Permanent storywalk opens in Port Townsend

PORT TOWNSEND — Once on a fall day, there was a singular bean. This individual looked like a lima bean wearing a tiny bow tie.

Anyway, this bean was lonesome. Sure, the cool beans are here, too, hanging out, rocking sunglasses, enjoying the crisp, cool weather in Port Townsend.

Next to them the lonesome bean feels awkward and figures the cool beans will always be in their own little group at school.

Then something amazing happens. Our bow-tied bean drops his lunch on his loafers, and a cool bean comes right over and helps out, dusting things off and acting like everything is fine. So it is.

Back in the classroom, the teacher calls on the lonely bean, who isn’t paying attention. Everybody looks. It’s another awkward moment, but then one of the cool beans comes to the rescue, cluing in the classmate about the question at hand.

Little by little, the cool beans show the solo bean what belonging feels like.

All of this unfolds on the 18 new panels at Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park, where the Port Townsend Library has installed a permanent trailside storywalk.

“It’s such a cool story about kindness,” Library Director Melody Sky Weaver said after the ribbon-cutting Tuesday.

Alongside Youth Services Librarian Hilary Verheggen, Weaver introduced the book, written by Jory John and illustrated by Pete Oswald, as the first in a series of storywalks at Kah Tai.

To read “The Cool Bean,” pedestrians can start at the park’s Landes Street entrance near 14th Street and continue on the trail to Kearney Street. Weaver estimated the storywalk is about half a mile long.

Every couple of months, a different story will be installed, she said, adding the next one will be about the Coast Salish people.

Storywalks also can be found outside the Jefferson County Library, 620 Cedar Ave. in Port Hadlock; at H.J. Carroll Park, 9884 state Highway 19 in Chimacum; and at Brinnon School, 46 Schoolhouse Road in Brinnon.

Clallam County’s temporary storywalks have been taken down, but the North Olympic Library System hopes to install more in the future, marketing coordinator Kate Radigan said Tuesday.

While the Storywalk Project is a registered service mark owned by creator Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, Vt., several local groups supported the installation at Kah Tai Lagoon.

Weaver thanked them all: the Port Townsend Public Library Foundation, Port Townsend’s Public Works Department, City Council and Parks, Recreation and Tree Advisory Board and the Friends of the Port Townsend Public Library.

“It literally took a village,” she said.

For information about other local library activities, visit jclibrary.info or PTpubliclibrary.org or phone 360-385-3181. In Clallam County, the North Olympic Library System’s branches can be reached via NOLS.org and 360-417-8500.

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Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladailynews.com.