April 30, 2003
Volunteering - and digging it
I’ve done a lot of things in Fort Steilacoom Park.
Well, no, not that.
But a lot of other things: hiked, run, walked the dog, strolled, explored.
Finally, I got to dig.
Hundreds of Lakewood residents dragged themselves out of the house on a rainy Saturday for the a day of volunteering in the local parks. Every park in the city got some attention. Not surprisingly, there was an army of people carrying trash bags and roaming Fort Steilacoom Park. Strong members of the army used special devices to pull out Scotch broom, the yellow flowering bush that spreads like a bad idea in a bar.
The task in front of yours truly and other volunteers was to dig around laurel bushes in the cemetery. The cemetery holds the remains of more than 3,200 patients of Western State Hospital. Because of confidentiality issues – and the feeling of past generations toward mental illness – almost all the graves are identified by number only.
There were some old laurel bushes, planted decades ago, that were the size of houses when they were full-grown. Well, OK, maybe not that big. The state had come by and sheared them down to a few feet above ground. It was our job to dig around them in order to make room for a stump grinder.
So we took turns wielding pick and shovel and hoe. This was nasty work. But it is work with a special privilege. The laurel hedge was ungainly in a place that calls for grace, and it is particularly unattractive now that the bushes were sheared. But sure enough, new growth was heading several feet into the air. In some cases, branches had fallen and rooted in two places into the ground. If the plant world was like the human world, Scotch broom and Laurel would play professional football.
The bushes were also, to be blunt, starting to burrow into the graves.
That doesn’t seem so bad with a tree. One of my favorite spots in Seattle is the large redwood that arises from the grave of ‘Doc Maynard’ and his wife. That tree represents something. And there are trees in the patient cemetery as well. But laurel just does not belong. It seems to engulf and suffocate surrounding graves, not to soar as a memorial to the dead.
So why care about digging in dirt? I do that at home all the time. But this was the same land that Britisher Joseph Health tried to till in the 1840s, to little success (any of us who garden in Lakewood succeed in spite of, not because of, our gravelly soil).
This was the same land that was planted by the soldiers at Fort Steilacoom, who rented the Health buildings from the British. Later on, this land was a booming farm, staffed by Western State’s patients. And then they were buried near the lands they had tilled; hopefully at least at times a bright spot of some sort in grim and unfair lives.
And now I was digging in that soil.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I can cry as much as the next guy, but this was not one of those sentimental moments. It was just a nice moment. This land had gone from cultivation for survival, to cultivation for sale, to cultivation in honor of those who have come before. It seemed to be a natural progression - and it was an honor to participate.
I am currently trying to round up volunteers for our Civil War Re-enactment on Memorial Day Weekend; if you are interested in fun and volunteering in a historic context, let me know
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