the cheapest birthday parties are picnics at Henderson lake. for those of us who are born in the months between when it's too cold to be outdoors and hot enough to go to the outdoor pool. there are great big trees that grow on acute angles that are low enough for parents not to worry but still a climb enough to be fun. the better activity when at these barely-supervised events is to wander along the rocks of the constructed lake edge until you happen across a dead sturgeon or a partially stepped-on crayfish. it seems like a prize but there is inevitably one or the other present at any point when the water is thawed. this lake is not like others that sink into each beige suburb around it, this lake is a historic cesspool, once named Slaughterhouse Slough. the "lake" was runoff that gathered sediment and the stench of death and iron until the neighborhood grew around it and the city deemed a rebrand to encourage wealthy developers to turn it into the still-fetid pond it is now