In the area of Olympia High School there are several bodies of water that qualify as ponds or even lakes, such as Hazard Lake. In the region where the Capitol Blvd. bridge crosses I-5 there was, apparently, a body of water called Moss Lake. In the days before environmental impact statements, Moss Lake was merely filled in when I-5 plowed through Oly and Tumwater in the 1950s without a lot of fuss.

On the OHS grounds there was "The Pond," and the cyclone fence around it was not an adequate barrier in preventing older students from tossing sophomores into it (in those days high school started at grade 10). I was in a Russian history class where we held a revolution, put the teacher on trial, and sentenced him to be thrown in The Pond, which was handy as we were the nearest classroom to that aquatic feature. Several of us had managed to shove him through a hole in the fence, and he was hanging on to the upper bar with all his strength. We would've had him too, except some teachers from the nearby portables raced out to rescue him.

This all comes to mind as I read through the late Mary Ann Bigelow's book, Where the Potholes Are (1990). Here is an excerpt to add to the OlyBlog Olylore:

... Nobody had a name for the oddities, but except for the size, they were alike. A Hole. A hole of from fifty feet across to several hundred feet; amazingly deep, whether in open or forest land, but with no change in surrounding soil or marking; a HOLE deep enough in many cases to hold water, with spring-fed depths of how many feet? Many seemed fairly shallow, but more held deep waters. Children were forbidden to go near and no one knew where the holes had come from or why they were there.

Several, behind Olympia High School (which, you must understand, is in Tumwater), were deep but dry. Homeowners, who built close to the edge, with viewing balconies, have their own trails down into the secret cups, a private ampitheater with picnic tables. Many have private, secret lakes with little boats tied up to their own little docks. Like the Mima Mounds to the south, the holes are a curiosity to visitors and a natural terrain by natives calmly accepted.

At least one man, wanting to build a house and live on the edge of one of the bigger holes, engaged a geologist to scientifically advise him as to the soundness of his property. The geologist made a thorough investigation of all the holes he could find and happily reported agelessly firm soil. The reason these old conformations existed, he said, was that millions of years ago, in the Ice Age, the glaciers covered this part of the country. When the world began to slowly warm, ice boulders of great size melted slower than the earth around them. They sank into the soil, causing identations in the earth. Natural springs found the identations, and timber and grasses grew.

What a strange relationship to the Ice Age! And yet, on Cain Road, North Street, Henderson Boulevard, and anywhere else in the suburbs where the land was cheap because of This Hole, there is our close connection to the beginning of the world. This is wondrous and mysterious, and it keeps us properly humble. How hard it is to realize that we simply can't know everything in the world.

Listen to this: A long time ago, a man drowned in Hewitt Lake, one of the largest of the moraine holes -- large enough to have a ring of houses and small docks ringing the lake. This lake is near the junction of Henderson Boulevard and the Yelm Road, a mile past the cemeteries. After a while, his body surfaced in the Deschutes River above the falls!