A county park that used to be a private resort

Martha Lake is a census-designated place in Snohomish County, west of Mill Creek and northeast of Lynnwood, with 21,129 residents at the 2020 census. It is not a landmark and does not pretend to be one. It is the sort of place a long walk actually passes through: subdivisions, arterials, a lake with a park on its east shore.

The park is worth the stop. Martha Lake Park, at 16300 E. Shore Drive, is six acres of county land with a fishing dock, a boardwalk through the wetland, picnic shelters, trails, beach access and a wading area with no lifeguard. It was not always public. The county records that the property was known and operated under private ownership as "Martha Lake Resort", and that the previous owners intended either condominiums or a business park on the site. When those development plans proved infeasible, the Martha Lake Community Club and local lake residents asked instead for a regional park, and the county acquired the land.

A registry works something like that. It is not a building or a technology. It is a list that exists only because ordinary people, none of them sick, decided in advance to be available to someone they will never meet. Nobody is on it by default. Torsten Huber joined a German donor registry more than a year before Jada Bascom was born — which is to say, before there was anyone to join for.