One of the most valuable services a kayak performs is to furnish a means of escape from civilization. On my best kayaking trips, I penetrate deep into the wilderness, where my only company is marine mammals and seabirds. Days or weeks can pass without my speaking to another person. Ideally, I won’t even see any other boats or hear any planes. I will only see trees and clouds and only hear waves and wind.
Still, civilization is not without its charms. One of civilization’s principal charms is fireworks. Say what you what will about seabirds and mammals, they just don’t put on a very good fireworks show.
I love fireworks. I love big ones and little ones, flying ones and bursting ones. I love them rocketing up high, I love them spinning down low. I love small, private fireworks shows in driveways, and I love giant, public fireworks shows in lakes. Every Independence Day, I suspend my usual preference for wilderness and solitude in favor of the very opposite: as much noise and spectacle as possible.
Route map. There are closer boat launches than 14th Street, but the closer you get to Gas Works Park on Independence Day, the worse the availability of parking.
The Seafair Charitable Foundation is the current host of Seattle’s Independence Day fireworks show. The show has evolved over the decades, but the current iteration involves a large fireworks barge on Lake Union, the heart of Seattle.
Most Seattleites view the show from Gas Works Park at the north end of the lake or Lake Union Park at the south end. Those who own boats can get closer to the action by anchoring in the middle of the lake. Hundreds of boaters turn out each year, jockeying for position on the lake to get the best and closest views.
To protect the eager boaters from their own enthusiasm, the police set up exclusion zones around the fireworks barge. Like cowboys herding cattle, the police boats corral the masses of recreational boats into designated viewing areas, where they are expected to sit tight until the show is over.
I figured the police would have their hands full wrangling all the powerboaters. In my unobtrusive little kayak, I might slip through the crowd and steal myself the best seat in the city for the fireworks.
Launching at Seattle’s 14th Street boat ramp. Though not widely advertised, tiny beachfront access points are dotted throughout the city.
Ballard Bridge. Returning to the launch beach at night, I used the Ballard Bridge—which carries 15th Street—as a landmark to locate the obscure boat ramp one block east on 14th Street.
Transiting Lake Washington Ship Canal toward Fremont and Aurora Bridges. The Aurora Bridge, the more distant and taller of the two, marks the west end of Lake Union.
Pedestrians crossing Fremont Bridge. The entire Fremont neighborhood was popping with live music, outdoor parties, and fireworks.
Crowd gathering in Gas Works Park. The industrial structures in the background are relics of the historic coal gasification plant for which the park is named.
My plan encountered a hitch at the very entrance to Lake Union. The Seattle Police Department had determined that the boaters’ viewing area in the center of the lake was full. They established a line of buoys just east of the Aurora Bridge and ordered all incoming recreational boats to keep outside the buoy line. Entry to the lake was now closed.
At first, the recreational boaters ignored the police. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, not Obedience Day. Full speed ahead to the fireworks!
The police had anticipated just such a recalcitrant response on the part of the boating community. The Harbor Patrol deployed an entire squadron of chase boats to run down blockade runners, en masse if possible, boat by boat if necessary.
This confrontational approach delivered more effective results. It is one thing to ignore a distant patrol boat announcing general instructions over a loudspeaker. It is quite another to ignore a patrol boat pulling up alongside to address you personally with specific and increasingly strident commands.
I wasn’t more than fifty meters beyond the buoy line when a patrol boat accosted me and a nearby group of paddleboarders. The police ordered all of us to turn around, to which I nodded politely as if hearing the rules for the first time. The police turned their full attention to the paddleboarders to upbraid them for not wearing lifejackets, which was all the opportunity I needed to duck out of sight behind the pier of a private marina. From here, I could study the situation and assess my options.
A sophisticated defensive scheme was in play here at the west end of the lake. Each police boat had its role. The first boat or two served as linemen to block incoming recreational boaters at the buoy line and turn them back toward the bridges. Behind these lurked a squad of linebackers, smaller and more nimble vessels, to tackle any runners who might break through. Farther down the lake was the territory of the defensive backfield, the safeties and cornerbacks, to sweep the waters in a last line of defense.
In addition to playing various positions on the field, the patrolmen also subscribed to various theories of policing. Some of the officers addressed the boating public in sarcastic, bullying tones: “Hello, in the blue pontoon boat. I know you’re very special, but you need to turn around now.” Other officers adopted a carrot-and-stick approach: “The fireworks will not start until you return to the other side of the buoys.” Still others tried to win hearts and minds through reasoned persuasion: “You will still see the exact same show from behind the buoy line.” When reason failed, they resorted to lights and sirens—the ultima ratio regum.
I, for one, was unconvinced by the police officers’ cajoling. I couldn’t help but notice that, while the recreational boaters were being turned back at the buoy line half a mile from the fireworks barge, the commercial cruise boats were allowed to approach to within a quarter mile. If the show really were “exactly the same,” then why did the cruise boats need to come twice as close?
Tickets aboard the cruise boats started at $135. Tickets for the “premium reserved seating” at Gas Works Park started at $50. Lake Union and the city parks are supposed to be the common patrimony of all the people, yet here the choicest areas had been cordoned off for those who could pay, with police officers on hand to enforce the new dispensation. This on the anniversary of our national independence!
Enough was enough. The real pirates were the ones who set up this hierarchy of the buoys, not the ones who were trying to break it. I shot from my hiding place behind the pier and bolted for the lake. Give me liberty or give me death!
Argosy Cruises Salish Explorer. Of all the cruise boats on the lake, this one had the most spacious viewing decks and the least offensive dance-music sound system.
Cruise boats on Lake Union. The cruise boats did not anchor but motored around in circles, tooting their horns at one another whenever collision threatened.
The police’s defensive scheme was designed specifically to detect paddlers like me. What’s more, the officers were all veteran kayak-catchers by now, having already apprehended dozens of miscreant paddlers this evening. Still, as capable as they were, the police were not prepared for an attack like mine. I have spent hundreds of hours over the years in pursuit of elusive marine mammals. I well know the ways to make an elusive marine mammal of myself when need be.
The first consideration is camouflage. Kayakers are easy to spot in the middle of a waterbody but almost impossible to spot against the background of a textured shoreline. The closer to shore, the harder to see. To camouflage myself, I hugged the piers, bulkheads, and moorings that line the shore of Lake Union.
The flash of a kayaker’s paddle blades can be another giveaway. Whenever I had to emerge into an open area, I would stow my paddle beneath my decklines and propel myself by pushing with my hands against the various docks and moored yachts—handrailing in the literal sense of the word.
Savvy sentinels that they were, the police were alert to the possibility of handrailers. Every few minutes, their secondary line of defense would sweep the shoreline at a distance of just ten meters. To hide from the sweepers, I would tuck in behind moored yachts, taking advantage of the narrow space between the hull and the dock created by the taper of the yacht’s bow. My own bow would often protrude beyond that of the yacht, but by holding myself motionless against the dock, I could, on casual inspection, pass for a harmless, moored dinghy rather than a kayaker on the move.
Needless to say, I kept my deck-mounted light switched off during this evolution. The police had lights enough of their own. The patrol boats were mounted with spotlights and thermal imagers, which the officers deployed liberally wherever they suspected a sneaky boater might be hiding in the shadows. Still, their lights could not penetrate deep into the fairways of the covered marinas, where I concealed myself behind pilings and floats.
It took an hour of cat-and-mouse creeping, but I finally emerged onto the open part of the lake. I was just in time for the show. Even as the final note of the national anthem echoed across the water, the first volley of fireworks shot upward. The sky lit up with showers of sparks and flames. From my vantage point just a few hundred yards away, I had to crane my neck to watch the highest of the bursts. In every direction, the boats and buildings glowed in the various colors of the fireworks.
I could have watched the fireworks for hours, but the show ended after twenty minutes. As soon as the final reports had boomed across the water, the shore crowd in Gas Works Park sent up a cheer. The boaters on the lake answered with a volley of hoots from their horns.
No longer needing to hide from the police, I clicked on my deck-mounted light and joined the parade of boats exiting through the ship canal. Paddlers and powerboaters alike hailed one another homeward, for all our spirits had been raised by the beautiful spectacle.
Beginning of fireworks show, Lake Union. From the lake, I could hear the launch of the mortars, followed seconds later by the much louder burst of the shells.
Bursting red peony shell. The show was set to music which played across the water, though I could not tell where the speakers were.
Bursting fireworks, Lake Union. There was enough breeze to clear the smoke but not so much as to interfere with the fireworks themselves.
Falling showers of sparks. As with many things, fireworks are even more delightful when seen from a kayak.
Exiting Lake Union toward Fremont Bridge. As if by unspoken agreement, paddlers kept to the left of the channel, powerboaters to the right.
I’ve been watching the Seattle fireworks show for decades. Having witnessed it from the water this Independence Day, I hold these truths to be self-evident, that a kayak furnishes not only the means of escape from civilization but also the means to relish civilization’s delights most fully, and that no premium reserved seating need ever be purchased for a first-rate experience to be enjoyed. As a lifelong fan of both fireworks and freedom, I can think of no Independence Day celebration I have enjoyed more than hiding from the police on a public lake to watch a fireworks show from the best possible vantage.
—Alex Sidles