The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got some groundbreaking news for all you Camano North Enders:  we found Lost Lake.  Down by us, we don’t lose lakes.  Course, we don’t have any lakes.  Got some ponds that dry up in the summer.  Got some garden features.  Even got a couple of seasonal streams.  We know where they are, although we don’t give em names.  Laziness,  I suppose.  Too damn much trouble to name a creek that dries up every summer drought.  Then it really would make sense if we named it Lost River or Hidden Creek.    For a couple months, anyway…..

I was driving around recently doing my usual Lewis and Clark on Camano, exploring the backroads in case we get another major road improvement detour, maybe come up with a Northwest Passage to Stanwood nobody has discovered yet, and right past Dry Lake Road —- another water feature disappeared — there it was: Lost Lake.  I swerved right in.  About 15 seconds later I was lost.  Which is why it’s probably called Lost Lake.  Not the lake — you!  I found the lake pretty quick.  Getting out of the labyrinth was a couple days of dead end cul-de-sacs, refusing to ask directions until the gas tank hit E.

Lots of places get lost on the “island you can drive to”.  Folks just hit the mainline to the bridge and rarely explore the tributaries.  I meet people all the time who live on Camano and have never been beyond their own blacktop turn-off.  No interest, I guess.  Maybe the high gas prices.  Fear of the unknown.  Who knows?  They started homesteading their 40 acres and left further exploration of the hinterlands to latter day  adventurers such as myself.  Which means reporting back to civilization was spotty, if not outright, rip-roaring, belief-shredding lies and legends.

The South End, while not exactly lost, is very rarely found.  Occasionally I’ll find a car cruising slowly, window rolled down to ask directions.  How far to the Whidbey Island ferry an elderly couple asked recently, obviously shaken from hours of circling the Head.   I pointed across Saratoga Strait.  The lady in the passenger seat began a slow moan.  And, of course, being the bearer of rotten  news, I felt bad too.  But hey, they probably made their way out.  A day late for the wedding they needed to be at in 15 minutes.  A lot of us weren’t that lucky.

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