The times that small steps are what you can take
Late in the morning last Monday I took advantage of a rare sunny day and walked the Clear Creek Trail in Silverdale. I started at the south end at the Sa'Qad Interpretive Center, taking the path up the east side of the creek. A few minutes in, I felt awful.
The sunshine and exercise, typically enough to buoy any mood, couldn't pick up the beer cans and empty containers strewn in the section behind Levin Road and up to where the trail hits Mickelberry, where across the street there's clearly an encampment serving as another reminder of the persistent struggle to house everyone in this community. And then at Myhre there were three abandoned grocery carts, arranged neatly yet far from their homebase at Target and certainly not enhancing the landscape of an important urban environmental preserve.
I turned around, using the west side of the creek trail for my return. Within minutes I was passing adult and teenage volunteers picking up garbage and doing some winter pruning, marking the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday with a day of service — and returning the optimism to my sunny day off. Thanks to each one of you, who may not have a solution to the endemic issues that require far more than a few hours of labor but show up and persist in making incremental improvements anyway.
An additional thanks to the handful of you who emailed, texted or even showed up at the Sun this week. The half dozen queries were coincidental, but understandable. Is the Sun doing alright? How can we help? It's a new year on the calendar, which we all know, but it also feels very much like a new time for this newspaper, which is something you don't.
This week reporter Andrew Binion left our newsroom for another job, the third colleague and friend who we have said goodbye to in the past few months. I've mentioned each one to you because it's important to recognize their service to the community and the impact those life decisions have on the Sun's present situation. I feel lucky to have worked with Andrew for so long — he's one of a rare cohort to have been laid off by the Sun and then return to start a nine-year run as our courts and public safety reporter. We sent him off on Wednesday, and his parting shot was encouragement for our staff to keep up the fight; which, to answer the question a few of you posed this week, we will. One way or another, we will, along with the support from the community of you all — who read, who subscribe, who send us news tips, who participate with a letter to the editor or a guest column, who keep asking how they can help. Just like the trail volunteers who won't alone solve the issues that lead to an abandoned tent strewn, a single action can't return local journalism to what this community deserves — but that won't stop us from showing up for the incremental steps that can be part of the solution.
One of my memorable lines from Binion was his reply when he was asked to do what we call a weather story several years ago: Open the window, there's your weather story.
We are reassured when we're given the forecast, but everyone in the Pacific Northwest learns you still have to look at what's in front of you to know how to dress each day. Our newsroom has a challenge as we begin 2023, as that handful of you noticed. I can't predict how the Sun is going progress as this institution approaches 88 years of covering the community, but I know there's still a story each day, and there's people who remain and care, and we hear you when you tell us it still matters.
David Nelson has been editor of the Kitsap Sun since 2009. Contact him at david.nelson@kitsapsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: David Nelson: The small steps we'll continue to take
