Core

photo by Drain

If it weren’t for the Duwamish River, Seattle probably wouldn’t be here in Seattle. 

The indigenous people of the area depended heavily upon it for fishing, hunting, and transportation and its subsequent exploitation by industrial interests in the 20th century is a big part of why a city grew up in this area.  The river’s sad fate as a Superfund site attests to its vital role as a component in the economic engine of the region and the fact that so little of it is accessible to your average citizen is further evidence of the way in which our home town still depends on the ability of private shipping and manufacturing companies to dominate nature for their own profit by externalizing the costs of pollution and environmental decay.

Nevertheless, it’s a delightful spot to bicycle up upon with more than 33 of your friends and acquaintances on the first evening cool and wet enough in months to prompt a fire in order to enjoy each other’s company against the backdrop of heavy industry carved from an estuary that once meandered along some of the same routes that brought you here.

Relatively short distances can provide plenty of adventure when they wiggle under freeways and are paved with shifting gravel and softball-sized rocks.  Perhaps impressively—and certainly surprisingly—no collarbones were broken, which just goes to show that it’s often less about the riders and more about the route—specifically, one which puts the off-road component before, rather than after, the main beer-drinking part of the evening.

And while there’s much to be said for the festive mood that bicycle-mounted sound systems can induce, it’s nice, on occasion, to be forced to find fun in non-technological ways, like the time-honored old-fashioned handmade thrill of a fire-totter, only this time, doubled-up to make a flaming four-way cross-totter much to the amusement of riders and audience alike—probably not unlike those indigenous elders did it millennia ago at our region’s core.