Mother Nature is helping Washington return a man-made lake to its natural state. The state is restoring Capitol Lake, a lake created by an Olympia dam in the 1950s, to an estuary.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Mother Nature is helping Washington return a man-made lake to its natural state. The state is restoring Capitol Lake, a lake created by an Olympia dam in the 1950s, to an estuary.

A man walking on tidal mud flats with friends in an Alaska estuary got stuck up to his waist in the quicksand-like silt and drowned as the tide came in before frantic rescuers could extract him.

The drowning was the latest tragedy at Turnagain Arm, a 48-mile-long estuary in Alaska known for its dangerous mud flats made of silt created by glacier-pulverized rocks.