High
The raised plane
Hands that pick the ball early want bounce that still finds turf. Priest Point tide then buries a low letter until the face arrives late.
Thurston · Capitol Way · bounce as floor
Map bounce as a floor. Stop treating it like a nickname.
Bounce Floor is an Olympia datum desk. Helene does not inherit a grind letter from a catalog. She stakes a plane against Budd Inlet hours, then Bram checks whether that plane actually leaves Percival clay instead of shoveling it.
Low
The sunken plane
A steep entry wants bounce that gets out of the way. Tumwater spray on a high letter becomes a shovel in the first wet week.
Costume
The borrowed elevation
A tour grind photocopied onto a Capitol Lake loop. Looks official until Nisqually clay interviews the leading edge.
Why a datum
Letters float. Floors have ticks.
People arrive holding a grind they liked in a magazine: wide, narrow, "whatever the guy in Seattle said." Thurston wetlands do not file Seattle letters. They file whether the sole meets a plane that exists in fog, or a plane that only exists on a dry mat.
Sigrid Holm will not average a high floor with a low floor as a kindness. If the sand wants 12° and the 56 wants 8°, those are two stakes, not a blended courtesy.
Heard on Capitol
Stakes people actually kept
My "wide grind" was a high floor pretending to be helpful. Bram dropped the plane. Percival stopped holding the face for ransom.
I tried to stake fog hours and dry-afternoon hours on one sheet. Helene handed me two flags. I paid for the second sand. The wetland was right.