There's something about the area that has fascinated me since I was a kid. I have very vivid memories of stumbling along the banks as a young kid(like age 4, maybe 3). I grew up fishing and swimming in the river. There was almost a second home kind of feeling to it. As I grew older and my hobbies began to get more set in stone(I'm a geologist), I began to get curious to the who, what, where, when, why and how. The research I did into the area only amplified my curiosity. There's just something about it that my mind always wanders around in. I'm not convinced that if I went to an afterlife, it wouldn't be amoung the Cedar trees along the rivers banks. Franklin's stories of being a former mining town with 1,000 people in it, now abandoned, and the stories around it in places like Ravensdale, Cumberland, Bayne, Selleck and Black Diamond are a somewhat overlooked place in King County, despite the coal production that helped with the regional growth. I'm pretty damn lucky to work with the museum in Black Diamond, and they encourage me to keep learning and growing and, most of all, sharing. There's no better joy I get then when someone has a good experience with us, be it in Franklin or in the museum or on a hike I take people on, when they tell me "I've been here 5, 10, 15, 20, 30+ years and I'm amazed this place exisits". It's a really unique and special spot I get to share with people why its so special and important. I think legendary mountaineering, kayaking, conservationist Wolf Bauer put it best when he described it as "A Ribbon of Wilderness in our Midst."