Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park Plot Plan, 1980

One of the many reasons that Kah Tai's future is not as certain as it should be 30 years after creation is that the paperwork didn't get completed in 1985 when the acquisition grant closed. A 6(f) boundary map should have been attached to the record at that time. All parcels in the Park should have been recorded as protected. But the ball got dropped, at NPS, at IAC (now RCO) and here in Port Townsend.

Then there are the errors made between 1985 and today. In 2004, an attempt was made to find the missing 6(f) map at NPS, but instead, a crudely drawn plat map was pulled from the record by support staff and casually penciled in with the label 'Official 6(f)'. The plat map includes within its rough and inaccurate boundaries many properties north of the Lagoon whose owners would be quite shocked to find out that the National Park Service considered their homes within the Park boundary, however briefly.

Fortunately, within the 1981 files is also a carefully drawn plot plan (click on image to enlarge), included in the orginal grant submission but not labeled as explicitly as would have been helpful for posterity. It shows the full boundary of the intended Park.  It may not say '6(f)', but it is dated September 20, 1980. And it shows all the public and private parcels considered to be part of the intended Park. This is the boundary that merits stipulations of perpetuity. This is our Park.

Kah Tai

Nurse – It's, still moving, or...?

Doctor – Yes, let's see- it's

Nurse – Beating?

Doctor – Scalpel!

Nurse – But, but...

Doctor – There, it's quiet now.

Nurse – But, wasn't that– the heart?

Doctor – Oh, yes, well I guess it was—

***

And so you too, Port Townsend,

The knife is raised, and what yet beats

Can be silenced soon enough.

This heart, this quiet place,

At rest in the fold of silent tongues,

This, that no man, no group,

No councilman, or commissioner,

has the right to take—

This heart beats for all, and

All should have a say.

If ever a referendum should be held,

Then it is now. If this heart is to be

Cut out, then all hands should grasp

The handle, and all hands thrust the blade.

Those who think they alone should cut

This heart—remember

Blood does not wash.

Brian Young

Port Townsend