Any newspaper’s function, week after week, is to provide a rough draft of history, but this week, The Beachcomber steps back from breaking news, and its immediate impact for the future of Vashon, to take a longer view of an iconic island spot, now weathered and dilapidated, but up for sale at Portage.

To envision what might come next for this storied location, it’s important to examine the past. This is why The Beachcomber’s longstanding series by Bruce Haulman and Terry Donnelly, “Time & Again,” is such a worthy contribution to our newspaper — it regularly helps us all place people and places in context.

This week, on page 1, “Time & Again” examines the history of the Portage Store and its surrounding scenic vistas.

A few islanders may remember visiting the proud building when it was called Lavender’s Store, and many more remember stopping in for essentials, candy and lively conversation when it was operated by Jim and Elspeth Smith, who ran the store until in closed in 2005.

It’s also been a place where Vashon’s freewheeling creative spirit has been felt, both by islanders and celebrated visitors including poets and musicians.

And so, on social media, it’s to be expected that some might nostalgically dream of restoring the picturesque spot, on the edge of the water, to some kind of functionality — a cool coffee shop? Another store? Can someone bring back the rag-tag collection of stationary bikes that for so long sat across the road, providing both a funky and breathtakingly beautiful place to stop, pause and painstakingly pedal, while gazing out at the sweeping marine vista?

This kind of nostalgia is unavoidable — but the place itself has longer memories and a deeper ache for restoration than many of us can conjure.

And so what we hope can be brought back to this site is something else — both its natural ecology and a recognition of its full human history, tied so closely to that, that was disturbed though not erased in the rush of white settlement of Vashon.

Portage’s salt marsh — which along with KVI Beach has the distinction of being the last remaining coastal wetlands of its kind in central Puget Sound and in King County — should be fully restored, at long last, as a place for wildlife to thrive.

Salt marshes are feeding grounds for juvenile salmon and other species — places that store carbon and provide a shallow water refuge for small fish. Because of the rich variety of food sources, shorebirds are also often found looking for prey in these sheltered areas.

Additionally, as Haulman points out in his article, it should be fully acknowledged that the First People of the island, the sxəbabs, used Portage as a major gathering and hunting place, and shared hunting rights at the site with the Nisqually Tribe in a traditional resource-sharing arrangement.

Importantly, the site has an even more sacred history — Portage was also the location of a major sxəbabs burial site.

“Canoe burials in the large madrone grove to the south of the road, connecting Tramp Harbor and Quartermaster Harbor, were still present in the 1910s,” Haulman writes. “The madrone grove has now been largely eliminated, and nothing remains of the canoe burials except the quiet spirit of the place.”

There are, however, stories that still circulate on Vashon — now passed down for generations — that include disturbing accounts of human remains being unearthed as the basement for the “new” Portage store was dug.

Haulman recounts one of these stories in his article, as recorded by another local historian, Brian Brenno.

In thinking about what comes next for the Portage site, islanders must, at last, fully address its history as a sacred space of ancestors, acknowledging and attempting to repair the way that Vashon’s settlement profoundly disturbed this aspect of the place.

We will watch and follow the sale of this property, and hope for the best — a buyer or buyers who fully appreciate the ecological, historical and cultural considerations at play in the transaction.