The “Old Home”

My grandmother, like many in her generation, occasionally waxes nostalgic about the "old home".

Until rather recently, this place was a rather vague and mysterious location known as "up home" or "the farm". It was near something called Castle Rock, she told me, and occasionally she and her siblings would ride their horses to it. The Farm was located near St. John and Pine City. In any case, she assured me, it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I didn't actually visit the Farm until a few years ago. I visited again last weekend. In both of these cases, it was to attend a family reunion.

The first year I went up, I would've been thirteen, and a couple of my misconceptions were quickly cleared up.

First, Castle Rock wasn't just near the farm, it was on the farm. The family owned it - in fact, they still own it. And second, it is so pretty up there that it is occasionally necessary to remind oneself that everything is real.

It's a large piece of prop- erty, and I haven't seen the better portion of it, but I'll go over a few highlights with you. First off, Castle Rock - a curiously shaped for- mation that reminds me of one of those short-brimmed straw hats. The climb up is relatively steep. At one point, it is necessary to cross over two five-foot-long wooden boards, gray with age, to cross a gap seventy- five feet above the ground. Defying all logic, they are as sound and sturdy as freshly manufactured steel.

The view from the top of the rock is nice - one can survey nearly the whole farm, including several ponds, vast expanses of roll- ing hills, a cluster of chicken houses that has seen better days, and Rock Lake, which the farm borders.

The rock and its name- sake lake are both steeped in legend. Grandma recalls finding arrowheads on its brush-covered top as a kid. In 1976, WSU did an ar- chaeological survey and removed most of the arti- facts, but every now and then someone finds a spear tip or something similar beneath the fine gray dust transported there by the eruption of Saint Helens.

The lake is rumored to be bottomless (drownees do not re-surface, and it is fed by a volcanic vent that can't technically be measured, so who knows?) as well as inhabited by a sea monster. According to a rather brief native legend, a group of native criminals was fleeing the authorities by way of Castle Rock when the ser- pent emerged from the blue depths of the lake and beat them to death with its tail.

Rock Lake is a beautiful shade of blue, but it gets very deep very quickly and is full of rocks that are an unsavory combination of sharp and slippery.

There's also an old rail- road tunnel and a wooden railroad bridge that reaches a dizzying height above the lake. I've walked through both of them.

Another remnant of the railroad is a rickety rock- slide watchtower. It's at least twenty feet tall, supported by a single pole, accessible only by a rickety ladder, and very wobbly. It's not a climb for the faint of heart, and tradi- tion insists that each climber leave an artifact in an empty mechanical cupboard near the tower to assure a safe ascent.

I did so before I climbed it. It was a scary trip up, but the view was well worth it.