Writing & photography by Matt Wisner
The only thing I knew about Discovery Park was that it was a large green section of the map, the farthest West point of Seattle, extending beyond the city into Puget Sound. Quite far from my routine commute from home to work, and then work to home, I couldn’t have just stumbled upon Discovery Park by chance. I got on a full 33 bus downtown. Thirty stops later, the previously full bus was now empty. I was alone. The bus pulling away was the last of the urban noise I heard that morning. I traded loud for quiet. Agendas for no agenda. Chaos for order, in a way. It was a rainy July morning, and I seemed to be the only person in the entire park.
I left the road and started on the Loop Trail. I stepped under the trees, and the rain seemed to have momentarily vanished. But the tree tops couldn’t shield me forever, and the rain seemed to find its way back to me. I think we’re conditioned to think we have to resist the rain. We hide from it, fight it, even. Allow it dictate how we spend our time. But today I decided not to resist. I welcomed the rain, let it run down my face and make my shoes heavy. I was incredibly attuned to sound. Nothing I heard was new or particularly interesting, but there was a clear absence of the persistent noise of the city I’ve become used to the past few weeks. I walked through the trees and listened to the rain as it met the leaves above my head. I heard the rain collide with the water and knew I was close to the edge of the trees.
I came out onto the beach, and the sky was gray. I couldn’t see too far out onto the water, but I could see the lighthouse a few hundred meters down the sand. Beside it were two small houses. Old and ominous, chipped paint. Shutters that couldn’t withstand the weather. The houses are the same style I’ve always imagined Daphne Du Maurier’s Manderley to be if it were real. I think the park is oriented in a way that, if you were to watch the sunset from the lighthouse, you’d be able to see the sun disappear into Puget Sound. But that thought is entirely speculation, of course, because my rainy day in Discovery Park saw no sun at all. I made my way back to the bus stop, walking the same path through the trees I’d taken earlier that morning. I listened to all the same sounds as before and thought about Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and I thought about how Spring should never be silent, and neither should summer, especially not rainy July mornings.
