If you are not familiar with Castilleja, you might recognize the common name, which is applied to almost every species within the genus: paintbrush. (They were long known as Indian paintbrush, but fortunately most have dropped the first part of the designation.) Paintbrushes favor the long wavelength of the Roy (of Roy G. Biv fame) part of the rainbow, dazzling in reds, oranges, and yellows, though some also can be white or magenta. When you see one, you can clearly see why the plants merit their common name.

That vivacious color though does not come from the flowers, which are inconspicuous and green. Instead, modified leaves, known as bracts, bestow the color of the paintbrush clan. An adaption such as this is good for the plants because the bracts provide benefits including display of warning signals, camouflage of conspicuous reproductive organs, and amelioration of external threats, such as rain, low temperature, and UV radiation. Colorful bracts are also a long distance attractant, which appears equally successful whether human or pollinator. In this capacity, bracts function like a narcissist: “Ooh, ooh look at me. Ain’t I pretty.” Other classic examples of bracts masquerading as flowers include poinsettias, dogwoods, and bougainvilleas.

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Found from sea to summit, Castilleja is a rich genus of around 180, notoriously-hard-to-distinguish species. In 1862, the great botanist Asa Gray wrote that “the species of this genus are most troublesome and unsatisfactory,” a statement still subscribed to by many botanists and plant lovers. The problem is that Castilleja are promiscuous to the point that if they were humans, we’d question their morals, but they are plants, so we merely question their status. The result of all this commingling are hybrids that don’t hue to the hue of their parents. Nor can one rely on morphology or genetics, which taxes even the most determined taxonomists. (Okay, enough of the silly world play.) In other words, they be troublesome.

I don’t even try to distinguish which species I am seeing. Our most common are C. parviflora, which tend to be reddish to magenta, often in the sub-alpine and alpine; C. miniata, generally scarlet, at all elevations; and C. hispida, scarlet or yellow bracts, at low to middle elevations. Because of their loose mating habits, I have found that it’s simpler and much more satisfying to only say Cast-ti-LAAY-HAAA.

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Not just deceivers with their colorful bracts, paintbrushes play another trick; they are vampire-like, sucking nutrients and water from other plants. In order to extract their host’s vitality, paintbrush send out finger-like parasitic tissues, known as haustoria, and form a root to root, one-way subway of sucking of key elements such as carbon and nitrogen. Paintbrushes though do not depend entirely upon their hosts; with their green leaves they can also photosynthesize but went an additional step and evolved the ability to supplement their own resources by taking them from another. Ecologists refer to organisms such as Castilleja as hemiparasites or facultative parasites.

Despite their manner of drinking up a host’s essential life forces, hemiparasites such as Castilleja are not all bad. Yes, they reduce their host’s productive, reproductive, and competitive abilities, all of which can be considered negative, but hemiparasites also have positive effects. Studies have found that they enhance nutrient cycling, particularly in nutrient-poor ecosystems. Intriguingly, they do via leaf litter, basically taking nutrients from one host and converting them to a more usable form and releasing them back into the ecosystem when they drop their leaves. Hemiparasites appear to further enhance their surrounding plant communities by interacting with and affecting soil microbes.

Long looked down upon as detrimental suckers of life, Castilleja instead are now being thought of as ecosystem engineers, or organisms such as pikas, that modulate the availability of resources. In other words, they help a community be a community by performing a role that is neither good nor bad. Castilleja are simply one of the uncountable, interconnected strands of the web of life, which evolution has woven together to comprise the beautiful and complex ecosystems that make up our world. Long live diversity in its many wonderful forms.

Excited that an excerpt from my book appeared in the Seattle Times on Sunday! It’s from my chapter on peopling the Cascades, which explores the 10,000 year plus history of people in these mountains.

Honored to be part of this splendid KCTS story about Puget Sound as a maritime highway. Click on Waymakers on the Water.

In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, I am rather excited about this book. It’s gorgeous and it’s about a place that has played a profound role in my life for more than five decades. Chapters focus on topics such as glaciers, wolverines, fire, mountain goats, and Clark’s Nutcrackers. Here’s a description.

Blending human and natural history into a vivid portrait of one of North America’s most dynamic landscapes, In the Range of Fire and Ice is a lively, groundbreaking exploration of Washington’s Cascade Range. Drawing on conversations with anthropologists, park rangers, ecologists, and climate scientists, as well as firsthand experience, I aim to brings readers into the mountains to uncover stories etched in the landscape over millennia. I hope that those who read the book will see the Cascades not only as mountains, but as a living, evolving realm of fire, ice, and hope.

All of these events are also listed, along with several others, on my website’s Walks/Talks page, which I update regularly. And, if you want to buy the book directly from me, here’s a link.

September 3, 2026 – Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park – 7pm – Book launch for In the Range of Fire and Ice. In conversation with former Seattle Times writer Lynda Mapes for my new book. RSVP for event.

September 16, 2026 – Burke Museum – 6:30 PM – In conversation with Mary Ann Gwinn, former book critic of the Seattle Times. RSVP for event.

September 17, 2026 – Edmonds Bookshop – Edmonds Waterfront Event Center – 6:30 PM – In conversation with Teresa Wippel of myedmondsnews.com. RSVP for event.

September 26, 2026 – Bainbridge Island Book Festival – I will be speaking about In the Range of Fire and Ice. More info to come

September 30, 2026 – Queen Anne Historical Society – 6:00 PM - In conversation with Alicia McBarron.

October 4, 2026 – Cascade Forest Conservancy – Portland, Oregon – 4:00 to 7:00 PM – I have the honor to discuss In the Range of Fire and Ice at the Forest Fest benefit for the Cascade Forest Conservancy. RSVP for the event.

October 7, 2026 – Darvill’s Books – Orcas Island — 6:00 PM – In conversation with Amy Frost, Executive Director of the Lopez Island Historical Society. More info to come.

October 8, 2026 – Village Books – Bellingham – 6:00 PM – In conversation with Saul Weisberg, co-founder of the North Cascades Institute. RSVP for event.

October 27, 2026 – Wenatchee River Institute – Leavenworth – 7:00 PM – In conversation with author Ana Maria Spagna. RSVP for event.

November 10, 2026 – Mount St. Helens Institute – Vancouver, WA - 6:30 PM – In conversation with Alyssa Hoyt, Executive Director of MSHI, as part of the Institute’s Brews and Views series. More info to come.

November 12, 2026 – Island Books – Mercer Island – 6:30 PM – co-sponsored by Mercer Island Historical Society – In conversation with Katy Sewall, KUOW co-host. More info to come.

November 17, 2026 – Browsers Books – Olympia, WA – In conversation with Dylan Fischer, Evergreen College ecologist. More info to come.

November 19, 2026 – Port Townsend Library – 6:00 P.M. - In conversation with Conner Bouchard-Roberts, Poet Laureate of Port Townsend. Link for the event.

November 21, 2026 – Quimper Geological Society – Port Townsend – I will be discussing In the Range of Fire and Ice. More info to come.

December 1, 2026 – Town Hall – Seattle – 7:30 PM – I am excited to share the stage with my pal Lyanda Lynn Haupt as we discuss our two new books; Among the Birds and In the Range of Fire and Ice. More info to come.

December 3, 2026 – IslandWood – Bainbridge Island – I will be discussing In the Range of Fire and Ice. More info to come.

Ghost platforms - I learned of these from my friend Jennifer Ott, Executive Director of HistoryLink.org. Walking with me on Alaskan Way, she pointed out the raised platforms at the base of several buildings, mainly between S. Washington Street and Pike Street. All faced west on the east side of Alaskan Way.

Jen calls the platforms “ghosts of Seattle’s industrial past” from the era when what we now call Alaskan Way was Railroad Avenue. The short story is that Daniel Gilman and Thomas Burke were attempting to built a railroad to the east. Known as the Seattle Lake Short and Eastern, it went north on trestles built over the water along the Seattle shoreline, eventually going through Interbay and around the north ends of Lake Union and Lake Washington. (Of course, Seattleites know it now as the route of the Burke-Gilman Trail.)

After the SLS&E opened in 1887, other railroads followed their lead and built their own trestle-bound rail routes. Within a decade or so, nine train tracks paralleled the shoreline. They carried all manner of goods and dropped and obtained the loads over the water, at the many piers built west of the trestles, and on land, at warehouses that crowded the length of what became known, not surprisingly, as Railroad Avenue. To reach the train cars and facilitate easy loading and unloading, builders built elevated platforms along the lengths of their warehouses.

Quite a few of these warehouses remain, generally repurposed for something not remotely related to their historic use. But, the old ghosts of Seattle’s industrial past, the elevated platforms, remain. As Jen points out, there really isn’t any reason to demolish them. “I love how they are relicts that mark a past use, and they are being repurposed as time goes on,” she says.

Of Wood and Clams - Speaking of relicts, the other feature I want to highlight is the new railing built along the waterfront. I know that handrail is not always the most exciting subject, but I have to credit the designers of Seattle’s new Waterfront Park with making handrails interesting. The reason is simple; they repurposed old wood from Seattle’s previous seawall. The wood comes from a deciduous tree (Lophira alata) native to Central and West Africa and is known as azobé, ekki, or red ironwood. (Unfortunately, the species has long been exploited and is now threatened due to over- harvesting and habitat loss.)

I first noticed the handrails soon after the opening of the waterfront. In particular, I was near the new habitat beach at South Washington Street and Alaskan Way reading interpretive signs attached to the railing. What attracted my attention were the numerous holes and tunnels, ranging from about an eighth inch to half inch in diameter, in the wood. Most holes went straight into the wood, but some paralleled the grain in tunnel cross sections.

They looked to be the borings of Puget Sound’s most infamous marine menace: the shipworm (they are not a worm or even closely related) or teredo clam. Found in salt water, particularly in the middle latitudes of the north hemisphere, the ravenous mollusks begin life as free swimming larvae, land on wood, and burrow deeply. The longest individuals of our local species Bankia setacea can reach six feet long, topped by a shell less than an inch wide. Shaped a bit like a medieval, conical helmet, the shell drills into the wood, weakening it, and causing expensive and extensive damage to ships, piers, piles, and wharves.

The ekki planks used for the railings came from a 1986 project to protect the city’s original seawall. Richard Miller, former director of roadway structures for Seattle, told me that he chose the ekki because it was resistant to marine borers. “It grows in sandy delta areas and has very high silica content. Turns out marine borers don’t like to chew sand!” But he warned, they had to use heartwood and not sapwood, which was prone to shipworm damage. Miller’s team even paid a timber expert to fly to Denmark where the wood was being milled to check each board.

Apparently, not every piece was heartwood, and the teredos quickly figured this out and honeycombed the ekki. The clams were joined by another invertebrate marine borer, a relative of our local roly-polies, or potato bugs, pillbugs, and bibble bugs, as some call them. All our isopods; our marine species is the non-local Limnoria tripunctata, better known as a gribble. (Unknown when they arrived but they were reported in California around 1870 and in Washington in 1962.)

Interestingly, gribbles became the face, if you will, of Seattle seawall damage. For example, here’s a screen shot from a City of Seattle webpage on the Waterfront. Note, no mention of shipworms but they do appear to have correctly identified gribble damage. Their holes tend to be smaller and more densely packed together. Gribbles max out at about quarter inch long. My theory as to why the focus is on gribbles is that the word is a whole lot cuter and more fun to say than shipworm.

Shipworms and gribbles and elevated platforms. Each of these is a ghost of the past, a reference to early Seattle and its dependence on rail and sea traffic bringing and taking out goods. We now live in a world of trucks and cars and planes, and of instant gratification, where goods magically appear in stores and directly at our homes. I think that we tend to forget the interconnected world we inhabit, especially in Seattle where the maritime economy is still important. We cannot separate the story of those who live on land from the sea around us; we are all integrated. Perhaps those gribble- and shipworm-infested wood planks along the waterfront will help remind us of that connection.

Wow, it’s less than one month until In the Range of Fire and Ice will be out in stores. I am rather excited about this! A couple of things.

You can still pre-order the book through Phinney Books, which gets you a discount and my signature.

The book launch is September 3 at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. I’ll be in conversation with Lynda Mapes, so it’s bound to be fun. Registration info.

For the rest of the events, which range from Portland to the North Cascades, please go to my walk and talks page on my website.

Thanks to Nancy Treneman, Jim Carlton, and Melissa Frey for help with marine borer info and to Richard Miller for his insights into ekki wood and the seawall.

Back at home, we continued to hear the kid. It turned dark, we got in bed, and still the calls pierced the air. Finally, I got up and tried to figure out who was making such a racket, disturbing my sought after slumber. Taking my phone, I walked out the back door in my pajamas and held it up. No calls. Now, the kid turns quiet! But eventually the sounds returned. A Red-tailed Hawk was calling and kept calling for quite awhile. I couldn’t complain; such a unique way to be serenaded to sleep in a city of 750,000 people. Like me, the kid was also an early riser, starting to call at 5:00 AM; as they say, there’s a reason babies are so cute.

As soon as the Merlin app informed me of the origin of the sound, I realized that the hawk was the only bird that could be making that call in our neighborhood. No other bird produces such a succinctly pitched note. My reason for not figuring it out sooner is that the caller was indeed a kid, a young Red-tailed Hawk who had probably recently fledged. In contrast to the short call of the kid, adults produce their longer, screaming kee-eeeee-arr, which shrills for two to three seconds. It’s an unmistakable sound and the classic bird call of gazillions of movies.

As I have noted in previous newsletters, Red-tailed Hawks are a very common urban bird. I regularly see them when I cross over the freeway near our house heading to the Light Rail station at Northgate. I have long suspected that a pair nests around here, but have not found the nest, so it was exciting to hear the kid calling. Calling though may not be the best word to describe the sound; it seemed more of a cry for attention. Mom, don’t forget me!

Once a young redtail has fledged and started to discover his or her world, the bird still relies on their parent for food. Not surprisingly, young birds are not good hunters or even very aware of how to hunt, as exemplified by the young Northern Harriers my pal Andy saw in Sequim. Here in an urban environment young birds such as redtails face numerous perils, particularly if they try hunting along an interstate freeway dominated by speeding walls of death.

The young Red-tailed Hawk is not the first youngster I have seen in Seattle. Goslings and ducklings abound at Green Lake. Black-capped Chickadees regularly nest in two nest boxes in our yard, and I have heard their cries for attention many times. My recent highlight was seeing female Common Merganser at Lake Washington carrying several babies on her back. Although I haven’t seen young robins, I have come across the baby blue eggs; no clue if they are where they are because of a nearby unseen nest or the result of someone such as a crow finding a tasty tidbit.

Writing of crows, their young take my prize for the most whiny baby bird. One has been a regular visitor to our yard over the past several weeks. I cannot remember the first time I heard the call, but soon after the bird was out of the nest and calling, our neighbor saw the youngster on the ground. She told me that the bird didn’t look well so she picked the kid up, attempted to feed her some water, and placed the bird in a “safe” bush. (Everything the neighbor did was wrong; forcing water into a young crow, or even using a syringe or dropper, can kill young crows, or most any other baby bird, and the parents were probably near by and well aware of where their kid was.) Fortunately, the young bird survived our neighbor’s good but incorrect intentions.

As the kid got older, the cawing became more regular, meaning anytime of day from dawn through dusk. I heard the calls at our bird bath, from trees throughout the yard, on our roof, across the street on telephone wires, on the ground, on the wing, and even when a parent was right next to the kid. For the most part, the calls’ persistence and tone came across as exceptionally needy pleas for attention. Mom, Mom, MOM, MOM!!

Of course, the calls are more diverse and nuanced than how my non-corvid ears can perceive. Those humans who know more about crows describe them as great communicators, who have a “complex language, steeped in cultural tradition,” write John Marzluff and Tony Angell in their book In the Company of Crows and Ravens. More than likely the kid was sharing a variety of information with mom, which would help both of them survive. As was the redtail youth; perhaps not as complex and nuanced as the crows but certainly as central to their family.

No matter what the crow baby and the redtail baby were saying to their respective parents, I enjoy sounds such as these, even if they come late at night or early in the morning. (Certainly, they are vastly better than my neighbor’s perpetual use of a leaf blower, which is annoying me as I type.) I am always thrilled to see and hear animals living out their lives in our urban ecosystem. To see the next generation figuring out how to continue that cycle of life further brings hope and inspiration, feelings that are so necessary in the challenging world we all inhabit.

NB - One interesting note to add. In the video above, the young Red-tailed Hawk sits prominently on a limb, very obvious to every human and bird around. Oddly, at least to my eyes, no crows are dive bombing the kid. If this was an adult, I am sure, and I have seen this in the trees around our house many times, the crows would have been apoplectic, determinedly harassing the larger bird. I wouldn’t be surprised if the crows recognize this youngster as not being a threat. Perhaps that somewhat whiny call also sends a message to other birds, which they can interpret as they please.

I have known Andy for more than 35 years; we worked together as park rangers at Arches National Park in the early 1990s. He was always a good naturalist and good observer. He was also one of those classic park rangers who was great at sharing his knowledge with visitors and fellow staff members; for several years I had the good fortune of teaching natural history with him to new rangers and was impressed by what he knew and what he had seen.

But then he opened a bookstore. It allowed him to indulge his passion for antiquarian books and in building a community of people equally excited about the written word. Managing the store though took him away from his true love, being outdoors. Not that he was fully aware of this, until he sold the store a few years ago. “I hadn't realized what I had lost being in the world of books,” he told me recently. “When I began to take pictures of birds again, though, I reawakened an entire world.”

We were talking about his work the other day, when my wife and I visited Andy and his wife. I had long been impressed with the bird photographs that he has been posting on Facebook and was curious about his process. I knew that he was a good birder, but he said that photography had taken him to a new level. He realized that if he wanted to get good photographs, he had to be intentional. “I had to learn about their behavior. I had to know where the birds would be and to plan ahead. I had to go out and watch and be patient.” In other words, Andy had to have the intention to paying attention to the natural world.

He illustrated this by describing a recent encounter he had had with Northern Harriers. Long known as Marsh Hawks, harriers are birds of the flats, floating gracefully over fields and meadows while scanning for critters such as mice and voles. Near Andy’s house is such an area, where he had seen harriers before. One time he had watched an adult male and female courting. The male had caught a mouse and, as part of his courtship, had presented it to the female on the wing. She then glided in for the love offering, which she nabbed in her talons.

Andy told me he had witnessed the prey transfer previously, which typically involved watching the birds for one to two hours. Getting these photos required patience, watching, listening for the birds’ calls, and a bit of luck.

Over the next several months, Andy continued to go back to the meadow, to watch harriers. The week before we arrived, he had seen four young birds. “They had none of the classic adult harrier behavior. Instead, they were perching and crying to each other and occasionally taking off and wheeling around. It looked as if they were learning what the wind could do.” At some point, an adult female flew in from the east. She called and within a second the four youngsters headed her way. She was about thirty feet off the ground. “I didn’t realize she had a mouse in her talons until she dropped it mid-flight. One of the kids tried for the mouse with his or her mouth and completely flubbed it,” Andy told me. All four young birds then dove to ground in search of the meal.

For Andy, moments such as this are not really about the photographs. Yes, he loves to “nail the shot,” to come up with a wonderful image of what he has seen, but it’s more about the time outside, to being witness to the natural world. The camera is merely the instrument that provides a reason—not that he truly needs one—to go out and observe. His observations are a two way street. He has found that paying attention to the birds so carefully supplements what he has read and brings the birds more to life, which leads to better photographs.

Photography has also rekindled his concerns about birds and the perils they face. How do his actions impact birds? How can he work to benefit them? “Watching and documenting birds through photography has heightened my awareness of habitat loss and I have become passionate about doing what I can to preserve habitats whether it is supporting the local land trust, volunteering for citizen-scientist work or planting our yard to create habitat for birds, pollinators, butterflies, etc.”

As I noted, so many of Andy’s bird photographs are amazing. They were clearly taken by someone with a passion for birds and a gift for photography, but now I know that they were something more. They were illustrating the importance of getting outside, of paying attention, and of knowing the natural history. They were the product of his passion. They were the art of the intention to attention.

On Monday, July 20, NASA featured a splendid photo of my fair city, Seattle, for their Image of the Day. Pretty fun to see Seattle from space. Part of what stands out to me is the amount of green. I feel fortunate to live in a city with so many trees and park spaces.

In his wonderful book, Stone by Stone, Robert Thorson writes: “Rock is raw material in situ. Stone usually connotes either human handling or human use….” In other words, rock is wild and stone is tamed, somewhat akin to the difference between wood and lumber. Or, taking a more capitalistic approach, stone is rock that you pay money for. But then again there are those who think that stone is more British, that stones are smooth and rocks rough, or stones are small and rocks are big.

Seeking a more erudite source in my quest for petrilexigraphic knowledge, I turned to one of my favorite books, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), to get the fine opinion of its worthy editors. The first definition for rock is “A large rugged mass of hard mineral material or stone.” Its first use comes from Old English, dated at 950 to 1100. The OED defines stone as “A piece of rock or hard mineral substance of a small or moderate size,” first used in 825. Apparently I was wrong in hoping the erudite Oxfordites would help!

I did though learn that the word stonerock, defined as “A pointed or projecting rock, a peak, a crag; a detached mass of rock, a boulder or large stone,” predates either of the singular words stone or rock. Stonerock, or stanrocces, as it was spelled, dates from the Early Old English, used from 600 to 950. I am not sure that this clarifies my quest but as is the norm for the OED, I enjoyed the many definitions and uses of the terms, which run to three pages for rock, including rock nosing, rockchuck, and rock-embosomed; and four and a half for stone, with such nifty combinations as stone harmonicon, stone-pock, and stone-toter.

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Ever optimistic, I thought I might find further illumination from on high. In the King James Bible, stone and rock seemed interchangeable, such as in Genesis 31:46, where we read of Jacob telling his brethren to “Gather stones; and they took stones, and made an heap.” (As someone who wrote an entire book about heaps of rock, I don’t know why those KJB writers didn't use the far better term, cairn! And, they call the KJB authoritative!) But there are two situations where stone and rock cannot be substituted for one another. The first is the surprisingly common Biblical pastime (at least a dozen times) where somebody must “stone them/him/her with stones.” You can “stone them with rocks” but no matter how tin your ear is you cannot “rock them with rocks,” which allows for the introduction of this silly phrase: you can, at least since the 1960s, “rock them with The Stones.”

More common than death by stone is the affirmation of a Holy Being as the “rock of one’s salvation.” Certainly, except for the most geodorky, one would never say the “stone of one’s salvation.” This sense highlights a central difference between the words. People often use rock to refer to something solid, large, grounded, substantial, or something to base your faith upon, such as a mountain or palisade. Basically, this is Mr. Thorson’s definition of raw material in situ. Stone, while connoting a hard mineral substance, favors smaller objects, such as something you can pick up in your hands, for example, the stones for the cairn gathered by Jacob’s pals.

Seeking out an even higher authority I turned to Shakespeare. He also incorporated stone and rock into his writings, more than 115 times and 50 times, respectively (which includes the plural forms.) One of his most famous uses comes from As You Like It, in the banished Duke’s ode to a new forested life: “And this our life exempt from public haunt/Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,/Sermons in stones and good in every thing.” Clearly the Bard chose stone for the alliteration and sound, as he did in Titus Andronicus, where the title character states “A stone is soft as wax,—tribunes more hard than stones; A stone is silent, and offendeth not.” (One of my favorite poets, Robinson Jeffers, refers to the “insolent quietness of stone.”)

Shakespeare’s use of rock was often specific to the sea, as something to fear. “Rocks that threaten us with wreck,” Henry VI, Part 3, Act 5, Scene 4. “And then there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks,” The Merchant of Venice, Act 1 Scene 3. “Alas, the sea hath cast me on the rocks,” Pericles, Act 2, Scene 1. No one, especially one with Shakespeare’s gifts, would substitute stone in these situations. Again, his use of rock reflects the idea that rock refers to massive, immovable matter, though this idea does not limit rock to this definition.

I cannot end my consideration of these two terms without turning to one final source of inspiration, that of big time wrestling, or “rassling,” as one former National Park Service superintendent called it. I refer to the two icons of that theater, The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Mr. Rock, or Dwayne Johnson, as he is formally known, starred in two movies about geology, San Andreas and Journey 2, each of which is equally preposterous from a geological point of view. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Austin’s name came about in reference to a cup of tea and its temperature.

What these fellows illustrate is that although rock and stone can often be interchangeable there are times when one is more appropriate than the other. I doubt that the two chaps would want to be known as The Stone or Rock Cold Steve Austin. Wrestling aside, I do think that there is some difference between the terms. Stone more often implies some sort of human use and also seems more restricted to smaller material. But rock can also be used in these situations. Ultimately, I am back to a simple, but basically useless, statement: all stones are rocks but not all rocks are stones. Clear as mud.

Coffee or Cup of Joe? Buy me a cup

This newsletter is adapted from a blog posting I wrote in 2014.

We entered the waterway from the north early morning on Monday, under overcast skies, easterly winds, a 10- to 15-foot swell, and a pleasant temperature. Our ship traveled at about 8 knots, slow enough that it seemed we were not moving until I looked at the land and saw motion. I was alone on deck, my head swiveling as I took in the muted panorama of gray sky, thin band of land, and blue gray water. To the north, lay the forested slopes of Vancouver Island, about seven miles distant, an area I knew little about. To the south was Cape Flattery and Neah Bay, landscape I had trod, which made seeing the trees and foothills from sea more exciting.

This southern land is the fabled entrance to the Strait, one supposedly first seen by European explorers in 1592. Leading those men was Apostolos Valerianos, a Greek pilot and mariner. (Of course, Indigenous paddlers have been traveling the waterway for thousands of years.) Better known as Juan de Fuca (no clue why; perhaps he just liked the name), Valerianos told English merchant Michael Lok that he had sailed north from Acapulco until he reached a latitude between 47 and 48 degrees and came to a “broad Inlet of Sea.” After turning east into the inlet, Juan de Fuca had sailed more than twenty days and landed at “divers places” where the land was very productive and abounding in precious metals and pearl. He then returned to Mexico.

Tantalizing with its details and suggestion of riches, and its account of possibly discovering the much-sought-after shortcut between North America and Asia, this first description of what we now call the Strait of Juan de Fuca became well-known to mariners and explorers, though more as a curiosity or fable than as fact. Indeed, although most historians have concluded that Juan de Fuca’s story was false, his tale was enticing enough that nearly every explorer who roamed the north Pacific Ocean for the next two centuries mentioned it, even if simply to discredit him. For example, after James Cook, accompanied by a young George Vancouver, sailed by the strait in 1778 and failed to see the opening, Cook wrote in his journal: “It is in the very latitude we were now in where geographers have placed the pretended Strait of Juan de Fuca but we saw nothing like it; nor is there the least probability that iver any such thing exhisted.”

Nine years later, Cook was proved wrong. In July 1787, the British fur trader Charles William Barkley sailed south from Nootka Sound and to his “great astonishment . . . arrived off a great opening,” wrote his wife, Frances, in her journal of the trip. “[My] husband immediately recognized [it] as the long lost strait of Juan de Fuca.” Born in 1769, Frances Barkley was seventeen when she accompanied her husband on his expedition beginning in 1786. She became the first European woman to reach the shores of British Columbia, and the first woman to circumnavigate the globe as a woman.

In 1792, George Vancouver and his men arrived at what he called the “supposed straits of Juan de Fuca.” Amazingly he encountered an American ship under the command of Robert Gray. Known as the Columbia Rediviva, it would soon become the first known non-Native ship to enter the river, which Gray named after his ship. Vancouver met with classic spring weather of thick rain and dreary sky that became “more unpleasant as the day advanced.” On May 7, after a thorough examination of the shoreline and coves, as well as time repairing sails, brewing spruce beer (“well known to be a great Antiscorbutic”), and getting fresh water, Vancouver and some of his men turned south, and became the first known Europeans to venture into the Whulge (from Lushootseed, meaning a stretch of saltwater), or what later became known as Puget Sound.

As we continued down the Strait, the world around us changed. The swell dissipated in the protection of the land and the horizon was no longer a flat straight line. Signs of humanity began to appear, such as a lighthouse, fishing vessels, and buildings. We also encountered new bird species, including Common Murres, Pigeon Guillemots, Rhinoceros Auklets, and gulls, as many more individuals flew along and dabbled around us. Intriguingly, apparently only one person (or at least only one journal writer) on Vancouver’s expedition noted birds. Naturalist Archibald Menzies wrote of “vast flights of water fowl such as Auk Divers Ducks & Wild Geese,” though his focus seemed to more about hunting the birds than admiring them.

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About seven hours after reaching the Strait, we turned south and entered Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound. Now, we were in territory I knew well. Unfortunately, low clouds hid the Cascades, but I had fun seeing the entrance to Hood Canal; the lovely, glacial deposits at Double Bluff; a friend’s house overlooking the water; and little Seattle poking its head above the hills. We reached the city about 5:00PM, suitably swathed in low clouds that highlighted the watery nature of this place, my homewaters.

Traveling the Strait and the Sound, I felt I was part of a continuum of humanity. Although a relatively young body of water, which formed just 16,500 years ago, after the last Ice Age, this water corridor has been paddled, sailed, steamed, or motored by people for perhaps the last thirteen or fourteen thousand years. Doing so these water travelers have forged lives and created communities, all woven together by this beautiful maritime highway. It truly was a pleasure to become another part of the story of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

It’s not too late to pre-order In the Range of Fire and Ice, signed and with a discount, from Phinney Books.

BOOK LAUNCH - September 3 - Third Place Books - Lake Forest Park - Looking forward to my conversation with the wonderful Lynda Mapes at this celebration of my new book!

Valerianos’ quotes are from Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas His Pilgrimes: Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others, vol. 14.

Menzies’ and other quotes on Vancouver Expedition from With Vancouver in Inland Washington Water: Journals of 12 Crewman, April - June 1792, edited by Richard W. Blumenthal

When we use the reductive it, we rob animals of their animacy, and of their agency. We know that animals are living, breathing beings, just like us, and, like us again, they also have agency. They are sentient and able to adapt to changing situations. They are individuals with personality. If you have any doubt, just take a few minutes and watch a gathering of crows; clearly these are animals with a dynamic, personal, and thoughtful relationship to their world. And, if you’ve ever been flight-bombed by crows (often during fledging season), you’ll know that they have strong opinions about our species, too.

While I have been trying consciously to not use it when writing about animals, I confess that I struggle with invertebrates. (And I like to think of myself as a FOB, or Friend of Bugs!) That big bug over there, it’s gotta be an it. Doesn’t it? Ascribing sex to a spider or Jerusalem cricket or geoduck or worm can seem a bit odd, but luckily for us, some invertebrates make the task easier than for many vertebrates. Consider the following. Every big, shiny black widow spider with a red hourglass is female; males are small and non-biting, and in fact, sometimes become a progeny-feeding meal. Practically all tarantulas roaming the landscape are males, on the hunt for a mate. The ants you see, they’re females, out doing the hard work of keeping their colony alive and well. Same with mosquitoes; every mosquito bite you have gotten is from a hungry female seeking your blood.

More challenging are the species where you could be right or wrong with sex. For example, our local Olympia oysters switch back and forth without regard to age or season between being male and female. As one early biologist wrote: “all possible intergradations between the different phases…are found in young animals, so that it is frequently impossible to assign the individuals to any one of the principal phases of sexuality.” Then we have everyone’s favorite garden slinkers, slugs; with both male and female parts, they are hermaphroditic, thus they, though again that’s a human construct on sex.

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Prompted by Rob Macfarlane’s book, Is a River Alive?, I have also begun to try and move away from it in reference to what are typically perceived as inanimate objects, such as mountains, rocks, rivers, and cliffs. Not only it but also pronouns such as that and which. As Rob writes, he prefers to “speak of rivers who flow and forests who grow,” in contrast to that flow or which grow. A subtle but a profound reframing.

As part of his quest to answer the question of his title, he also writes of “daylight[ing] long-buried ways of feeling about water…and to see what transforms when rivers are recognized as both alive and killable. If you find it hard to think of a river as alive, he notes, try picturing a dying river or a dead river.” Sadly, writes Rob, for many people that is not hard; they simply have to find the nearest river and see the challenges the river has faced and continues to face from neglect, pollution, and habitat degradation.

When one begins to see a river or mountain or cliff as alive, one opens a world of possibility and responsibility. No longer simply confined to be a disjointed, unconnected thing, or other, these entities now join the larger body of what we think of as our community, our kith and kin. I suspect that most of us have an idea of what is meant by kin, but kith is an odd word, rarely uttered except in connection with its sister kin. Kith dates back to the Old English cyðð, meaning “kinship, knowledge, acquaintance, and familiarity.” To me, this original meaning of kith carries a powerful evocation of place, of what I have been trying to do as a writer, that is to learn the cultural and natural histories of my chosen home so that I feel grounded and rooted to my surroundings.

On one level, I find this new way of thinking immensely appealing. I want to use who and he and she and to excise my use of it. Doing this with animals feels natural and easy; they have eyes and mouths and breathe and give birth and I cannot help but sense their animacy. I want to see and feel and experience mountains and rivers as alive and animate, too, but do not find the change easy to accomplish. I struggle to unlearn a lifetime of thinking and speaking and writing and my very literal view of the world. I don’t expect my change to happen quickly, and I know that I will continue use it inadvertently. I also know that as I have tried to move away from it over the past few years that I have felt more kith and kin with the wildness around me.

In the Range of Fire and Ice is the product of four years of researching, writing, and editing. My field time took me the length of the Cascades in Washington state with ecologists, geologists, wolverineologists, ornithologists, glaciologists, well you get the gist. I had amazing adventures hiking, backpacking, and exploring, which I like to think helped give me the time, passion, and knowledge to share stories of these mountains, mountains that have graced my life since I was a child. The focus of the chapters ranges from geology to huckleberries to fire to wolverines to stocking fish to human settlement to one devoted to Mount St. Helens.

I have to say that the book is gorgeous. It’s what is known as paper over boards, meaning it is hardcover with the cover printed directly onto the hard boards instead of using a dust jacket. I didn’t know exactly what to expect but it’s beyond what I could have hoped. The format gives the book elegance and style, which combined with the wonderful full-color images and custom maps, makes this the most beautiful I have written. Thanks kindly to Mountaineers Books for their willingness to devote the time, energy, and money to the design.

Okay, enough about the book. Here’s another link to pre-order signed copies. There’s also a space on the order form to let me know if you’d like me to inscribe it directly to you or someone else.

Please feel free to share this newsletter with anyone and everyone you know!

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Our face off with Mr. Goat began on a ridge of Iron Peak in the Cascades. Looking north toward Mt. Stuart, I noticed a white dot moving below us at the pass we had recently ascended. My binoculars revealed it to be a mountain goat. I am sure he did not see us but he followed the trail that we had taken to reach our high spot. Plodding along and periodically stopping, he slowly made his way toward our location. Since we did not want to disturb the goat or be disturbed by him, we gathered our gear, abandoned our lookout spot, and retreated to the nearby grove of whitebark pines. Not surprisingly at the elevation where we were—about 6,200 feet—the whitebarks were not terribly large or abundant.

Marjorie and I split up, she to a more dense area of small trees, and me to be close to a dead tree with a foot-wide trunk. I hoped that I might get a photo of the billy with Mt. Stuart rising behind. (No luck on that hope.) The goat clearly noticed us and walked along the trail toward me. About 15 feet away, he stopped and looked at me. He was quite handsome with his long white hairs, dark eyes and nose, and long goatee. Until this moment, I hadn’t really thought of the origin of goatee as coming from a goat…okay, I can be rather slow.

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But he was also a bit menacing. Those two sharp horns looked like they could do some damage. He was also shedding his winter hair, which gave him a bit of a stereotypical “caveman” look of wearing a furry tunic over a bare shoulder. Although the billy had lost most of his cold-weather outfit, patches of his eight-inch long outer hairs remained; clearly he was well-insulated for his mountain home and I am guessing he may not have appreciated the record early season heat that was sweatering the region in a too warm embrace.

I knew through my research for In the Range of Fire and Ice that mountain goats live in an antagonistic society. The goal is not violence or injury but establishment of stable and highly linear social dominance. During antagonistic interactions, mountain goats tend to avoid physical contact though of course, there may be no other recourse except to attempt to inflict a wound or two. When this happens, the aggressor will strike up and sideways to try and drive their horns into their opponent’s belly and rear, the latter protected by a rump shield of thick skin. In a typical encounter, rivals circle each other head to flank, known to goat biologists as antiparallel fighting. One other primary method of aggression—the present threat—is to present one’s broadside, arching the back, and trying to look big. Mountain goats may also quickly rush an opponent or threaten an adversary by brandishing their horns aggressively. To enhance their position, aggressors may snort or grunt and stamp their hooves. Sometimes, however, all it takes to show dominance is a hard stare.

Mr. Goat didn’t give me a hard stare but he seemed a tad too focused on me, clearly looking in my direction, where I stood behind my stump. We faced off for a minute or two; apparently I wasn’t that interesting and he wandered back over toward Marjorie. As the billy got closer, Marjorie realized that she looked a bit goat-like with a her white sun hat and light colored clothing so she removed her hat and bent down.

Keep David Caffeinated to Avoid Goats

Satisfied with Marjorie’s reduced status, the goat peed for about a minute, then turned back toward me. This time he came within about five feet of me as I continued to hide and tried not to make any noise behind my stump. He proceeded to give me a sort of Dirty Harry Eyeball: don’t mess with me, kid. When he eventually decided I was just as boring and unintimidating as I think I am, the billy moved away. I quickly headed down and in the opposite direction toward Marjorie and then the two of us returned down trail and back to the pass. As we looked back, we saw that our furry friend followed, again, not quickly but seemingly in our direction. It took a while for our hearts to stop racing.

I once heard mountain goats described as “big marshmallows,” with their white woolly coat, the outer hairs of which make them seem plush and soft, which can lead hikers to thinking of goats as relatively benign. In addition, they have the appealing habit, at least for some, of not always running away like deer or elk and of giving people the opportunity to observe the goats being wild animals. “The problem with the goats’ friendliness is the potential for miscommunication. We think we understand them and yet, if we stab them with a [trekking] pole, that’s a declaration of war, and something you don’t want to do with a big, testosterone-filled billy,” says Cliff Rice, retired WDFW biologist.

Not that everyone is out stabbing goats with their hiking poles, but sometimes simply having food, peeing, or hiking in the wrong location can trigger a response. “Goats live in an aggressive society, and we need to be aware of and respect them and their habits,” he says. Clearly, they are not marshmallows; they are large, wild animals used to getting their way with their formidable horns, and it would be wise to treat them as such.

If you want to know more about mountain goats, I have one chapter in my next book In the Range of Fire and Ice devoted to them, their life histories, and deep connections to Indigenous people in the PNW. You just have to wait until September, when the book hits bookstores.

The pika seemed to be watching us but made neither noise nor movement. Apparently, we were not of much interest. One aspect of pikas I like, in contrast to chipmunks and ground squirrels, who often beg for and steal food, is that the more dignified pikas simply vanish like liquid into their lithologic homes when disturbed by people. They know we are there but don’t change their ways because of us and for that I respect them and their ability to disdain us and remain true to their nature.

Unlike some of their much much larger fellow mountain dwellers (such as bears), pikas do not hibernate; they simply hunker down in their homes. To accomplish this winter-defying feat, pikas are planners, or what biologist Denise Dearing calls “profligate hayers.” They spend much of the summer collecting plants to store deep in their rocky homes, making as many as thirteen haying trips per hour.¹ She also found that individual pikas ventured forth an average of thirteen thousand times in the summer in search of suitable vegetation for their petripads.

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Such hay piles, or caches, Dearing found, contained 350 days of food. She also determined that even if 25 percent was lost to decomposition and 25 percent included nonedible items, a pika’s storage cache still contained enough for the majority of their winter diet. Dearing further observed that pikas harvest two types of plants: ones to be eaten immediately and ones to be stored. The latter contain more phenols, chemicals that aid in preservation, which lead to more nutrients later in the winter, when they’re most needed.

In another study of pika hay piles, researchers described pikas as allogenic engineers because of these accumulations of plant matter.² To an ecologist, an allogenic engineer is a species that changes the environment by transforming living or nonliving materials from one physical state to another; classic examples include beavers and woodpeckers. In contrast autogenic engineers change the environment via their own physical structures; think corals and trees.

Regarding our higher alpine engineers, ecologists have observed that these hay piles increase soil nutrients, particularly nitrogen, which could contribute to the overall fitness of subalpine and alpine plants. Hay piles also accelerate soil development and, when the nutrients leach into lakes, the added productivity can help drive a more complex food web that benefits amphibians, fish, and insects. Way to go, little farmer.

As the mountain snow melts out and more people head up to our lovely Cascades, I suspect that more and more of us will see these amazing little animals. About the size of a fist, tailless, and fetchingly tawny, with cute-as-can-be white-margined ears, pikas animate boulder fields with their swift movements and distinct eeenk calls. They are arguably one of the Cascades’ most beloved, most frequently studied, and most well adapted animals. Plus, they are darned enchanting, so I wish you many fine encounters with them.

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Word of the week - Pika - In 1769, German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas published the first scientific description of pikas. He based it on an expedition to Siberia in 1768, when he learned of the Mongolian vernacular—ochodona or ogotona—for the what he named Lepus alpinus.

How Pallas got the name pika is a bit more complicated. When I asked an historical linguist who specializes in Central and Northeast Asia languages (in particular the language spoken by the Evenki people), he told me that Pallas probably heard pika through someone translating it from Russian, which has two animals called pishchukha (пищуха): pikas (unclear which one as there are at least three species in this region: Ochotona pallas, O. turuchanensis, and O. hyperborea) and the Eurasian Treecreeper (Certhia familiaris). The former is found under the name čipa in the dictionaries, while the latter is attested as pikačaan. “My conclusion is that Pallas or his collaborators most likely asked an Evenki person for the translation of pishchukha and received the name of the bird (pikačaan) rather than the rodent (čipa) as a reply,” said the linguist. He added that “in transcriptions of Evenki, the letter i is commonly used to write the ee sound, so peeka should be what Pallas heard.”

If you want to know more about pikas, they pop up regularly in word and image in my next boo In the Range of Fire and Ice. You just have to wait until September, when the book hits bookstores.

By the way, here’s one of the pikas in the book. She’s drawn by Melissa McFeeters, who was also the designer of In the Range of Fire and Ice. And, in case you wondered the pika’s name is Poppy.

Footnotes:

1. M. Denise Dearing, “The Function of Haypiles of Pikas (Ochotona princeps),” Journal of Mammalogy 78 (4), 1997, 1156-1163.

2. Ken Aho et al, “Pikas as Allogenic Engineers in an Alpine Ecosystem,” Oecologia 114, 1998, 405-409.

Before diving into the subject, I need to make a quick geology interlude. Lake Union formed during the retreat of the great glacier that covered this region—the Puget lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet—around 16,000 years ago. As the ice retreated back to the north, a chunk broke off, settled in a depression between two ridges, melted, and formed a lake. With its steep sides, which curve down to a maximum depth of about 50 feet, Lake Union has a bowl-shaped profile.

Our day began at 7am on the east side of Lake Union. Four of us, Phil Parisi (project lead of shipwreckcity.org), Libbie Barnes (curator of exhibits and engagement at MOHAI), George Spano (boat owner and maritime aficionado), and I piled into George’s little boat. It had just enough room for the four of us and gear. The plan was to go out to known sites of submerged objects and drop a remotely operated underwater vehicle, or ROV, into the water and pilot it down to see what was there. For equipment, we had Phil’s laptop and his BlueRobotics BlueROV2, equipped with sidescan sonar and a GoPro camera.

After we reached our first spot, LU025, located under the Aurora Bridge, Phil and George dropped (literally) the ROV, which was attached to a yellow tether, into the water. Phil and Libbie then got under a dark blanket (too bright otherwise) to observe realtime footage from the GoPro on Phil’s computer screen. With the GoPro acting as his underwater eyes, Phil used an Xbox controller to take the ROV down to what had been described previously as a pile of logs. “Yes, it’s a log,” said Phil, when Finn, as he calls the ROV, was nearing the bottom, 45 feet down. George and I kept watch for anyone, such as rowers, pleasure boaters, and tugs, who might hit us or get entangled in the tether, which floated on the surface.

Phil found nothing else beyond the logs, which could have come from one of the many log booms that had been moved across the lake to mills in Ballard in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He wasn’t surprised as others had been down to this location but he wanted up-to-date footage, which was one of the goals of the project.

People have long known of and even visited some of the wrecks and other submerged materials in Lake Union. These include DCS Films (Dan Warter, Carl Stieglitz, and Scott Caldwell) and the Maritime Documentation Society and Coastal Sensing Survey. Via divers and sidescan sonar, which is an acoustic imaging method that creates detailed images of the seafloor and objects resting on it, they have produced maps, photos, and videos of what sits on the bottom of Lake Union. Phil’s plan has been to synthesize that data and generate underwater footage of every object.

“Our goal is to create an underwater archive of Lake Union,” says Phil. Like others, me included, he knows that there are many stories hidden beneath the surface, which add additional layers to the maritime connections that have long been important to the residents of this place. As he notes on his website, people have been using these waters for thousands of years to fish and to travel. In a landscape of challenging topography, water would have been the logical means of getting around, a fact that many present day residents also realize. Unfortunately, any sunken Indigenous canoes would have succumbed in the depths long ago.

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Non-Native residents have been using the water since they first arrived around 1851 but not until the 1870s did steamships begin to move across Lake Union. The first was the side-wheeler Clara, piloted by Curtis Brownfield to transport coal for the Seattle Coal and Transportation Company. (Lewis and Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, pg. 161 & 192). That company also operated what may be the first vessel to be abandoned in the lake, the large, steam-powered ferryboat Lena C. Gray. In 1878, when the SC&TC failed, the Lena was stripped of her iron. “Her days of usefulness are ended, and she will be allowed to decay at the landing,” wrote an unnamed reporter for the Puget Sound Dispatch. (If this wreck exists, it’s probably buried under fill, as Lake Union used to extend farther south.)

Over the next several hours, we motored to another 11 locations, six of which had wrecks in various states of mouldering. All were made of wood often with some metal ribbing for support and strengthening. We also saw 50-gallon drums, tires, red Solo cups, a sort of fence-like structure, pilings, and a fiberglass boat. We saw only one identified boat, the Kahlenberg, a 50-foot long wooden ship built in 1913 and sunk or abandoned at unknown time. This was my favorite wreck primarily because Phil let me control the ROV; it was quite stunning to drive Finn through the hazy pea green water and suddenly come upon the bow of a ship, 45 feet underwater, an eerie testimonial to a past life.

At present, Phil and his team list 105 known lakebed targets. About 70 are wrecks of some sort of vessel including barges, cabin cruisers, landing craft, and ships. Most of them were probably abandoned or scuttled; it’s a lot easier to simply abandon a ship than pay the disposal fees. Because no official record of wreckage exists, researchers have found very little documentation about any of them. As the team continues to search, more shipwrecks will probably be found. Phil’s goal is to get a better picture, literally and figuratively, of what lies beneath.

I, of course, applaud his and his team’s work to preserve the past. Like every aspect of the city, Lake Union is an evolving landscape where new generations of visitors and residents alter the lake and adapt to it and those who live and work around it. By unearthing (unwatering?) the past, not only can we better understand how those stories continue to shape Lake Union and us, but we can also begin, as Phil puts it, to think about preservation, pollution, and our shared responsibility to care for urban waterways.

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If you are interested in helping fund the work of Phil and his team at shipwreckcity.org, here’s a link to do so.

I am tickled to announce that Wild in Seattle was awarded a Gold Medal by Foreword Indies in their Regional category. Thanks to Elizabeth Person for her wonderful drawings, which bring the book to life, and to Mountaineers Books for their support, editing, and design.

“My kayak is almost bigger than the pond,” said Lauren Kuehne, a freshwater ecologist with a deep passion for Olympic mudminnows. She had just paddled out in search of the little fish in what felt like an artificial accumulation of water, formed perhaps by the damming effect of the road where we stood. If Lauren had not directed me to this spot of cattails and cedar stumps, I wouldn’t have suspected that it was home to a unique fish; Olympic mudminnows are Washington’s only endemic freshwater fish, meaning they occur no place else in the world.

Sitting in her kayak, Lauren carried a small net, which she periodically dipped into the water under cattails and other aquatic plants. (The generic name of Olympic mudminnows, Novumbra, meaning new shadow, poetically refers to the species’ predilection for lurking in the dark under vegetation.) A few minutes into her search she found her quarry, which she netted and deposited into a white bucket. About an inch and half long, the narrow, brown mudminnows were dwarfed by a robust, six inch salamander. “I think we are in a nursery,” said Lauren, as she netted additional mudminnows, none longer than about two inches. Not that she expected to find any individual much bigger, mudminnows in our part of the world top out at about 4 1/4 inches. Over the next 45 minutes, Lauren continued to probe the vegetation, splitting her time between walking along the road and in her kayak.

Marginal, human-created habitat such as this little wet spot is classic for Olympic mudminnows. In fact, the first scientific discovery of the species was in a ditch. As one scientist has said: “If you pull up to a spot and it’s really a nice place to have a picnic or swim, that is not the place for mudminnows.” They are fish able to survive in ditches and less than ideal conditions. For many years, mudminnowologists thought that the fish didn’t coexist well with other species because they were often isolated. Turns out, however, that mudminnows are not loners, but can probably tolerate environmental conditions that other species can’t.

That they are able to survive in riparian/wetland areas that can preclude other fish makes them extra special and an important component of our local ecosystems. In particular, if they are the lone predator, they can play a role in community structure by preventing species such as biting midges and mosquitoes from becoming too prevalent.

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Not only was our location the product of human activity, but the presence of mudminnows wasn’t natural either; early researchers proposed that the fish inhabited only a few drainages on the Olympic Peninsula. They are here, twenty miles east of Puget Sound, because a local landowner introduced them. This person also owns property on the Olympic Peninsula near a population of the fish, collected some, and deposited them here. “Apparently, he felt the world needed more mudminnows. He isn’t wrong,” said Lauren.

Whether one would call my second location a ditch or creek may be in the eye of the beholder. Winding for less than a mile, the yard-wide ribbon of dirty brown water flows in a slightly wider channel through tall grasses and past the occasional tree. For this piscine adventure, I was with Monica Blanchard, a biologist with Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, who is both knowledgeable and passionate about lampreys. Joining us were several county and non-profit employees who worked with the fish.

“I could talk all day about lampreys,” said Monica, when all of us were sitting in a classroom prior to our field time. Unfortunately, we had only three hours, but in that time, Monica made it clear that she loved every aspect of them. We learned that lampreys evolved 450 million years ago and have changed very little since then; that they lack bones and jaws; that two species live in the state, the bigger and far better known Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) and western river lampreys (Occidentis ayresii). Both species are born in freshwater, migrate to salt water, and return to freshwater for spawning and death, though western rivers can also leave their birth stream and travel only to a lake (such is the case in Lake Washington), as well as never leave their birth stream. Monica also added: “Never say anything definitive about lampreys. The next day they’ll surprise you.”

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After our class session we headed to the ditch, where Monica pulled out a curious backpack. It looked like a 1970s RadioShack kit with knobs, red lights, levers, and warning sign but was actually an ETS Electrofishing Systems ADP-2 electrofisher. Using two paddles attached to the ADP-2 Monica’s plan was to run enough electricity into the water to “tickle” out the lampreys. “We just want them to feel it and be annoyed enough to emerge,” she said. Within a few minutes, Monica had annoyed several. All were western river lamprey larva, brown, eyeless, and less than five inches long. Once again,I would never have seen them without a friendly biologist, Monica.

As with the mudminnows, I had no idea that such a relatively mundane looking body of water contained such a wonderful animal. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, I have regularly observed plants and animals inhabiting places we often overlook—the paving stones of our backyard, utility poles, and empty lots—and I am by no means very knowledgeable. It’s when I go out in the field with ecologists that my little mind is blown open by the complexity, diversity, and beauty of the more than human species we co-exist with. I worry though that far too often we take such places and their inhabitants for granted; we tend not to honor these ecosystems for their biodiversity or to recognize the ecosystem contributions of their resident plants and animals. As I regularly state, I hope all of us can take the time to slow down, pay attention, and enjoy the world around us. It really is quite wonderful.

N.B. - In case you are interested, my plan is to return to fuller discussions of Olympic mudminnows and lampreys. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Lauren and Monica and Jeff Jensen for help with this newsletter.

June 16, 2026 - 7pm - Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park - I will be chatting with Kevin Fedarko about his book A Walk in the Park. Here’s a link to register for this here event.

Word of the week - Lamprey - A name that dates back to 1297 and is believed to derive deep in its past from lampetra, which comes from the Latin lambĕre to lick and petra stone, in allusion to the fact that the lamprey attaches itself by a sucker to stones. Some wordsmiths though question this origin, claiming that lampetra “may be merely an etymologizing perversion,” or so opines the OED.

Two days later, after the temperatures had returned toward more acceptable, we hiked in Waterworks Canyon, a few miles west of Naches. A small creek runs intermittently through lovely basalt cliffs dotted with color sparks of lupine and balsamroot and phlox. Perched high on a rim, a chukar, a non-native partridge, looked very hawkish, until I zoomed in with my binoculars and noted that the bird was rather stout compared to the svelte outline of a bird of prey. We had hoped to see bighorn sheep, which people regularly report, but alas, no luck for us.

We did, however, meet with one of our favorite desert denizens, the western rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus). Marjorie was the first to see the serpent. Although I like to think of myself as the observant one, I can think of several times in the past few years that she heard or saw a rattlesnake before I did. This has occurred on trails, once in a parking lot, and once in a driveway. I also remember one time when she trailed me and a pal on a hike and yelled “Stop. Did you realize that you just stepped over a rattlesnake?” The snake was dead but still…she was the one to see it, hence she is my rattlesnake dowser.

On our most recent encounter, I had stopped at a creek crossing. The previous mile had been hot and exposed so a break (with squished PBJs on homemade bread….mmmm!) under the dense vegetation was in order. As I was standing by the water, Marjorie pointed out the snake I had not seen on the other side, about 8 feet from me. “Oh, it’s a rattlesnake,” she said, not because of the snake warning us but because Marjorie had noticed the rattles. We didn’t seem to bother the serpent, who simply began to move slowly across the trail. Slithering along, the handsome beast periodically stopped and tongue flicked.

Eventually the snake crossed the trail and curled up. We ate our yummy sandwiches and watched the well-camouflaged reptile, which seemed to watch us. Isn’t that what we humans always think—that everyone notices us? My theory is that the snake didn’t really give two hoots about us. If you look at the video above, you can see that about two-thirds down body, a slight bulge appears. We speculated that this was the reason the snake neither rattled nor moved away; why bother worrying too much when you have a full stomach. Of course, the cool of the trees and shrubs and water may also have played a role in keeping the snake calm.

On the photo above, you can count nine rattles. This does not mean that the snake has lived nine years, or even has had nine lives, like a cat. All it means is that the snake has shed his or her skin nine times; rattlers add a rattle each time they shed their skin, which occurs two to four times a year. Plus, rattles periodically break off; so the number of rattles tells you nothing about age. This myth has persisted since its first appearance in print—in 1615—in Francisco Hernandez’s Four Books on the Nature and Virtues of Plants and Animals for Medicinal Purposes in New Spain.

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When we left the creek, about 45 minutes after arriving, the snake was still curled up, periodically tongue flicking, but mostly motionless. Watching the forked tongue was pretty darned cool, to say the least. What an amazing way to detect the world, to stick out your tongue and taste aromas that create a map and provide guidance to one’s surroundings. Although Aristotle thought that a forked tongue allowed a snake to double the pleasure of taste, more modern research has proposed that the twain creates a stereoscopic field of observation; depending on the strength of the signal in each fork, a snake can detect which direction, for example, a prey is traveling.

Marjorie first noticed the other snake we saw, too. This one was dead and on a dirt road, which seemed to get limited vehicle traffic. Stretched out, the gray reptile appeared to be napping. Upon closer inspection, we noticed a bit of red and some viscera, as well as what looked like a puncture wound. We concluded that the snake (what I think was a western racer) had arrived via the sky; some sort of bird had grabbed a slithering meal, only to have the snake attack or wriggle out of the bird’s talons. Unfortunately for the snake, gravity called and upon hitting the ground, the combination of death grip and meeting the substrate at terminal speed resulted in death. At least that’s the story we concocted.

Over the years, I have long appreciated Marjorie’s snake noting skills. Mostly, they give us the opportunity to interact with a serpent that we might have passed by. But occasionally, and I would include our recent creekside encounter as one of them, her abilities prevented us (aka me) from stepping into harms way. Always great to have one more reason to appreciate her!

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June 16, 2026 - 7pm - Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park - I will be chatting with Kevin Fedarko about his book A Walk in the Park. Here’s a link to register for this here event.

A sad note. Paul Dorpat, Seattle’s great public historian and founder of our local Now and Then series, died Wednesday. Generous with his time, savvy with his wit, and always willing to share and discuss Seattle history, Paul inspired and contributed to my work, and to countless others, in innumerable ways. He was one of a kind and he will be missed.

Of the state’s five volcanoes, Mount St. Helens is the most active and youngest, at least its pre-1980, 9,677-foot summit. During its first stage of life, a sort of proto-volcano—a low hill, perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 feet tall though it may have been higher at times—existed from about 270,000 to 35,000 years ago. Between 35,000 and 4,000 years ago, the little edifice started to bulk up, reaching to about 6,000 feet, though still more lumpy than conical. I find it completely fascinating that people would have seen this growth; the oldest archaeological site in the vicinity shows habitation back to 9,200 years ago. In Sahaptin, the language of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the name Lawetlat’la means smoker, a clear reference to the volcanism.

Mount St. Helens then entered its mature, modern stage, ultimately forming the beautiful pre-1980 summit though not until the addition of rock in an eruptive cycle from about 1650 to 1725. Another round of eruptions occurred in the middle 1800s. They were witnessed by many who recorded the events. On March 30, 1847, artist Paul Kane wrote of having “a fine view of Mount St. Helen’s throwing up a long column of dark smoke into the clear blue sky.” When George McClellan passed by on July 31, 1853, he noted seeing smoke rising from Mount St. Helens. Four years later, an unnamed reporter for the Washington Republican wrote of the mountain “presenting a grand and sublime spectacle.” After this cycle, Mount St. Helens went quiet until 1980.

Following the big blast of May 18, five additional eruptions in 1980, all much less grand, generated ash plumes, pyroclastic flows, and dome destruction. In addition, another twenty dome building eruptions between December 1980 and October 1986 produced a nearly 900-foot-high lava dome. The mountain then shut down until September 25, 2004, when seismicity picked up to levels not recorded since 1986.

Coincidentally, I was on the summit with friends on September 24 and was supposed to meet a group of University of Washington geologists to go into the crater on the 25th. They never showed so we hiked out onto the Pumice Plain. We knew nothing of what was happening at Mount St. Helens until we arrived back in Seattle on the 26^th and my mom told me that land managers had closed access to most of the mountain. Seven days after we were on the summit, Mount St. Helens erupted with a small plume that rose about a mile over the summit. It remained active until 2008 and has not erupted since.

The other night I had the privilege of hearing Carolyn Driedger of the United States Geological Survey give a talk for the Mount Saint Helens Institute. I have long known Carolyn; she’s a great communicator about the mountain. She made several key points particularly in regard to science. Mount St. Helens is the “master teacher,” which provided lessons to scientists and emergency managers around the globe that helped save uncountable numbers of people. The mountain also showed how research couldn’t be siloed; scientists needed to cross disciplines and share information in order to understand such a complex situation.

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This may seem rather obvious but Carolyn told of how the different researchers at the time didn’t collaborate. The results could be catastrophic with a failure to communicate information needed to help in predicting future eruptions. She noted that when the USGS built its Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, WA, it purposely designed the facility so that researchers in different fields would have adjacent offices with the hope of cross discipline discussions. This plan has been a success.

As I have written previously, Mount St. Helens is one of my favorite locations in Washington. It is both a geological and an ecological treasure unlike any other spot in the state, and I would argue, in the world. Not only is it beautiful and inspiring, but it also has, as Carolyn noted, provided essential scientific information that has rewritten our understanding of volcanoes, emergency response management, and how to communicate in a disaster. The mountain has further rewritten our understanding of succession, or how plants and animals replace another species over time following disturbance, such as a volcano or flood. In the words of ecologist Jerry Franklin, one of the region’s key forest researchers: “The learning that initiated at Mount St. Helens is global. In a sense it’s universal.”

And yet, I don’t think the mountain gets the recognition it deserves. I am always surprised by the number of people I talk to who haven’t been to the volcano. They think nothing of driving three hours north to hike in the North Cascades but don’t do the same going south. I understand that access has been difficult the past few years, and that a lack of funding has resulted in the closure of visitor services, but for anyone who does take the time to discover the stunning geology and ecology, you will be richly rewarded.

Another problem is that Mount St. Helens isn’t as sexy as it used to be. The first few decades of research led to the unprecedented discoveries that shifted the paradigms of geology and ecology, but those stories are still playing out. Forty-six years is a mere blip in the geological and ecological timelines of a landscape like Mount St. Helens. New research continues to help clarify, recalibrate, and unearth both the simple and complex relationships that are shaping the future landscape, as well as forcing scientists to ask new questions to help further the lessons that this master teacher is providing.

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If you want to know more about Mount St. Helens, I recommend the following.

Eruption by Steve Olson tells the story of the 57 people who died on May 18, 1980, and how they came to be where they were. Not surprising, it was a mixture of politics, history, and geology.

After the Blast by Eric Wagner provides the best account of the amazing ecological stories of the mountain.

The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, USGS Professional Paper 1250 - Weighing eight pounds and totaling 844 pages, 62 scientific studies, and a map, the Twelve-Fifty is a stunning account from the mountain’s reawakening on March 20, 1980 through the May 18 eruption to the months of research that followed. It is not a document to be taken lightly.

Roadside Geology of Mount St. Helens by Pat Pringle - An approachable and practical guide to the mountain’s geology.

I also recommend the classes and programs at Mount Saint Helens Institute.

Known as the Drift Barrier of the White River, the concrete and steel fence was meant to subdue the river by catching woody debris carried by the current, particularly during flooding, which plagued settlers in the White/Duwamish River and Stuck/Puyallup River valleys. In the words of famed engineer, Hiram Chittenden, the river “being impossible of navigation, of little use for irrigation, and too near sea level for power…is thus more of a nuisance than anything else.” The solution to the White River’s unredeeming attributes was to artificially straitjacket the water, control the flow, and flush it through a sort of “storm water surface sewer…harmlessly to the sea,” concluded Chittenden, who knew a bit about controlling water as the designer of Seattle’s locks.

Primary to this plan was the Drift Barrier. It would catch both natural drift, such as trees that fell into the river, as well as logs and other material from the ever expanding logging operations upriver. In Chittenden’s words, drift “constitutes the gravest feature of the flood problem” not only by taking out bridges but also by creating log jams that changed the path of the river; if the drift wasn’t eliminated, it was “almost useless” to make any of the other proposed changes.

Construction of the Drift Barrier began in September 1914. After building a temporary road, workers excavated a 12 foot by 12 foot tunnel 79 feet deep, at the end of which they anchored the cables that would run between the blocks in an infrastructure of massive I-beams, wrought iron pipes, and two blocks of concrete, one 15-feet thick and one 10-feet thick.

The fence would consist of twenty six, diamond-shaped piers, 24 feet wide by 27 feet long and spaced 64 feet apart, center to center. Each pier had an angled top—sloping from 13 feet tall to 11 feet tall—and sat on a concrete foundation that extended an additional 3 to 7 1/2 feet down into the river sediment. Total weight of each pier, about 330 tons. Running between each pier were the steel cables, which would catch the drift. Workers connected the final cables in May 1915.

Visiting the Drift Barrier after the first big storms of 1915, in November and December, project chief engineer William J. Roberts wrote: “It is performing its duty exactly as expected.” The barrier was so successful that he submitted a summary report in 1920, which recommended that similar barriers should be built on other rivers. Within a few years, however, the tone had shifted. The barrier required extensive maintenance, at least five piers had been buried or sunk into the river sediment, floods had severed cables, and drift continued to build massive, unstable piles that required significant money and work to eliminate. By 1933, a new chief engineer was writing “the barrier has already been abandoned.”

I first visited the abandoned Drift Barrier in January 2026. I was lucky to go with Josh Latterell, an ecologist with King County. He had first come across the barriers about a decade ago. Josh had no clue as to why the blocks were there or what function they had though clearly, they had been built in place and clearly for a purpose. He eventually talked to more knowledgeable colleagues who provided some of the background story.

The first pier we found rose about three feet above the White River. (Intriguingly the river has changed sides completely; in 1915, water ran along the west bank and now the channel runs along the east bank.) Mostly submerged, it didn’t look so formidable, as opposed to another block on the river’s edge. When Josh gingerly climbed to the top, he stood about ten feet above me. Down at ground level I was eye level with several eye bolts as big as my hand and the old rusty one-inch steel cables that had formerly stopped woody debris.

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Climbing through blackberries and around big logs and interlaced branches that forced careful stepping and diligent observation to avoid getting thwacked in the face, we located twenty-two piers, running in their original line across the valley. Most piers lacked connecting cables, but a few pairs of piers retained theirs. Softened by a jacket of moss, the strands of steel were still taut (see comment below) and embedded into the concrete.

To my twenty-first century mind, trying to fence in a river seems both arrogant and ecologically unsound, but I also understand why people such as Chittenden proposed it and know that it isn’t appropriate to apply my mindset to theirs. For as long as settlers had farmed the bottom lands along the White River, flooding had been a problem. It had destroyed bridges and train tracks; wiped out homes and farms; ripped out telegraph poles; and killed people and livestock. Understandably, residents wanted protection from the regular flooding and the unpredictability of the river. The engineers were simply trying to help and building the Drift Barrier was an obvious solution.

The White River, not surprisingly, did not cotton on to this solution. Like most rivers, the White was unstable, or more accurately, reactionary. When conditions changed, the river responded, constantly meandering and braiding across the flood plain, creating and destroying habitat, as well as the artificial barrier that we built in the hopes of controlling this dynamic ecosystem. It seems that if the Drift Barrier tells us anything, it is that a river does not want to be harnessed or straitjacketed. Rivers are alive and the more we understand this fundamental, the better we can treat rivers with the respect they deserve.

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Tonight, May 14 - Barnes and Noble in the U-District - 5pm - I will be chatting with my co-author Jennifer Ott about our book Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal: A History and Guide. Here’s info to register.

June 16, 2026 - 7pm - Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park - I will be chatting with Kevin Fedarko about his book A Walk in the Park. Here’s a link to register for this here event.

And, if you want to hear an interview with me about Operation Mother Goose, here it is. It ran on KUOW’s Soundside on Wednesday, May 13. Apparently, I am the historian on this subject; it helps that I think I am the only historian, as well.

The list is not in any particular order. And, please let me know if you have other suggestions for future scavenger hunts.

Fossils - The most commonly used building stone in the country is Indiana’s Salem Limestone. Deposited 330 million years ago in a quiet sea, it is pointillist rock made of fossils instead of dots. Crinoids. Brachiopods. Corals. Bryozoans. Whole and shattered. But the Salem is not the lone building stone with fossils; I have found fossils of all sizes in buildings in most cities I have visited. If you have a magnifying lens, or better yet a Hastings Triplet, you’ll be the envy of all who seek fossils.

Lions, Eagles, and Walruses - No matter where you walk in a city, they are watching. They being the carved and terra cotta animals and human faces that adorn buildings. The most common are lions and eagles but you can also encounter ducks, squirrels, fish, and, in Seattle, walruses. If you have binoculars, and can get over the peeping Tom feeling, they are invaluable. (If you want to go the extra mile, at least in Seattle, I know of bronze duck tracks downtown. Perhaps they were made by the terra cotta duck shown below?)

Hitching Posts - Back in the era when horsepower actually meant equine energy, people needed a place to hitch their horses. Understandably, most hitching posts have gone the way of, well, the horse and buggy, but a few remain, a reminder of the era when the worst output from your source of transportation was poop.

Lichens - Colorful, abundant, persistent, and ubiquitous, lichens are everywhere. Neither plant nor animal—lichens have been described as more like an ecosystem than an individual organism. They grow through a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae, or cyanobacteria, can be found on wood, rock, cement, automobiles, roof tiles, bird baths, etc. etc., and will be here long after we are. What more could you want in your urban world?

Local Geology - Okay, here’s my true dorkdom shining through. A good way to get an insight into your local geology is to look at older buildings because early builders typically used local rock. For example, Seattle’s oldest structures are made of a 50-million-year-old sandstone quarried in Tenino, Wilkeson, and Chuckanut and 32-million-year-old granite from Index; these are the closest sources for good building stone. Early builders also sought out nearby glacially-deposited clay beds to make bricks for structures and streets, as well as limestone for the lime for cement.

Native Trees - Seattle’s most abundant trees are probably its native Douglas firs. Two other common natives are bigleaf maple and red alder, both of which pioneer disturbed habitat. I don’t know about other locations but I am sure that wherever you live, you’ll find native trees growing. I suggest seeking them out in parks, cemeteries (great places for lichen lovers), or arboreta. Or, if you can’t find a native tree, then you could consider planting one or more.

Ghost Forest - Many years ago I had a floral epiphany. The tree trunks I saw around town were once trees, which probably meant that they were part of a forest of what I assumed was the native ecosystem since many stumps were in parks. In Seattle, I know of about a dozen, most of which are western red cedar. Look for the springboard notches, where loggers inserted planks to allow them get above the “knees” that often made up the bottom of a cedar tree. Also look for nurse logs and nurse stumps, great habitat for new life.

Phone Booth - Perhaps the hardest item to find on the list but a few still persist, a reminder of when superheroes and Ma Bell were bedfellows, so to speak.

Evidence for Native people - In Seattle, we have Lushootseed (the Native language) place names, such as Licton Springs and Shilshole, as well as more and more interpretive signs that incorporate Native plant names and that tell the story of Indigenous people past and present. We are also fortunate that several recent books help tell those stories, too. If your city and its residents aren’t recognizing and acknowledging the original inhabitants, then it seems some things need to change where you live.

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Evidence for Historic Water Features - Urban development typically results in the paving over of many hydrologic features, such as creeks, seeps, and springs. But water has a way of bypassing these attempts to hide its story and creates hints for those who seek them out. One simple example in Seattle is Spring Street, named for the springs that provided drinking water to the nascent town. Others clues include water-loving plants (such as horsetails and devil’s club), backyard streams, weeping hillsides, and place names.

Ghost Signs - Pentimenti from a bygone era, ghost signs are a reminder of those who came before, or at least those previous hawkers of their wares. Most signs are disappearing because of urban renewal but you can still find them, often on brick buildings, up high, and nearly always fading. Here’s another fun word to describe them, palimpsests.

California Coolers - Once upon a time, people used the outside air to keep their food cool. Basically a closet with a screened opening on an exterior wall, the coolers worked well for fruits and vegetables. They were popular in apartments and can still be seen on older apartment buildings around Seattle though sometimes the old openings have been closed.

Hatchcover - One of the more mundane places in the city to encounter urban art is your local hatchcover, or what some call manholes (the p.c. term peopleholes just sounds icky). Not only does Seattle have lovely hatchcovers, it also has ones with maps, which I think are pretty darned nifty. Two of the hatchcovers below are in Seattle. (Do you know why they are round?)

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I wish you a wonderful spring and summer filled with exploration, observation, and inspiration. Please let me know if you have topics you’d like me to pursue. I am always in search of fun ideas.

May 14, 2026 - Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal - 5pm - Barnes and Noble University District (formerly the UBookstore) - My co-author Jennifer Ott and I will be discussing the new edition of our book about the history of the Ship Canal and Locks. Info for registering.

Here’s a sampling of what I have been seeing and hearing.

A Hearty Rhody
Depending on your world view the rhododendron in our front yard is either half dead or half alive. I lean toward the latter. This plant is a survivor. When we moved into our house, we had two healthy, moderately sized rhodies in the front yard. One is now dead and one, the survivor, looks as if we had abused it, with several leafless limbs. I do admit that we subscribe to some tough love—if a plant cannot survive without us watering or attending to it, then it’ll probably be returning to the soil whence it came—but we don’t mistreat them. Over the years this rhody had suffered so we had trimmed it, hoping that it would put its energy into its remaining healthy parts. It has and each year continues to brighten our yard with a vernal burst of hot pink efflorescence.

Weed Killer
I am not proud to admit to this sign of spring. As gazillions of plants push their way skyward, I change my status from mere mortal to someone deciding the fate of life and death: Which seedling will survive and which will be yanked from the ground, out of its womb, and die in our compost bin? I don’t have exact criteria; I tend to focus on smaller, weedy plants that I think will spread faster and farther if I don’t do something. These “offensive” plants include some small mustards, an aggressive mint, and a grass or two. I have mixed feelings about being a plant killer. I like that we have mostly native plants and these interlopers don’t necessarily benefit native animals. Nor do they benefit native plants, and, in some situations, may prevent natives from growing.

But I also know that I should be more tolerant. Instead of killing plants who are simply doing their thing, particularly ones that are able to grow in an urban environment, I should be celebrating them for their tenacity and adaptability. I do like to think that I have become more tolerant and pull up fewer plants than I used to but let’s cut to the chase, when spring arrives, I become a killer. For me, this is one of the great ironies of the season.

Bird Sounds
I am one of those nutty, annoying morning people who wake up early and pop out of bed ready to go without need of coffee to evolve into a human. (I admit I do need coffee because I am addicted to it but that’s another issue.) Because of this tendency to wake early I have the pleasure of hearing birds singing loudly. As I have written before, I am not good at identifying song so I rely, like many, on the Merlin app to identify who is plying the airways. Below is a list generated at our house, when eight species were chorusing on Tuesday. While this may not be a high tally, it still was joyful that so many birds were singing, even at our house sandwiched between Interstate 5 and Aurora Avenue.

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Animal Encounters
I recently had the pleasure of meeting two babies, surely a sign of spring. My first encounter was sitting at my desk working on my computer. I had reached up to rub my head when I felt something odd and a bit squishy. I grabbed it and flung it on my desk; it was a half inch long slug. I had just returned from a bike ride and suspect that when I put my helmet down in the grass at the end of the ride, the slug had availed themself (slugs are hermaphrodites so they seems appropriate) of the cozy helmet and then found even greater joy latching onto my noggin, most likely not suspecting that they would soon be traveling far from home. After picking up the startled, and I hope, not too injured, mollusc from my desk, I placed them in a more suitable habitat, our yard.

Later in the day, we were eating dinner outside with friends when I noticed a string dangling from my ball cap. I was quite delighted to see it, as I have recently started wearing prescription glasses and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it previously. Reaching up to detach the string, I discovered a wee caterpillar dangling from it. I suspect that the little critter had latched on to my hat during a walk we had done at Magnuson Park. Once again, being the gentle soul I am, I returned the caterpillar to the wild, hoping that it makes wiser foraging decisions in the future.

Orwell - This is one of my favorite quotes from George Orwell, who was quite the devoted nature guy.
“The point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing. Even in the most sordid street the coming of spring will register itself by some sign or other, if it is only a brighter blue between the chimney pots or the vivid green of an elder sprouting on a blitzed site. Indeed, it is remarkable how Nature goes on existing unofficially, as it were, in the very heart of London.”
George Orwell - Some Thoughts on the Common Toad - April 1946

May 6, 2026 - A Lake with No Limits - 5:30pm - Center for Wooden Boats - As part of an event co-sponsored by the Eastlake Community Council and the Floating Homes Association, I will be discussing the history of the Ship Canal and Locks. I will be joined by Anna Bachman, Clean Water Program Director for the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance. For further information.

May 7, 2026 - Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal - 6pm - Ballard Locks - My co-author Jennifer Ott and I will be discussing the new edition of our book about the history of the Ship Canal and Locks. Some info on Facebook about the event.

I’d also like to recommend a podcast produced by my friend Shin Yu Pai: Ten Thousand Things. Shin Yu explores a collection of objects and artifacts that tell us something about Asian American life – from a second-hand novel to a blue suit worn by a congressman on January 6. Her show is informative, thought provoking, and fun. She starts her fifth season on May 5. Here’s a Spotify link to the trailer for the season.

As Brusatte writes, the idea goes back to the time of Darwin and Wallace and their fleshing out natural selection. Thomas Henry Huxley, often called Darwin’s bulldog for his defense of Mr. D, was the first (in 1868) to draw the link between our feathered friends and the biggest beasts of the past. Using his knowledge of anatomy, Huxley concluded that “the leg of a barnyard chicken is a miniature version of any T. rex leg you see in a museum,” writes Brusatte. In the middle 1800s few dinosaur fossils had been found so when Huxley made the connection, he was actually referencing a small, two-legged theropod (the group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex) known as Compsognathus. That lack of evidence was problematic because Victorian scientists, like their modern counterparts, couldn’t cotton to the bird/dinosaur connection without the facts.

Not until 1964 would the idea be revived, when paleontologist John Ostrom unearthed Deinonychus, a species unlike the prevailing image of dinosaurs. Instead of a lumbering, tail dragging, plodding lummox, Deinonychus were agile, active, fast, and formidable predators, he wrote. Ostrom based his description on the bones he found, which showed a lithe, long-limbed beast with sickle-like claws on each hand. (Deinonychus means terrible claw.) The fossils made him think of Archaeopteryx, a Jurassic Period fossil, long known as the oldest evidence for birds. When Ostrom compared the skeletons of the two species, it was clear, he concluded, that Archaeopteryx, with their classic avian feathers, had evolved from a theropod dinosaur, such as an ancestor of Deinonychus. The dinosaur-bird link was back, writes Brusatte.

Ostrom’s linkage of birds and theropods is a key point that Brusatte stresses. The family tree of dinosaurs is a phenomenally diverse group, persisting for hundreds of millions of years and ranging from chicken-sized, feathered, two-legged carnivores (e.g. Tyrannosaurus rex) to school-bus sized, four-legged plant-eaters (e.g. Brontosaurus). Birds are simply one limb of that tree, similar to the many branches of the mammal family tree. Comparing body shapes, one might not link bats, whales, apes, and anteaters, and yet we easily fit them in the same family. “A bird is a dinosaur version of a bat. A dinosaur that got small, evolved wings and developed the ability to fly but retains many hallmarks of its dinosaur relatives,” writes Brusatte.

Over more than 300 pages, Brusatte provides the thrilling evidence. For some, the most exciting is feathers. In 1996, exquisite dinosaur fossils with stunningly detailed feathers began to come out of China. As numerous additional species came to light, it confirmed the direct relationship between birds and dinosaurs; so feathered were dinosaurs that Brusatte could write “feathers were to dinosaurs what hair is to mammals: the default condition.” But feathers don’t mean that dinosaurs could fly or that all birds fly. Consider moas, emus, ostriches, and penguins; they gave up flight and kept their feathers, a subject that Brusatte describes in a wonderful chapter on earth-bound birds.

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But birds are more than light boned (usually), winged, and feathered. They were the “intellectual champions among land-dwelling animals for many millions of years…[until] a few million years ago, perhaps, when some big-brained ape” came along, writes Brusatte. In addition, birds evolved the superbly adaptable beak, or what he describes as “revolutionary new inventions.” Birds are also fast growing; one reason you rarely see baby birds is that they simply mature too quickly. And, of course, birds vocalize, cacophonying the world with harmonies, tweets, chirps, honks, cackles, whistles, squawks, and screeches.

Brusatte’s writing is clear, concise, and up to date. Over the past few decades paleontology has become truly multi-disciplinary (as well as adaptive of new technology) and he appears to know everybody who is making it so. I particularly appreciate how generous he is in referring to and praising the stellar work of these other scientists. He also illustrates how paleontology has emerged out of its hidebound, white male, western-based past, with research from around the world and a full diversity of scientists. (One area where this manifests itself is how scientific names of dinosaurs have started to reflect a more encompassing and respectful view of where fossils originate.)

For anyone who pays attention to the natural world, birds are ubiquitous. I can’t remember a day without encountering one, no matter where I have been, from the urban chaos of downtown Tokyo to the Douglas firs of my backyard to alpine meadows high in the Cascades. As a geogeek, I have long known that birds are dinosaurs, but Brusatte’s book puts birds in a new and exciting perspective, linking these amazing animals to me, to the ecosystems I love, and deep into the planetary past when dinosaurs ruled the world. Now, they simply rule the sky but what a graceful reign it is. No matter where you look, the connective tissues of life abound, glorious in their complexity and beauty.

If you are interested, I’ll be chatting with Steve Brusatte about his new book on Saturday, April 25, at Town Hall at 7:30PM. Here’s how to register.

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The new edition is smaller, has fewer words, and not as many images. So, what gives. When we first wrote the book, our plan and our mission was to write the definitive history of the Ship Canal and Locks, from geologic time to present. Because of that mission, we dove down many deep history holes to ferret out the details. It was fun and, we like to think, provided the information that would tell a full story that had not been told previously. But we also know that not everyone has the history geek proclivities that Jen and I do. In that light, we teamed up with the UW Press to produce a new edition, still with the key parts of the story but not with all of the details.

I just got a box of books in the mail, so if you are interested in purchasing copies of Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal, you can do so through this link, which takes you to my Square page. Happy to sign and/or inscribe the book.

One story that we kept in the book and that I still find to be singularly interesting is what happened to salmon. For thousands of years, they had moved via the lake’s outlet river, the Black, between the salt water of Puget Sound and the fresh water of Lake Washington and the Cedar River. The completion of the Locks and Ship Canal, however, lowered the lake by nine feet and severed its connection to the Black. How then did fish that migrated up the Black River find their way back to Lake Washington after the opening of the locks? Unfortunately, we have no records of how it happened, but we can make some viable suggestions.

Historically, salmon would have been able to reach Lake Union by swimming up Ross Creek, which once connected the lake via Salmon Bay to Puget Sound. After 1886, when two, small-scale, human-made channels linked Lake Washington to Lake Union and Lake Union to Salmon Bay, fish would have been able to swim this route to Lake Union. In addition, they could have traveled out from Lake Washington via a lock that linked the two lakes. We can hypothesize they did so because newspaper articles as late as 1911 reported that people regularly caught salmon, weighing up to 28 pounds, at the western base of the dam that formed the outlet of Lake Union.

If salmon were already traveling via the pre-1916 canal system, then the post-1916 route might not have been a problem for many returning salmon. Plus, when the locks opened, some recently born salmon must have lived in Lake Washington and made their one and only migration out through the locks. Knowing only this route from their birth waters, they would simply have returned home via the locks. Subsequent generations would have followed their hereditary imperative.

Also consider, though, like the previous ideas, completely impossible to prove, is that salmon that initially swam out the Black and Duwamish Rivers on their outward journeys (between about 1908 and 1916) simply returned to Lake Washington via the locks. For fish with an excellent sense of direction and ability to smell their birth stream and regularly migrated hundreds to thousands of miles, locating and traveling up the new canal route, which was less than 10 miles from their old route, might not have presented any problem at all.

And, then salmon had to get past the locks. The intended upstream route was a fish ladder. State law from 1890 required a ladder or fishway for “any dam or other obstruction across any stream in the state which any food fish are wont to ascend.” A ten-step concrete ladder with wooden weirs was included in the original design. Poorly built by modern standards, with very little design consideration for how fish actually use fishways, the original ladder was little used by salmon. Going out to sea was more hazardous, as no provisions were made to facilitate the passage of smolts migrating to salt water.

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One further fish-­related change has occurred at the locks. In the landmark 1974 court case, United States v. State of Washington, Judge George H. Boldt restored the rights of tribal nations guaranteed to them by treaties they signed with the federal govern-ment in 1854 and 1855. Specifically, they had reserved the right to fish in “usual and accustomed” areas and the right to harvest half the fish. At the locks, one result is that anglers from Muckleshoot Indian Tribe (above the locks) or Suquamish Indian Tribe (below the locks) continue to harvest fish seasonally. Although the locks did not exist then, ancestors of the Muckleshoot and Suquamish had long fished in Lake Wash-ington and Lake Union, and the waterways were and are part of their usual and accustomed fishing grounds.

As I reflect back on the 110 years since they opened, I would argue that the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Hiram M. Chittenden Locks have transformed the waterways and shorelines of Seattle and its surroundings more than any other event before or since. They opened up miles of waterfront, helped cement the importance of the maritime industry, and fostered a connection between the interior freshwater world and the wider salt water world. In many ways, it’s hard to separate the waterway from the history and character of the city itself.

But the ship canal’s environmental and cultural costs have been steep. Marshlands were drained and converted to dumps, lakeside vegetation has died, and salmon have had to find new migration routes. Plus, the death of the Black River and loss of use of wetlands was devastating to the Native people who had relied on them for thousands of years.

Despite all of the many changes, the Ship Canal, Locks, and Seattle have long been intertwined: economically, recreationally, industrially, and culturally. Not all of the impacts have been positive and most have been in ways that early canal supporters could not have imagined. But throughout that century-plus of use, the canal has reflected Seattleites’ image of themselves and the city they inhabit and hope to inhabit. Few other places in Seattle are as central to the city’s identity.

Jen and I have three talks lined up about Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal.

April 22 – 7pm – Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park. To Register for this event.

May 7 – 6pm – Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. More information to come.

May 14 – 5pm – Barnes and Noble Books, University District. To Register for this event.

If you missed it earlier, or simply desire to purchase another one, here’s a link to buy copies of Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal. Happy to sign and/or inscribe the book.