Sue's father, Harry Cook, slipped quietly out of our world on the first day of this year as all of his seven children gathered at his bed side. Harry had requested that their not be a funeral service and expressed a wish that he be discreetly returned to the natal soil of Fidalgo Island. There on Fidalgo Island he grew strong and formed strong bonds with the mild land that his parents farmed on Marche's Point outside of Anacortes. After putting himself through veterinary school at Washington State, he eventually returned to the area with the US Department of Agriculture to care for the dairy herds of Snohomish and Skagit Counties. When he had finished with his day job at the USDA, he then returned to labor on his beloved land where he had a couple of cows, pasture in the back forty, an orchard and a bountiful garden. He was a man of the good earth.
With the family had all gathered around New Year's Eve on sudden notice of Dad's fast fading health, upon his passing everyone purposed to return to Anacortes as a family once schedules could be arranged, and make a proper farewell. Over several months and a series of iterations of everyone's schedules, obligations and preferences, early August seemed most practical for gathering in Dad's memory and to serve as a reunion.
Several years earlier Harry had donated funds to purchase a parcel of land that is part of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands (ACFL), as a means to keep the mountains, lakes and forest around Anacortes undeveloped and freely available to enjoy for generations to come - just as he had enjoyed the land. Cathy, with her accounting background handled the papers of the estate, for which we offer our thanks. Bob, our man in Anacortes (or at least pretty close), did a bit of discreet checking around. Technically, there was not provision or even permission to scatter ashes in the ACFL; but Bob, in talking with the director thought he detected a wink over the phone, with the implication being that if cremains of someone were to spill while people were walking in the forest lands, it was unlikely anybody could really do anything about that. Bob, got a map with the location of the specific Harry Cook parcel and placed it before Mike, Bill, Sue and me.
We decided a reconnoitering expedition was in order before the entire Cook clan gathered and hiked about the ACFL with no clear direction or plan. It would not be a good beginning to a final farewell. So with a much technical savvy as we could squeeze out of our brains and into our digits (which was mostly Mike), we surfed the web and downloaded satellite images, websites, county and city maps and a topographic image courtesy of the US Geological Survey. The directions to the correct ACFL area were not without a few discrepancies and it looked like we needed to be flexible in our navigation even though we did reach agreement on the Cook parcel coordinates. I drove the lead expedition vehicle, made a few turns into private roads, but eventually found the trail head that would lead us to the location of the parcel. With my own sense of dead reckoning and based on the digital contour maps I had studied earlier in the morning, I found a spot that I believed to be the tract that Harry had donated to the ACFL. Bill then uploaded an app on his phone that would give us a GPS lat/long once we got out from under the forest canopy. Once Bill's app uploaded and seemed to work, we hiked back up the trail to see if the GPS coordinated got close to my dead reckoning. The location was confirmed.
The next morning, the family gathered and strolled about a half mile up the gently inclined trail to the previously scout location of the Harry Cook plot. We all stepped off the trail and scrambled over a few fallen logs and slipped behind a veil of sword fern and and spread ourselves in a circle beneath a cathedral of conifers. Tom, the eldest, had prepared a few words from Ecclesiastes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a few other sources, to bring fond remembrances and a sense of closure closure for the occasion. Tom's words were well chosen and well delivered drew the solemn ceremony to a close with a few tears and a few hugs as all his kids returned their father back to the good earth in silence, except for the eternal sounds of wind and spirit moving among the boughs and aria of a few distant birds. A he wished, a good man of the land was returned to his land by those for whom he cared and provided.
The return trek was a return to a sense of the present with a short hike along the trail to Whistle Lake in the ACFL Preserve. Quiet chattering among brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, all connecting to the now and future before us.
Northwest Passages: A recognition of the passing of time and of people, an over-the-shoulder glance at the paths from and back to Western Washington, a recording of those things seen and those things thought along the way.
With the family had all gathered around New Year's Eve on sudden notice of Dad's fast fading health, upon his passing everyone purposed to return to Anacortes as a family once schedules could be arranged, and make a proper farewell. Over several months and a series of iterations of everyone's schedules, obligations and preferences, early August seemed most practical for gathering in Dad's memory and to serve as a reunion.
Several years earlier Harry had donated funds to purchase a parcel of land that is part of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands (ACFL), as a means to keep the mountains, lakes and forest around Anacortes undeveloped and freely available to enjoy for generations to come - just as he had enjoyed the land. Cathy, with her accounting background handled the papers of the estate, for which we offer our thanks. Bob, our man in Anacortes (or at least pretty close), did a bit of discreet checking around. Technically, there was not provision or even permission to scatter ashes in the ACFL; but Bob, in talking with the director thought he detected a wink over the phone, with the implication being that if cremains of someone were to spill while people were walking in the forest lands, it was unlikely anybody could really do anything about that. Bob, got a map with the location of the specific Harry Cook parcel and placed it before Mike, Bill, Sue and me.
We decided a reconnoitering expedition was in order before the entire Cook clan gathered and hiked about the ACFL with no clear direction or plan. It would not be a good beginning to a final farewell. So with a much technical savvy as we could squeeze out of our brains and into our digits (which was mostly Mike), we surfed the web and downloaded satellite images, websites, county and city maps and a topographic image courtesy of the US Geological Survey. The directions to the correct ACFL area were not without a few discrepancies and it looked like we needed to be flexible in our navigation even though we did reach agreement on the Cook parcel coordinates. I drove the lead expedition vehicle, made a few turns into private roads, but eventually found the trail head that would lead us to the location of the parcel. With my own sense of dead reckoning and based on the digital contour maps I had studied earlier in the morning, I found a spot that I believed to be the tract that Harry had donated to the ACFL. Bill then uploaded an app on his phone that would give us a GPS lat/long once we got out from under the forest canopy. Once Bill's app uploaded and seemed to work, we hiked back up the trail to see if the GPS coordinated got close to my dead reckoning. The location was confirmed.
The next morning, the family gathered and strolled about a half mile up the gently inclined trail to the previously scout location of the Harry Cook plot. We all stepped off the trail and scrambled over a few fallen logs and slipped behind a veil of sword fern and and spread ourselves in a circle beneath a cathedral of conifers. Tom, the eldest, had prepared a few words from Ecclesiastes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a few other sources, to bring fond remembrances and a sense of closure closure for the occasion. Tom's words were well chosen and well delivered drew the solemn ceremony to a close with a few tears and a few hugs as all his kids returned their father back to the good earth in silence, except for the eternal sounds of wind and spirit moving among the boughs and aria of a few distant birds. A he wished, a good man of the land was returned to his land by those for whom he cared and provided.
The return trek was a return to a sense of the present with a short hike along the trail to Whistle Lake in the ACFL Preserve. Quiet chattering among brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, all connecting to the now and future before us.
Northwest Passages: A recognition of the passing of time and of people, an over-the-shoulder glance at the paths from and back to Western Washington, a recording of those things seen and those things thought along the way.
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| The Cook Clan gathers at Whistle Lake in Remembrance of their Father |
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| Nephews & Niece with Aunt Sally On the Shore of Whistle Lake |
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| Grant & Cousin Connor tossing Rocks into Whistle Lake To everything there is a Season A Time to scatter stones and A Time to gather them together |
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| Some of the Grand kids Grant, David, Matthew Connor, Emma, Zach |
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| Emma with Aunt Sally |
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| The Cooks of Minnesota David, Mathew, Esther & Tom |
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