I usu­ally try to make site vis­its on days when the weather is nice. Not today. Today the com­puter screen was giv­ing me a headache. My cof­fee had turned stale within a half hour and the flu­o­res­cent glow from above was too much to bear. I was squeezed like paint from a tube onto the wet palate of the out­doors.

“See ya in about an hour, Greta.” I grabbed my jacket and rain­coat, stuffed the di­rec­tions into my mes­sen­ger bag and made my es­cape.

The sky read rain and de­liv­ered on its promise just as I stepped out of my car. There was only one other car in the lot. An­other drove through Lake­side Park with four peo­ple in­side, their faces pressed to the glass like they were look­ing for some­thing. Maybe a lost dog? Are they tourists that took a wrong turn? A fam­ily try­ing to pick up their fix and un­able to find the drug dealer? I pulled my hood over my head to shield it from the misty Seat­tle rain and walked north along the path.

Two weeks ago, Heather Chen had con­tacted me by email:Upon hear­ing my reply that yes, this could be pos­si­ble, Heather had Zot’s mother send in a check for the full do­na­tion amount — an un­usu­ally fast check. I pro­posed a few sites in the park that the land­scape ar­chi­tect at the parks de­part­ment had iden­ti­fied, but Heather wasn’t in­ter­ested. She wanted a spe­cific spot where Zot used to spend a lot of time. I asked if she could di­rect me to­ward a site that she pre­ferred.

I didn’t know what she meant when she said “it will need to go by the board” but I en­cour­aged her to tell me where they would like the bench to be lo­cated. The next email con­tained the di­rec­tions.

Tread­ing through the mist, it took me longer than ex­pected to reach the sculp­tures. I wasn’t used to dri­ving to Lake­side Park, and my car was in a far­ther lot. As walked past the closer lot, I con­sid­ered that had I fol­lowed the fam­ily of lost tourists/dog-seek­ers/drug-ad­dicts, I may have been bet­ter off. On the bright side, I’d be out of the of­fice just a lit­tle longer.

The breeze from Lake Wash­ing­ton left faint drops of water in my beard. I saun­tered along the path through a hall­way of sleep­ing gi­ants lulled into dor­mancy by the cold weather. This was my first time in Lake­side Park dur­ing the win­ter. Gone were the chil­dren in bathing suits, chas­ing each other in and out of the water. Their par­ents were ab­sent, too, sit­ting on pic­nic blan­kets and dis­cretely but self-con­sciously sip­ping wine. No­body was play­ing soc­cer in the mead­ows, nor were there any kites chal­leng­ing the wind, teth­ered to their human an­chors on the hill. The raft in the pro­tected swim­ming area where Zot had once life­guarded laid bare. One re­tired cou­ple smiled at me as they walked their dog in the other di­rec­tion. This was not the same park that Zot had spent his sum­mer va­ca­tion in. This park held a quiet beauty in­stead.

I rec­og­nized my land­mark. The giant tails shot out of the grass like fins of black sharks frozen in time as they swarmed around their prey. I passed by un­no­ticed and un­scathed and con­tin­ued on my search for Zot’s spe­cial spot.

After round­ing a bend be­yond the giant sharks, I came upon the di­lap­i­dated struc­ture. It looked more like a ware­house than a home; the front was clearly a load­ing dock. But I wasn’t going to argue with my di­rec­tions and the path clearly came to an end per­haps a cou­ple hun­dred feet ahead.

I made a right turn and started to won­der where ex­actly I was going. Was I on my way to the spot where Zot killed him­self? I had been on a work crew in New York City that had pre­vi­ously found a dead body in High­bridge Park while tear­ing out in­va­sive species one spring. It turned out to be an old man with Alzheimer’s that had man­aged to walk out of his care fa­cil­ity in the fall. The au­thor­i­ties as­sumed he froze and spent the win­ter in the park, wait­ing to be found. Who had found Zot, I won­dered? I shook my head and tried to focus on fol­low­ing the di­rec­tions.

The path was no longer paved, and I was on a foot trail that cut through the brush and bram­bles to­ward the lake. The park is filled with these paths lead­ing to small se­cluded clear­ings on the water’s edge — good places to go swim­ming or enjoy the view of the moun­tains in pri­vacy.

What kind of guy was Zot? Did he like com­ing here be­cause it of­fered a good place to go and get into some trou­ble, or was he a bright, in­no­cent youth, drawn to the quiet clear­ing as a place to clear his head and cool down on a warm sum­mer day?

This is where I began to have some dif­fi­culty. I had no idea where these “sev­eral path­ways” could be. From the struc­ture (which had def­i­nitely never been a house), I fol­lowed one trail and it had led me straight to the water. I was now stand­ing on the beach. The only way north would be to walk along the beach. I looked to the next di­rec­tion for a clue:

Maybe I had al­ready gone too far to the north? I looked up and down the beach for a clear­ing with a fallen tree. North of me, just past a fence, in the off-leash area, was a huge fallen tree. It had been dead so long that the wind had left it smooth like a piece of drift­wood that had been launched ashore by a Lake Wash­ing­ton tidal wave. Could that be Zot’s fallen tree?

Kris­ten Mit­tel­steadt

As I made my way to­ward it, sand col­lected in my top­siders. They were per­haps not the ideal footwear for this sort of trip. I reached the fence but there was no easy way around it and the brush and wil­low trees made the climb un­at­trac­tive. Could there be an­other trail west of me that could bring me into the off-leash area? I started head­ing that di­rec­tion through the scotch broom and thick for­est of wil­lows.

There was no such trail. As I emerged from the brush back onto the paved path I grinned sheep­ishly at the man and his dog walk­ing by. “Don’t mind me,” I thought, “I’m just the guy wear­ing muddy slacks and boat­ing shoes that just emerged from the for­est.” I walked along the path to the ac­tual en­trance of the off-leash area and quickly dis­cov­ered that de­spite the creepi­ness of the tree, there was no ev­i­dence of Zot’s name carved in a tree any­where close by.

How could his clear­ing be such a pain in the ass to find? I was de­ter­mined not to give up how­ever, and headed back to the struc­ture: the last place I knew I had been on the right track. This time, when I di­verged from the paved path, how­ever, I took a trail that was a bit far­ther south and veered south­east as op­posed to north­east. After only about fif­teen steps in, I saw him: “ZOT” carved in two inch let­ters in the trunk. The fallen tree was hardly as dra­matic as I had en­vi­sioned, yet here it was. I had made it. I sat down on the fallen tree and took a deep breath in Zot’s small cor­ner of the world.