by Robert Graef

A cooling dip in a lake is a very good thing in July or August. The state and county provide opportunities at waterfront parks where families enjoy paddling and picnicking, sometimes for a slight charge, sometimes free. It is at lakeside outings that little ones soak up indelible memories of water more wild and natural than in a bathtub. It may amount to more splashing and dog-paddling than swimming but that’s where swimming starts. Maybe the water’s not crystalline and sometimes smells a bit fishy but that just adds to the wonder of it all. Like the labels on some trendy beverages say, 100 percent natural and unfiltered.

Gissberg Twin Lakes, a.k.a. Gissberg Ponds or Square Lakes is a rarity. One can walk all the way around without crossing private property. Public access all the way. The broad grassy path down the north side is shaded by alders that meet overhead like sabers at a military wedding. Now and then one spots a downed tree bearing the chisel-tooth marks of a pesky beaver.

Freeway din at the parking lot is frankly awful. But a well-placed berm effectively separates the shoreline from the traffic’s roar. A few steps over the hump and toward the water it remains an earful but all one has to do is crouch to reduce the volume. I-5’s din is reduced to a whisper at water’s edge.

Gissberg Lakes is truly a people’s park. While rich-and-famous wannabes max-out credit cards to roast for a week under Caribbean sun, Gissberg Lakes’ quiet families ponder the beauty of dragonflies as disinterested trout and bass nudge their lures. Lots of fishing goes on along the shores and just enough catching to keep people coming back.

Judging from contented children and snoozing parents, Gissberg Lakes has a capacity for soothing jangled nerves. If peace is what the park’s visitors look for, most won’t be disappointed. Aside from delighted squeals from waist-deep water fights, few voices are raised. An unspoken rule seems to keep boom-boxes at bay. It all adds to laid-back luxury that money can’t buy. Think of it as re-creation as opposed to wreckreation.

To be fully prepared for an outing at the lakes, bring folding chairs, a cooler, snacks, bait, rod-holder and rod. Maybe add a blanket or a portable barbecue and you’re set for a delightfully slow day — after driving maybe five or ten miles to get there. Gissberg Lakes’ proximity is a good fit for families feeling the pinch of today’s economic vise. Their seriously road-weary cars that might not survive big vacation trips share the lot with newer shinier models.

When the thermometer tops eighty, children launch an amazing variety of blow-up rafts. Canoes and the occasional mini-sailboat trace laps around one lake but need to be dragged through the shallow channel that connects to the other.

The lakes are the result of a happy accident. When the DOT was building the freeway link north of Marysville it had marshland to contend with. Fill was needed to elevate the roadbed so the road-builders mined for nearby gravel wherever it was available. Gissberg Lakes was a result of those gravel-mines.

The lakes are bounded on the east by I-5. Concrete walls of big-box stores at Lakewood Crossing rise to the north while they are bordered by placid agricultural to the south and west. The two lakes take up 25 of the park’s 44 acres. The north lake is reserved for juvenile anglers under the age of 15, a restriction that appears to be popularly ignored. One has a maximum depth of 24 feet, the other measures 13 feet deep.

No stream feeds the lakes nor do they have an outlet. One source lists them as spring-fed but much of the water moving in and out comes from a slow flow of ground water oozing through the local aquifer. Dig a hole anywhere in the region and you’ll hit water at the surface level of Gissberg Lakes. Since the road builders required the kind of high-grade sand and gravel that poses no barrier to water flow, it figures that ground water thereabouts is free to drift through, perpetually renewing the lakes.

The lakes were named for Bill Gissberg, or more formally, State Senator William A. Gissberg. Bill grew up in Everett’s Riverside District and played championship basketball at Everett High before attending the University of Oregon and the UW on athletic scholarships. He earned a law degree at the UW and practiced law in Marysville and Everett. He served as a landing craft commander in the Pacific during WWII where he participated in the invasions of Okinawa and Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines. Throughout 20 years in the state senate, Gissberg developed a reputation for integrity and hard-nosed independence that caused one friend to describe him as a oner among loners.

When he wasn’t lawyering or legislating, Gissberg was fishing. An outdoorsman and environmentalist, he lived to see the lakes named for him and he surely felt deep satisfaction knowing that children would hook their first fish in lakes bearing his name. At the time when party officials were grooming him for national politics they took him to Washington D.C. to meet the movers and shakers. But when Gissberg took one look at the polluted and littered waters of the Potomac and considered the futility of wetting a line there, he said, no thanks, and returned home to continue representing the 39th District in Olympia.

Gissberg Lakes — a great place for a casual outing. It helps my appreciation of them to know that they were named for a man who deserved the recognition.

Comments may be addressed to: rgraef@verizon.net.