Scott and I gathered with family in Olympia on Saturday. After lunch we headed down to Capitol Lake for a walk around the loop. The reflections were amazing down there, and we met some way cool dogs and humans, too!

(I didn’t bring my big camera with me, so these were all taken with my cellphone and don’t have as much “pixel-power” as my Nikon might have given me.)

Little Boogey pup came by with his humans, and allowed me to give him a scratch behind the ears; we passed Joey the Corgi going the opposite direction – look at his sweet face! – how could I not take a picture?

We paused along the trail to look out across the lake towards downtown, and this is when I saw a man looking down into a marshy area of cattails and fallen logs. He looked to me to be grieving, and my heart reached out to him.

I saw a kind of stark beauty in the logs and cattails. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked the man. He nodded his head and agreed it was.

Then he pointed to the mud and cattails and said, “I saw the largest boreal toad I’ve ever seen down there.” He said the toad had been about eight inches long! He’d never seen anything like it.

I learned he’d seen the toad three years ago and hadn’t seen it since. He said non-indigeneous bullfrogs had come into the lake, and efforts had been made to get rid of them. Jim thought the toads might have died then, too.

I confessed to him, then, that when I’d seen him looking into the cattails it looked to me like he’d been in mourning. I understood now. He nodded his head.

Scott joined us then, and we all introduced ourselves – Karen, Scott, and Jim Livingstone. We learned Jim was related to the Scottish explorer and abolitionist, David Livingstone. We learned, too, that Jim had served as a volunteer for the late great Olympia activist, Margaret McKenny, who had advocated for preserving open spaces in Olympia and who had founded the Olympia Audubon Society.

I was beginning to understand why Jim knew so much about the environment of Olympia.

I told him my dad had worked for a time for the State as a geologist-hydrologist. Dad, I said, had been an outdoorsman – he’d guided me to the summits of Rainier, Baker, Adams, and Hood when I was younger – and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d known Margaret McKenney. I’d been born in the hospital up on the hill, I said, pointing to where the old Saint Peters Hospital had been on the west side of Bud Inlet. I’d spent the early part of my childhood in Olympia, I told him. We learned Jim had been born the same year as Scott, and had lived in Olympia most of his life.

When I asked Jim if I could take his photo and write a little about him, he agreed to this. I showed him my Facebook wall – where he might find his photo when I posted it. He saw my name and said, “Dee Molenaar.” Yup. He recognized my maiden name and knew, without asking, who my father had been. He said he’d climbed Mount Saint Helens with Dad. How cool is that?!

I love these connections Dad left me – these links to other people and places and adventures. What a gift!