Escapes: Discovery Park offers retreat from urban anxiety

Sometimes the city is just too much. Too many people, too much asphalt, too many signs to dictate your actions and too many materialistic items to remind you of your college poverty can accumulate and make a person volatile. If you need to extinguish your volatility and regenerate some inner peace, Seattle has your medicine. An extensive effort to preserve parks has made Seattle one of the most naturally beautiful cities in the world.

Discovery Park is the biggest of Seattle's many parks, combining 534 acres of urban wilderness with history, culture and hiking. Originally an army base, Discovery Park has mutated into a place of quiet tranquility.

Preserved Fort Lawton, one of Discovery Park's many features, still echoes the base's residual history. The site was a passage for prisoners of World War II, a radar and missile site, and a place of struggle between American Indians and Alaskan Natives involving Jane Fonda, the Pentagon and teepees. The Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center gives the history of the struggle in detail.

The Daybreak center is celebrating its 18th Annual Seafair Indian Powwow from July 18 to 20. The cost of four dollars is well worth the food alone -- a salmon bake and Indian tacos.

Presentations of Merry Wives of Windsor and The Merchant of Venice are free events as part of the Shakespeare in the Park series, which runs July 12 to 13 and August 24. Also free are "Beach Walks," hosted every other Saturday and Sunday morning by Discovery Park staff. They consist of exploring the beach at low tide and possibly getting your shoes wet.

Amazing views smother the learning and cultural centers. Magnolia Bluff overlooks the Olympic Mountains rising above the Puget Sound. Sunsets from the bluff are spectacular. Trails explore meadows, cliffs, forested groves and two miles of beach that are conveniently spotted with picnic

tables.

Discovery Park is a collection of many things. In the midst of its intricate history, landscape architecture, American Indian culture and environmental education, its natural aesthetic pulsates above all else. The varying forms that nature takes make the park unique. Throughout the park you can sense the unifying stillness that connects you to nature's quiet existence, and the sounds of Seattle fade away.

Information on classes and events the park has to offer is available at the Discovery Park Environmental Learning Center, which can be reached at 386-4236.