Walking to Get Over a Dead Cat: Mt. Baker

One unexpected delight of working through the 25 walks in the Seattle Stairway Walks book is that all of a sudden, I am out walking with many of my friends. Today’s walk started with great sadness as my friend R came to our house and then told the story of having to put her nineteen-year-old cat down earlier in the week. With the dreary wet day, we decided that the best option would be to grab our umbrellas and stay close to home or Hike #20: Mt. Baker.

I live at the bottom of the hill. What this means, all over in Seattle, is that you are in a “cheaper” neighborhood. It’s relative, mind you, but if you’re on the ridge with a view, chances are your house, and everything around it, is going to be worth a heck of a lot more than the valley dwellers. The Mt. Baker neighborhood, rising on the ridge to the east of us, is no exception. That said, the stretch of view homes this walk visits is the lower-end of the upper-end homes in these parts.

I’ve done variations of this walk for the last six years we’ve lived in the neighborhood, and I am not a fan of the walk as it is laid out in this book, filled with a big figure 8 redundancy. Still, for all the walks down into Colman Park I’ve done, I’d never pieced together a hard left at the bench in the P-Patch would take me through the woods to a lovely climb on the Dose Terrace Steps. So another big grin of thankfulness I bought this book, but you can definitely look forward to a revised Mt. Baker Walk later this summer based on my experience; something that is going to go over the hill only once to the lake, but also bring you down to our Judkins Park side of the ridge where there are plenty of stairs and other things to see.

Later, I got an email from R, “…our walk made me feel a lot better.” Obviously sent after we both had dried off, warmed up, and had some tea, but she’s right. Even on a crummy day, it’s amazing how good a long walk feels even if your cat is dead.