.  The fire station I photographed tonight doesn't have a sign about those tests, and does have a sign saying "Key card access only", but it seems firemen still do offer such tests, so I'll go on photographing.  FAS also lists other things worth visiting.  What I'm not doing, this time, is visiting any "snippets" or "parcels" of theirs.

Office of Housing:  They never list all that much, nowhere near as much as they're actually involved with, but everything they do list, I do too.

Seattle City Light:  I reliably find their properties and former properties (they burn through substations like nobody's business) interesting.  Sometimes an SCL property is a six acre park enclosed in a steel fence.  Sometimes it's a tiny house village.  You never know.  So I've listed all those that Seattle appears still to own.

Seattle Department of Transportation:  With them, on the other hand, what you see is what you get.  So I list anything they imply is a park.  (Peace Park is theirs.)

Seattle Public Utilities:  They parkify a lot of their property, and I like their style.  Much of their property, like 1/7th of Bitter Lake or their operations in distant places, is outside what I'm willing to deal with, and some, like a 5 square foot standpipe, doesn't make sense to me, but any time they claim enough North Seattle land to find, I want to see it.

Seattle Center:  Doesn't own any land in North Seattle.

Department of Neighborhoods:  All they ever claim is P-patches, city sponsored gardening plots for people.  Two of these are official North Seattle parks, and I've already photographed bits of those, but in general I don't think I'm all that good at photographing garden plants, and intend, with most, just to make text references, either "this park" or "this neighbourhood also contains a P-Patch".  But I've listed them all, so I can show you, dear Diary, the signage for the ones not in parks, and so I can give in to inspiration if it comes.

Seattle Public Library:  I list all their properties in the area of concern.

OpenStreetMap

This is the most optional category, but not very optional.

I looked for big campuses, all over North Seattle.  Several major institutions - both colleges, and both shopping malls - actually qualify by having outdoor water fountains and/or restrooms whose doors open to the outside.  Hospitals, not so much.

Reading Ken Ilgunas's book at the same time, I looked for fences:  Cemeteries.  Playgrounds.  Exclusive parks.  Playgrounds brought in most, but not all, of the schools in North Seattle, and one reason I have to go back to Bitter Lake is that the signage at Broadview-Thompson confused me, and I had to look up the policy, which does say, as I remembered from my first years in Seattle, that public school playgrounds and playfields are open to the public, but under conditions that will get much tighter once daylight saving time ends.  Playgrounds also bring in Seattle Children's Hospital.

Although I concluded there were too many undeveloped streets to visit, and on too shaky legal ground, I added a few really substantial ones in precisely two of the neighbourhoods that maintain exclusive parks, Blue Ridge and North Beach.  Because I really want to know what's been done with those.

When I went along I-5 in 2023, besides talking about encampments, I discussed the land's potential, and I've given myself the opportunity to re-address that topic. 

At the last minute, I added the light rail stops.

These added over 100 places to go, to about 300 city-owned. 

A terminological note

I think I'll need to use clearer words for non-governmental parks.  Most admit the public, though some require fees; these are privately owned.  Some don't admit the public; these are exclusive.

Emerald City

I wanted to introduce agencies, whether governmental, non-profit, or even occasionally for-profit, who help homeless people, and I knew I didn't know enough about such agencies to do the job myself.  So I outsourced the job to the people who do a professional list each year, the Real Change News people.  North Seattle is a real backwater in the book they produce, but I found 58 more addresses.

Summing up

So I have about 450 places to go, and have already visited maybe 40.

I went to 20 today, it took a lot out of me, and I have a few to return to and a lot of writing to do.  I've given up hope of doing a downtown baseline this year, and I think I have to give up hope of finishing by September 21st.  The hard deadline is early November, when Christina Hirsch will announce that work has already begun on turning off water fountains and closing restrooms.

Until tomorrow, then, dear Diary, and good night.