For going on 60 years, the beach property on Camano Island where my dad lives has been a family gem. My maternal grandparents bought it back in the early 1950s, and I've heard the stories over the years of how Grandma had a hissy fit when Grandpa bought it (without her blessing, and men could do such things then without including their wives) because it was so remote and expensive for that time. But she did grow to love it. She and Grandpa would do very much the same thing as what JDub and I do now with our Harstine property — head there for the weekends to stay in their 1940s-style camping trailer. Behind the trailer there was a wooded hill with an old chicken coop that my parents, as a young married couple with baby me, totally cleaned up and and painted and installed linoleum and that was our sleeping cabin. Throughout my and my younger brother's entire childhoods, we spent weekends and vacations there and sprayed a ton's worth of bug spray in that cabin to kill the humongous spiders and moths. Bathroom facilities were always primitive and unpleasant, but aside from that, it was a heavenly place. I learned to row a boat when I was 4. We caught smelt as they boiled up on the beach at high tide; we caught Dungeness crab in pots; we'd have evening fires on the bulkhead just above the beach and watch the surf while we roasted hotdogs.
And there was always that beach. We'd walk the beach to the Little Store by the Bay and get a quarter's worth of penny candy. One land point was closer than the other and we'd walk to it quite often, and when we felt especially adventurous we'd walk to the very, very far point and back, totally exhausted (and needing to pee desperately!) Then my parents inherited the property and they replaced the old 1940s trailer with a 1970s model and they would head up for 
the weekends just as JDub and I do at Harstine and just as Grandma and Grandpa used to do there at Camano. Nate was one month old his first visit to the island, and we spent many summer weekends and holidays staying in a tent on the grassy bulkhead just above the beach, falling asleep to the surf. With retirement just a few short years away, my parents had a nice but modest house built and said goodbye to the camping trailers — and the chicken coop/cabin (and primitive bathroom facilities). That was 16 years ago!
It was in my young adulthood that I discovered the joy of hunting for agates, and over the years we found hundreds if not thousands of them during all our 
beach walks. My feet know that beach. I've walked it with husbands, walked it with my child (taught him how to find agates when he was very young), and walked it with weenie dogs — Bambi as a child, Mandy as a younger adult, and now Peanut and Bailey. I've walked it with my mom, my dad, my aunt and uncle, my friends. The people sitting out in their yards and decks along the way would wave and we'd wave back. Many of them would ask, "Have you found any treasures?" and we'd show them the agates or beach glass or special shells we'd collected on our walk. It was a community of folks who shared a particular thing: the love of that gravelly saltwater beach, the salt spray, the awesome beauty of that expanse of blue water under the 
plugged-in beam of Mt. Baker.
It was remote, and that was Grandma's complaint. But the properties were all pretty narrow (mostly 50 ft. of water frontage) and there were a number of quaint cabins and small houses along the bay. Everyone was respectful of others' properties — you would never consider digging clams in front of somebody else's place, or placing your boat buoy anywhere else besides out front of your own property, and we all placed 
our crab pots out in line from our trailers, cabins, tents, or houses. When the smelt hit, the closer neighbors would walk up and down each others' beaches and share the onslaught together. It was camaraderie and fun times.
It's not remote anymore. There are multi-million dollar MacMansions up and down the bay these days. Godawful obscene things. There are traffic lights on the island! (My grandmother would spin in her 
grave, because ultimately she would have far preferred the remoteness). There are people everywhere. And when there are lots of people, you are going to encounter an asshole now and then.
We spent the day there yesterday, and even though the weather wasn't nearly as nice as Saturday, it was dry most of the day. So JDub and I, along with the weenies, took a beach walk, of course! We stroll pretty slowly with our eyes glued to the beach, scoping out 
agates and beach glass. The dogs probably make 10,000 strides to one of ours, snooping every nook and cranny of the beach, and they love walking logs and bulkheads. As we passed one bulkhead I peered around a little warily remembering an altercation with a nasty fellow five summers ago that was so unpleasant that it cemented in my heart that it was time for JDub and I to seriously look for beach property of our own and that I would no longer feel like I was "betraying" Camano Island by doing so. But there was nobody around and we continued on and filled our pockets. On the way back, we joined up with my dad's lady friend, my sister-in-law, and my niece. And then I heard the Voice:
"GET YOUR DAMNED DOGS OFF MY BEACH!"
It was the same asshole who had threatened JDub and I five years ago with calling the police because we were walking on his beach. It had come "this" close to fisticuffs between my gentleman-JDub and this jerk.
"YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON MY PROPERTY!!!"
I absolutely lost it. This scum-of-the-earth knuckle-dragger has lived there possibly six years at the most, and I just could not wrap my head around his venom and hatred and snarling asshat-ness.
"Who do you think you are?" I yelled at him. "We've walked this beach for decades! You're the only person along this entire bay [which is huge] who feels that way! It's a BEACH! It's a BEACH!" Like, duh. People who live on beaches walk beaches!
"IT'S MY BEACH, AND YOU ARE TRESPASSING AND I'M CALLING THE POLICE!"
I laughed. Loudly. Snidely. I said, "You. Go. Right. Ahead." (I'd heard that one before). The police would laugh their asses off! Can you imagine? "So, what are they doing on your property, sir?" "They're walking on my beach!" But the guy ran up his steps like a rabid dog, apparently to make good on his promise. (Never saw a cop, though).
I know damned well that if the weenie dogs had just happened to venture up on this guy's bulkhead, that they would be dead right now. He would have kicked them to death. I am utterly convinced of that.
I have to say, that my heart is broken. Never again will I ever feel comfortable taking a beach walk at Camano — something that has given me absolute joy since as far back as I can remember. As my brother (or maybe it was my dad) said, it's like having an evil troll lurking down the way. One single asshole troll who has ruined a simple and pleasurable — but huge — part of our lives.
In a nutshell (in case you don't want to read the entire article), a gal on a college softball team who had a pretty poor batting average and hadn't hit a homerun in four years, hit a three-run blast out of the park that pretty much sealed the win for her team. She was so giddy with excitement that she didn't touch first base, so she turned back to do so and badly twisted her knee and collapsed. The 1st base coach, nor any of her team mates, could touch her because she would have then been "out", so she had to crawl back to 1st base in pain. Then the ump determined by the rules as he understood them that a substitute could take her place but that it would only count as a single and null the homer and the three runs! So two players from the opposing team carried her around the diamond where she touched her good leg to each base so that the homer counted! I'll repeat that: Players from the opposing team carried her around the diamond, even at the expense of failing to make the playoffs. When they reached home plate, people from both sides were in tears at this amazing display of sportsmanship. Even revisiting this story makes me all sobby. 
