The bus I take to get to Joann Fabric & Crafts, Trader Joe’s, and the pharmacy goes past two Lynnwood parks, Scriber Lake

and, right across 196th Street, the very patriotic Wilcox.

I’ve always looked at the wetland trail system leading into Scriber Lake Park wistfully, wishing I could take Bishop hiking there. (I now feel I can legitimately use the term “hiking,” because I have to wear tennis shoes rather than flip-flops and there are actual changes in elevation.) But that would entail taking Bishop on the bus, which I can only imagine would be a kerfuffle of epic proportions, even for us.

Bizarrely enough, it didn’t occur to me until this week that I could check out the park on my own, sans the guard dog. Today, needing to do a TJ’s run anyway, I decided to do exactly that.

I hadn’t been in such a marshy area since the Okefenokee Swamp, and I enjoyed tramping around on the paths. I found the mosquitoes and gnats annoying, but I managed to emerge without a single bite, and that’s without wearing bug spray.

The path I took leads to a small lake, where a teenage boy was fishing.

Shortly after I arrived, two women showed up with bags of bread crumbs. They told me they come every day to feed the mallards, wood ducks, and Canadian geese, some of which are so tame that they take food from the women’s hands.

After the women left, the birds stayed around for awhile, hoping I might be another source of bread crumbs. I took more photos of Canadian geese than any sane person needs, and they finally decided to cruise back to the other side of the lake.

As I was leaving, I noticed what I thought might be a beaver lodge.

I left Scriber Lake Park feeling a little gypped. I know this area has lizards, frogs, snakes, and turtles, so where were they? Why hadn’t I seen a single animal other than birds–entertaining as they were–and insects?

This discontent continued as I walked through Wilcox Park, where a group of people played volleyball and had some kind of picnic. They’d set up speakers in the bandstand, and techno blared so loudly that I’d heard it in Scriber Lake Park as well.

At the west end of the park, I followed a throughway that runs along a stream. I stared at the murky water, littered with bottles and cans and fast-food cups, and remembered the canal that ran behind my second Savannah apartment. You couldn’t take a step without hearing alarmed squeaks and splashes. I’d seen rat snakes, snapping turtles, fish, frogs. When I moved into my house, I couldn’t mow the lawn without scattering frogs, toads, and anoles. Once I even found a legless lizard living under a container in the backyard. I miss that abundance, even though I don’t at all miss the profusion of mosquitoes and gnats that fed it.

So I was starting to sulk, and then I spied this.

Delighted–it doesn’t take much, sometimes–I continued along the stream. At one spot, I stepped close to the water and heard the sounds I’d just been missing: a high-pitched squeak and a couple of splashes. Yay, frogs! I thought, and peered into the water, trying to spot them swimming away. I took a few photos because the light was pretty. Then, a little way downstream, I noticed ripples, and something broke the surface. I thought it was a small otter until I saw the tail and realized it was a beaver.

Now, I had never seen a beaver before. We saw plenty of lodges and dams and gnawed-off stumps when we went camping in the mountains, but I’d never seen a real beaver, not even in a zoo, as far as I can recall. I was ecstatic, so much that I didn’t even get a decent photo because I decided to just watch the beaver swimming instead, for a precious few seconds before it disappeared.

And that made my day.