The Seattle Street-Smart Naturalist , livre ebook

To Marjorie
Text 2005 David B. Williams
Maps 2005 Megan Ernst
Cover Photo 2008 Jamie and Judy Wild / DanitaDelimont.com
This book was previously published under the title The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle .
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williams, David B., 1965-
The Seattle street-smart naturalist / David B. Williams.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-55868-859-9 (softbound)
1. Natural history-Washington (State)-Seattle Region-Anecdotes.
2. Williams, David B., 1965- I. Title.
QH105.W2W55 2005
508.797 772-dc22
2004012542
WestWinds Press
An imprint of Graphic Arts Books
P.O. Box 56118
Portland, OR 97238-6118
(503) 254-5591
Editor: Colin Chisholm
Design: Andrea Boven Nelson, Boven Design Studio
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Eagles
The Fault
The Plants
The Creek
The Stone
The Geese
The Bugs
The Weather
The Hills
The Invaders
The Water
The Crows
Notes
About the Author
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could not have written this book without the generous support and encouragement of the following people: Sally Abella, Bud Angerman, Clay Antieau, Esa rm nen, Jeremy Bell, Becky Benton, Nick Bond, Derek Booth, Sharon J. Collman, Brad Colman, Rod Crawford, Frank Danes, Bernadette Donald, Jean-Pierre Garcia, Curt Hedstrom, Arthur Lee Jacobson, Roger Kiers, Cheryl Klinker, Dave Knoblach, Louise Kulzer, Ray Larson, Estella Leopold, Meredith Lohr, Nate Mantua, John Marzluff, Kathy Mendelson, Martin Muller, Ralph Naess, Dennis Paulson, Keel Price, Sarah Reichard, Diane Sepanski, Brian Sherrod, Evan Sugden, Paul Talbert, Coll Thrush, Kathy Troost, Bob Vreeland, Dave Waters, Jim Watson, and John Withey. They answered my persistent questions, tracked down obscure facts, took me out in the field, and fact checked chapters. Any errors or misinterpretations of their data, of course, are mine.
I wish to thank the librarians in Special Collections at the University of Washington, who helped me track down many obscure documents. In the Internet Age, librarians skills and knowledge are more important than ever.
The Cultural Development Authority of King County, through their Heritage Special Projects and Arts Special Projects programs in 2002 and 2003, and the Office of Arts Cultural Affairs Seattle Artists Program for Literary Arts provided funds that allowed me to work on this project.
A big thanks to Tricia Brown at Graphic Arts for her support throughout this project.
I am grateful to Lisa Wogan and Bob Benton for reading the entire manuscript and making helpful suggestions, to Megan Ernst for her exquisite drawings, and to Colin Chisholm for his astute copyediting and editing.
To my parents for their inspiration and support.
And finally to my wife, Marjorie Kittle, for reading and rereading each chapter and for listening to me ramble during this four-year-long project on seemingly endless walks. I couldn t have done it without you.
I NTRODUCTION
I have been fortunate to spend an important part of my life outdoors. After I graduated from college with a degree in geology I moved to Moab, Utah, where I had lined up an internship with a nonprofit education organization. I planned on staying for three months but ended up leaving nine years later. As a program coordinator at the field school and later as a park ranger at Arches National Park, I explored some of the most beautiful and desolate landscapes on the planet with a vibrant and enthusiastic group of folks who loved the desert and who had a passion for sharing their knowledge of the flora and fauna. It was an amazing lifestyle that I was lucky to experience.
My years in the desert ended when my wife, Marjorie, and I moved to Boston so she could go to graduate school. The change was a shock, to say the least. I can best sum it up with a simple set of numbers. Population density in Grand County, where we lived in Utah, was a little under two people per square mile. In Somerville, Massachusetts, there were roughly 19,713 more people in that same space. We remained in Boston for as little time as necessary, arriving one day before Marjorie s graduate program started and leaving three weeks before graduation ceremonies.
What saved my sanity in Boston was the natural world. I discovered five-inch-wide fossils in limestone building blocks of the city s second-tallest skyscraper. I watched red-tailed hawks hunt in the gardens across the street from our apartment. I joined a pilgrimage of birders to one of the city s toniest sections, when a boreal owl made a rare visit. I found solace in a 3.5-mile-long river. Unlike the previous decade of my life, when I had to travel only a few minutes to find spectacular natural features, these expeditions required planning and determination. To succeed in finding wildness in the city, I had to hone my observational skills and learn the importance of patience. I became an aficionado of small wonders.
Moving to Boston also forced me to be a hunter and gatherer, not only of nature, but also of stories, one of the most sustaining parts of my life. For me, a good natural history story is as much about history as it is about nature. I am someone who wants to know why a plant or place has a certain name, why a scientist decided to study his or her subject, or when and how a particular species was introduced. I want to examine the intersection between people and nature, and the urban landscape is as good a place as any to do this.
Since Marjorie and I moved back to Seattle 7 years ago, after an absence for me of 15 years, I have tried to use my new skills to hunt, explore, and ask questions in the city where I grew up. Although Seattle is young, our stories are as complex as our topography. They have given me a deeper appreciation of and connection with my hometown. Maybe it is hyperbole to say that I have found myself or that without my forays into urban nature I could not survive, but I do know that I like Seattle better after spending so much time exploring and discovering new and old places. I take greater pleasure in the city. I am comfortable here.
What these stories and my adventures in Seattle confirm for me is that you don t have to go to exotic places to find interesting natural history stories, despite what you might see on the Discovery Channel or in the pages of National Geographic . These fine purveyors of nature leave you with the distinct feeling that nature is out there, away from most people s ordinary lives. They fail to show that stories are in our yards, under our feet, and on the walls of our buildings. Stories and nature are all around us, if we take the time to look and wonder.
I am not saying that we should substitute urban experiences for wild ones, but I recognize that most urban dwellers stand a better chance of developing a relationship with a goose than with a gorilla. We will develop connections with nature more often in our neighborhood parks than in national parks. We will have our first childhood encounter with a wild, undomesticated animal while exploring our backyards or nearby green spaces. These encounters and experiences will become more important as we continue to become a more urban planet.
Getting to know the urban wild will also influence how we react in wilder places. What lessons will people learn when they see public officials killing Canada geese in Seattle? What if instead citizens heard public officials challenging us to make changes in order to coexist with thousands of geese? I cannot help thinking that positive experiences with wildness in urban settings will lead to a positive land ethic in wilder places.
Another fine attribute of life as an urban naturalist is that it does not require specialized equipment. My field bag consists of notebook and pencil, binoculars, flashlight, magnifying lens, and an insulated coffee mug (one benefit of urban natural history is the proximity to good food and drink). I also wear metaphorical blinders. I have found them to be quite helpful in ignoring trash and ivy on a search for skunk cabbage. They have allowed me to bypass the mall while hunting for a bog, or to block out freeway sounds when listening to chorus frogs.
It also doesn t hurt if you don t mind doing odd things, like crawling around the floor of a mall to look at 150-million-year-old sponge fossils, posting up in a car at 7:00 A.M . waiting for crows to come and find a bag of old french fries, traipsing around under an interstate highway in search of evidence for plate tectonics, or touring a wastewater treatment plant. These experiences may not fit the picture of classic nature, but they certainly have made my days more fun and interesting.
To be an urban naturalist one must also be an optimist. You have to be open to possibilities. You have to trust that urbanization will not drive away every living species except starlings, rats, blackberries, and English ivy. You have to believe that humans can learn from the past. You have to believe what Henry David Thoreau once wrote, that In wildness is the preservation of the world, whether you find that wildness in your backyard or in the back of beyond.

For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, whe re, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk; and, when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him.
L ETTER FROM B ENJAMIN F RANKLIN TO HIS DAUGHTER