A Circuitous Stroll

Bellingham writer Alan Rhodes is an inveterate saunterer and a compulsive cataloger of arcane knowledge and frivolous minutia. He can be reached at writealan@aol.com.

“It is a great art to saunter.”
—Henry David Thoreau

Bellingham is best explored unhurried and on foot, which I do often, being a dedicated saunterer who embraces that sublime art of “walking leisurely with no apparent aim.” Unlike my hero Thoreau, who shunned towns and walked only in the woods, I enjoy the occasional urban ramble. But even in the aimless act of sauntering, I can’t abandon an obsessive need to carry a notebook and scrawl observations on regional history, local color, neighborhood oddities, interesting people and, of course, highly opinionated commentary on everything. Whatcom Watch, in an obvious lapse of good judgment, has agreed to indulge me as I share some of these idiosyncratic strolls from time to time in months to come.

My saunters always follow the same pattern: park the car at a randomly chosen spot, start walking and be guided by whim and serendipity. Today I’ve parked on Holly Street, in front of Maritime Heritage Park. I’m standing right outside the Environmental Learning Center. Operated by the Bellingham Public Works Department, the center offers educational programs, with classes of local school kids arriving daily to learn about our shoreline and salmon.

I walk inside where I’m greeted by Kym Fedale, a dynamo of positive energy, who’s teaching a “Fishy Connections” class to a roomful of seven-year-olds, leading them in a spirited inquiry of “What makes a fish a fish?” She invites me to join in but, even though everyone is having a good time, it’s too nice a day to be in school, so I continue on.

Out on the sidewalk the city has erected an informational display board, where I read the sign explaining to visitors why they’re having a hard time finding their way around. Bellingham, it elucidates, was once four towns on four different grids—Sehome, Fairhaven, Bellingham and Whatcom—and each kept its own street names as they evolved into the single entity of Bellingham. That, combined with a geography that curves around a bay, has produced a town that’s only slightly more difficult to navigate than Cairo. The sign doesn’t mention that the situation is made even more difficult by the city’s penchant for practical jokes, one of them being the establishment of a plethora of pointless and confusing one-way streets.

I notice on an adjoining map that the Old Village Trail begins near here. I’m not familiar with this trail, so I go looking for it. As I walk through Maritime Heritage Park, the Whatcom County Museum looms above everything, dominating the bright blue summer sky. I love this building. Somehow it manages to be ungainly and Transylvanian, yet majestic and beautiful at the same time. Built in1892, this turreted, red brick behemoth served as City Hall for several decades before becoming a museum.

I head down the new boardwalk that runs alongside the RE Store, an Old Town favorite selling recycled materials to do-it-yourselfers. I once bought some used cabinets here for my garage and the salesman informed me that, because of the RE Store, Bellinghamsters have the “best appointed” garages in America. There’s something incongruous about the concept of a well-appointed garage, but I’m sure Martha Stewart would understand. Should I be dressing better when I go out to scoop the cat’s litter box?

Below the boardwalk, the shore of Whatcom Creek, once a parking lot, has been restored and planted with new vegetation. A great blue heron fishes in the creek and some office workers on a break sit with coffee cups at a picnic table. I wander around the salmon breeding pools and the park’s native plant trail, thinking about the increasing importance of this downtown oasis as office buildings and condos rise on its edges.

Not so long ago this park was a neglected eyesore, overgrown with blackberries and strewn with wine bottles. Local environmental heroes Elaine and Mike McRory were instrumental in its transformation, along with their great organization, the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association (NSEA). I like this group for two main reasons: (1) it accomplishes Herculean habitat restoration projects and (2) it has a really clumsy name. I remember being out here with NSEA on Earth Day several years ago, ripping out invasive plants. At the end of the day I was feeling remarkably happy and satisfied for someone who looked like he’d been diving into the blackberries rather than removing them.

Heading up the hill, I cross C and D Streets onto the Old Village Trail, which starts out along Bancroft Street. At Bancroft and F Street, I find myself in front of the house built by Captain George Pickett in 1856. The sign out front notes: “During the Indian War the same year, he erected Fort Bellingham to protect the settlers at Whatcom. In this house he and his Indian wife lived.”

This story is the stuff of good novels. Captain Pickett was up at Semiahmoo Bay (now Blaine) one morning, where he was smitten by a lovely maiden who carried a jug of water. She was an Indian girl named Sakis Tiigang, which means “Morning Mist.” (Is this romantic, or what?) They fell in love and married, and the captain built this pleasant home for them here at 910 Bancroft. When their son was born in 1857, Captain Pickett’s joy was brief, as his young wife died shortly afterward.

Later, as the nation plunged into civil war, Captain Pickett made two agonizing decisions. He resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and returned to his native Virginia to fight for the Confederacy. He knew that his child of a mixed marriage would never be accepted by Virginia society, so he left him behind to be brought up by friends, and was never to see him again. The son, James Tilton Pickett, grew up to be an important artist of the Northwest, and today his paintings hang in museums and public buildings in Washington and Oregon.

Captain Pickett’s house is locked this morning, so I call a contact number on the door, and June Perry cheerfully drives over to show me around. She’s a member of the Daughters of the Pioneers, the organization that maintains this historic landmark. All the ladies in the group can trace their ancestry back to Washington Territory prior to 1870.

June takes me through the house, points out the thick walls made of planks from Henry Roeder’s sawmill, gives me a little history of the place, shows me a couple of sketches by James Tilton Pickett. It’s a cozy little house, and I picture the captain and his young wife sitting here in the parlor, long before an office building blocked the view, and when Bellingham Bay came all the way up to where Holly Street is now.

By the way, I learned that if you want to see this place, you don’t have to call someone up like I did. It’s open the second Sunday of each month from 1 to 4 p.m.

Thanking June, I move on, passing a small parking lot where I’m sidetracked by a car plastered with anti-Bush bumper stickers. Being an enthusiastic Bush-basher, I start copying down some of my favorites, when an attorney comes out of the building wanting to know what I’m doing. I tell him I’m with Homeland Security and we’ve had him under surveillance. I’m tempted to leave it at that, but the poor chap looks so puzzled that I give him the straight story and continue my saunter.

Two tips if you’re ever on the Old Village Trail: (1) It’s really short, so don’t pack a lunch and (2) it breaks abruptly at H Street, so you have to wander around looking for its resumption. As I’m doing this, I come to the Bellingham Theater Guild. I’ve seen some great shows in this old building, my all time favorite being the 1999 production of the zany rock and roll, science fiction musical “Return to the Forbidden Planet.”

The Theater Guild goes back to 1929, when its first productions were staged in private homes. They moved around to various locations before buying this permanent place in 1944, a beautiful old Congregational Church that they purchased from an evangelical superstar of the day, Amiee Semple McPherson.

It seems appropriate that a theater would buy a church from Amiee, who was pretty theatrical herself. She liked to roar on stage on a motorcycle, dressed as a traffic cop, exhorting her followers to put a stop to sin. She had millions of radio fans, many still loyal even after she staged a fake kidnapping in order to seclude herself with her lover for five weeks in the Hollywood hills. The same year Amiee sold this church to the Theater Guild, she raptured herself off to heaven on an overdose of Seconal.

I see the Old Village Trail again, right across from the Theater Guild, running along Clinton Street. Clinton Street? It’s shown on the map as a street, but I know an alley when I see one. Picking up the trail again, I notice one of those “Adopt a Trail” signs. I really like this city program, in which organizations or individuals agree to watch over and maintain a trail or section of a trail. It reflects a community spirit that has always been a distinguishing quality of Bellingham. Whenever I see one of these signs, I always say thank you to whoever’s name is on it. This trail was adopted by Niki Thane. Thanks, Niki.

I continue my sunny perambulation down the Old Village Trail, which is taking me along the edges of the Lettered Streets, whose funky siren song invites me in, but I decline for now (another saunter, another essay). I feel quite at home here: lots of older cars with leftist bumper stickers, Pedal Project posters on telephone poles and an ancient garage that looks like the owner constructed it from chunks of pink marzipan. There is character here, a sense of place, texture-qualities missing in the cookie-cutter subdivisions sprouting up on the edges of town as we metastasize into Bellevue North, a tragic consequence of our “discovery” by the rest America. Bellingham seems to have made every magazine’s “best places to live” list over the past couple of years, resulting in run-away growth that threatens the very qualities that make this place desirable.

Coming to the trail’s end at Broadway, I cross to Elizabeth Park. The morning sun grows warm, so I plunge into the cool shadows of the park, quiet except for bird songs and the ponk-ponk-ponk of a tennis ball casually lobbed by two paunchy, uncompetitive players. I sit on a bench by the fountain, mesmerized by the splashing water. This little park is surrounded by my favorite part of the city, the Columbia neighborhood (also another essay, another time). This is the way much of America used to look—houses with individual personalities, a neighborhood park, stores and businesses within walking distance—before the voluntary diaspora to the suburbs began in the 1950s, with people willfully surrendering themselves to homogeneity, long commutes and lawn chemicals.

From the park I walk over to Eldridge Avenue and head north. There is an interesting blend of houses here, some relatively modest but most drop-dead palatial. It’s a beautiful stretch of residential street, with many of the homes bearing plaques indicating the original owner and date of construction, most falling between the late 1800s and the 1920s. The “Bolster Home, 1891” near the bridge over Squalicum Creek is a beauty, a massive Victorian structure painted in various purple hues.

But the knockout house is just across the bridge. Sitting back from the street is the Kennard Estate, a huge, imposing gray French chateau straight out of a movie. I half expect to see dandies in powdered wigs riding around in carriages. Instead, I see the owner, Mike Kennard, coming out to get his morning paper. He’s a big, bearded, Harley-riding guy with a booming voice and a ponytail. He’s friendly as all get-out and he gives me, on the spot, an extemporaneous lecture on the history of the house.

It was built by Hugh Eldridge, son of Edward Eldridge, the legendary figure who came here with Henry Roeder in the 1850s to set up a sawmill on Bellingham Bay. While Edward Eldridge prospered mightily in various enterprises, he had bad luck in the housing department. His house on the bluff above Squalicum Creek burned down in 1878, so he built a Victorian mansion at the same location, which burned down in 1894. Later, Edward’s son Hugh lived in a house built on the same location. Apparently Hugh inherited some bad residential karma from Dad, because he saw his house burn down in a forest fire in 1907.

In 1926 Hugh managed to build something on this spot that didn’t incinerate easily, this sprawling chateau that was still around for Mike Kennard to buy 68 years later.

Mike says that he receives never-ending solicitations from developers who want to buy his house. “If they push this place down,” he says, “they can build up to 17 houses here. But I’m not selling. First of all, it’s my home. Secondly, if you own something like this, you have a community responsibility.”

My own mild and balanced opinion is that anyone who would bulldoze this historic landmark to make a buck would be a contemptible and odious scapegrace with moral standards slightly below those of a crack dealer or child pornographer. I compliment Mike on his house and his ethical sensibilities and continue on my way.

Heading down Seaview Avenue to the bay, I come onto Squalicum Beach, completely deserted on this weekday morning. The air turns cool, fog rolls in and the only sounds are the cries of gulls and the hissing of waves washing over rocks. For a couple of minutes I pretend I’m a detective in a 1940s film noir, coming down to take another look at the spot where the beautiful heiress disappeared. (Sorry, but deserted foggy beaches have this effect on me.)

My sappy fantasy ends abruptly when the sun returns, so I walk down to the pier and use the Bay to Baker trail to take me back up from the beach and through Little Squalicum Park, a tranquil spot on land once owned by Edward Eldridge. I emerge into the Birchwood neighborhood where I meander for a while. It’s comfortable, unpretentious and reminds me of the working class neighborhood where I grew up: cats snoozing on porch chairs, tricycles on lawns and unfinished do-it-yourself projects that seem to say, “I know this should be done by now, but the weather’s been so nice that I took the family camping instead.”

It’s lunch time when I get back to Maritime Heritage Park where I started, so I walk a little way up Holly Street to the Old Town Cafe, a place with great food, a laid back, counterculture ambiance and the friendliest waiters and waitresses in town.

I sip my coffee and listen to a young man and woman with guitar and mandolin singing “Red River Valley” with a heartbreaking sweetness so poignant and nostalgic that I want the song to go on forever. As I sit in this pleasant cafe that seems to stay the same year after year, for a minute or so I feel sad. We are seeing this town beginning to change rapidly, with the real possibility that much of what makes it special will be lost to economic forces that care nothing for tradition or history or sense of place.

Will we go the way of many other communities, becoming so large, franchised, prepackaged, homogenized and gentrified that we wake up one day and don’t know who we are anymore?

Or do we have the vision and the energy and the will to resist? §