Celebration for common ground | Letters | Sept. 10

We’d like to invite folks to come down to Strawberry Cannery Cove Waterfront Park Saturday or anytime this week to say goodbye, pay their respects and celebrate our common ground. No matter on what side folks see themselves in the debate over the future of this public park, we hope to shake hands, share stories and maybe even a song or two. If ecology teaches us anything, it is really that there are no sides: We are all one.

To celebrate everyone’s efforts, Friends of Cannery Cove have been “Parking Out the Park.” The city helped us. They not only had DNR remove the 110 deteriorated creosote pilings in the cove last year, but last week they fulfilled a year-long dream to help beautify the east peninsula’s shore side meadow by removing the power pole that has been there for eight decades.

Beautiful park direction road signs were also commissioned in the style of other park road signs. They used an image of a picnic bench beside the shore, an image discovered at the Yeomalt Cabin opening. It was the logo of the Bainbridge Island Park Foundation, an image of Cannery Cove, no doubt selected because it is central to who we are and what we envision for our parks.

We returned picnic benches there and invite people to come sit and observe one last time before excavation begins on Monday. Larry Nakata loaned us a bench that has been in his family for years. Dave Beemer provided us with one that folks enjoyed all summer. We made an 8-foot replica “stone” lantern in honor of those who worked at the site and whose labors built this community.

Volunteers pruned viewpoints. A haiku invites others by a tree:

“Willow weeping hears...

Bulldozers coming!

‘Am I in way of salmon?’”

Robert Green, co-creator of Port Madison’s Frog Rock, helped paint the cove’s picnic plaza with a giant red strawberry. Within hours, poets decorated it with letters from small pieces of clam shell left by gull and crow. A message: “Reflect.”

Net Systems is providing resources for a long-envisioned outdoor fire circle. Maybe it will dry the rain. We all need to sit around a circle and begin helping the park district plan the remainder of the park. We are blessed and thankful for people who care about our history, environment, parks and recreation.

Gerald Elfendahl

Friends of Cannery Cove

Comment on this story.

COMMENTING RULES: We encourage an open exchange of ideas in our online community, but we ask you to follow our guidelines for respecting community standards. In a nutshell, don't say anything you wouldn't want your mother to read. Please see our FAQ if you have questions or concerns about using Facebook to comment.