Memories & Restored Fotos from two family camping trips a year apart to Lake Wenatchee State Park and nearby Nason Creek Campground in the surrounding Wenatchee National Forest, May 2005 & May 2006
*This is an unfinished work in progress. Please enjoy anyway. Thank you.*
Snakes! Kate with a corn snake, Monroe, WA. Memorial Day Weekend, Monday 30 May 2005. Here’s she’s about 6 and a half years old.
Horses! Talia upon a horse in Lake Wenatchee State Park, WA. Sunday 28 May 2006. Talia had recently turned 4 years old.
These were our last camping trips to Nason Creek and Lake Wenatchee of a particular family configuration. Kristina and I along with 2 of our 3 kids. I don’t think my oldest, Morgan, who changed her name to Dylan in 2018, joined us on these particular adventures. She was was a busy tween and chose to stay behind with her Mom, Gwen, to be with her school friends. For a couple of more years we would return to the same area, but by then we had our own house out on River Road near the village of Plain. Then we lost the home along with our North Seattle house in the Great Global Recession.
Kristina hadn’t spent much time out in this part of her native state of Washington before. She grew up way out on the Olympic Peninsula just outside the national park there and then spent a decade abroad. So exploring the wild backcountry of the Cascade Range was new to her. She was happy to let me put together a series of fun backcountry adventures for both our family and for ourselves.
Furthermore, a few years earlier Gwen and I took first Morgan/Dylan and then Kate out to the area between Stevens Pass, Leavenworth, Wenatchee, Lake Wenatchee, and the Glacier Peak Wilderness for our adventurers. Baby Morgan’s first camping trip ever was at Bridge Creek National Forest Campground at Icicle Creek outside of Leavenworth. So this area was a major destination for our combined family for parts of 15-20 years. As an adult I’m blessed with many wonderful memories there, and I hope this foto essay helps my children remember what fun times they had waaay back when they were so little.
So these pictures recovered from the 2010 house fire and restored on my iMac constitute both a legacy work for my family and their descendants. This is also for anyone else interested in a view into our blended family dynamics and camping adventures during a unique time in the history of Early 21st Century Cascadia. Enjoy!
William & Kate Bass at the state park Riding Stables so Kate & Talia could go for “horsie rides.” Sunday 29 May 2005.
After getting Kate set up for her horsie ride. The trip was a mellow, 2-mile guided ride thru the forests of Lake Wenatchee State Park.
Little Kathryn, only 6 here, proved to be at ease on a horse. Indeed, she quickly outgrew these rides & enjoyed them anyway.
There they go! Kate’s way up there in the front middle.
Talia is excited and quiet at the same time. Here she sits in her Mama’s lap. Kristina used to ride horses long ago, and later on Talia took equestrian lessons, including feeding horses and cleaning up after them.
Out of the woods and into the sunshine! Kristina & Talia trottin’ along.
Kristina & Talia approaching the riding stables. Lake Wenatchee State Park, Washington. Sunday 29 May 2005.
Stopping to have a chat with Kate, who stands to the left in the edge of the picture.
Kristina dismounts. All things come to an end. Why? It’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics at play, silly!
Katie at the riding stables.
Yes, Kate’s quite proud of herself and is reluctant to leave. She wants to stay with her horse.
Kathryn Elizabeth. What is going on in her mind? She is so curious & loves to engage.
Now we wish Morgan Hannah was here with us! Talia has the stillness of a Buddha-like meditator and observes actions in such a way it’s as if she transcends time. Here she is fearless! We’re at the highly regarded Reptile Zoo in Monroe, a town in the Skykomish River Valley we stopped in on our way home to Seattle. Memorial Day Monday the 30th of May 2005.
“It’s just a little corn snake, Dada.”
“See?”
“Hmn. Well, I don’t really want it crawling inside my dress any further!” Kristina laughed and called her outfit a “corn snake dress,” but this afternoon I am reminded of Prehistoric Pagan Goddesses standing in their power with a mighty snake held up high to the sky in each powerful hand.
Kate has a snake, too!
“See? No problem!”
Calm. Cute. And…”Well, what do I do with this thing?”
Uh Oh!
“Got it! See? Everything’s OK. But, uh, I’m kinda done now? How do I put this snake back in its house?”
Talia takes another snake! I don’t remember if it was the same serpent Katie held.
Did I ever tell y’all my kids are strange? As weird as their amazing parents? See, my youngest likes to kiss snakes.
A year later back at Nason Creek Campground in the national forest near Lake Wenatchee. Talia & Dada burn marshmallows. Saturday night on the 27th of May, Memorial Day Weekend 2006.
Talia Kristina eyes the hot, gooey, sticky s’more we made together.
Yummy!
Another perspective! Nothing quite like dressing in white and getting all dirty going camping in the dirt and gobbling down big, messy s’mores! Another, please!
Talia pedals around the campground. Hey, this Trek Mountain Cub bicycle with training wheels is an icon of family history! First Morgan, then Kate, and now Talia learned to ride bikes on this little machine after they graduated from trikes. Hey, this would now be a vintage little kid’s bike! Go, Talia, Go!
Pure childhood joy! Perhaps I should’ve titled this foto essay, “Snakes, Horses, & Bikes!”
Reflectors! And we all had fun this Saturday night! Well, Kate & Talia broke the zipper to their tent door in the old North Face Bullfrog 2P Tent I bought in Lander, Wyoming back in the Summer of 1986. Hey, that was 20 years ago! Gwen & I used that sturdy dome-tube hybrid on many an adventure! At first we were a bit peeved, then laughed and shrugged as, hey, perhaps after 2 decades, it was time. Y’know? Kristina & I had our own tent, tho, but those two had to stay in their own broken-door tent with a roll of duct tape! And, oh, there were little bitty ants & little bitty mosquitoes squeaking on inside…and little bitty spiders…
Back on the horsies! Yay! We’re at the Lake Wenatchee State Park Riding Stables, Sunday 28 May 2006.
Kate is ready to go! All in due time, of course.
Kathryn Elizabeth loves animals! Here she is with her horse on Sunday the 28th of May in 2009. Kate’s only 9 & a half years old here. Gosh, I love my girls! I miss these times, and am glad they’re all grown and growing and building out their own lives in these crazy times. Life goes on, generation after generation. Eventually even all these artifacts will disappear and the memories may fade, but the love? Ahhh, well, love is forever!
William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 23 July 2019
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia
Sol
Copyright © 2019 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.