The other day at one of my talks for my new book, Wild in Seattle, someone asked me what was the wildest thing I had seen in the city. I thought it was a great question and, prompted by my big brother, I decided to come up with some of my favorite wild sightings in Seattle.
Flying Fish - At Alki Point with a pal, we saw an adult herring passing over us in the talons of an Osprey, who disappeared to the north. Then the Osprey and herring returned back over the water, followed by a Bald Eagle. The Osprey juked left, juked right before dropping the fish in the water. Abandoning his pursuit, the eagle seemed ready to dive into the water after the herring but apparently decided at the last minute that the fish wasn’t worth the effort. Another time I watched an eagle bring a fish back to her nest near Green Lake and land with the meal, only to have the fish flop out of the nest and fly (or technically, drop) to the ground below. The eagle sure looked grumpy about the lost calories, but several nearby crows rejoiced and within seconds had landed on their lagniappe.
Spirit Whale - Many years ago at a friend’s mother’s memorial service near Shilshole Marina, a gray whale rose out of the water adjacent to us. My friend later told me: “About a week after my mom’s service, a gray whale was seen right in the heart of urban Vancouver. This was exactly the time when we were moving up there from Seattle, so we sort of metaphorically imagined that my mom as a whale came to her own memorial and then followed us to Canada.” Sounds good to me.
The Coyote Clan Living It Up - Walking to the Light Rail station at Northgate, I heard the wonderful sound of a coyote calling about fifty feet away. I knew they lived on the campus but had yet to hear one so I was rather pleased with the howls. God’s dogs, as they are known by some, are widespread across the city; I have seen them under I-5 on Ravenna, trotting by our house, and once, I encountered three of them sitting in the middle of an intersection on a quiet road. They didn’t seem to care that I was running by them. I wondered if they would have moved when a car arrived; they certainly seemed to own the road. I have no problem with that.
Thrilling to Thrushes - Over the past few springs, I have savored hearing the trills of Varied Thrushes. These orange-necked, black-bibbed cousins of robins typically start calling at dawn in a haunting, monotone whistle suffused with the mysteries of a mountain forest. Summer residents of higher elevation, they migrate down to hang out with we lowland dwellers from late fall to spring. The trilling notes feel not only like a rejoicing of spring but also a call to turn one’s thoughts to the mountains.
Dinner in the Park - Walking down the main trail at dusk one summer day in Ravenna Park, we heard a buzzy, sort-of-raspy-hiss ahead of us. The sound came from a juvenile Barred Owl, one of four flying from tree to tree. The highlight was when mom, or at least an adult, caught a rat, flew up to a perch, began sectioning the meal, and served chunks to one youngster. Soon a second kid arrived, and muscled his or her sibling out of the way, which prompted mom to abandon the rat to her children. She then flew straight toward me, landed a social distance away, and nabbed a worm, which she ate. And, then she did it again, landing about 30 feet away.
Erupting Volcanoes - In 1975, I watched steam erupt from Mount Baker. Then it shut down. I am still disappointed that nothing further happened than a few puffs. Luckily, in 1980, Mount St. Helens burst to life with an epic eruption. We couldn’t see the big blast of May 18 but I remember watching it on our black-and-white television. Annoyingly, none of the ash that eventually circled the globe from that eruption made it our way. Fortunately, though, the wind blew north in a subsequent eruption and a totally cool thin layer of ash painted our deck in gritty gray.
Dead Salmon at Carkeek - Life comes in many forms, even death. Last autumn, I witnessed the return of salmon to Piper’s Creek in north Seattle. The fish had come to spawn and die, which they did by the hundreds. In doing so, they were continuing a multi-generational, multi-millennial way of life that helped perpetuate salmon, as well as the plants and animals that benefit by the death of the fish. As I wrote about them in a previous newsletter, the salmon were illustrating the power of place, of how the DNA of a landscape can embed itself in each of us—animal, plant, human—and provide a tenacity and resilience to the challenges that we all face.
Deep Time - Of the many fine scientific ideas that geology has gifted the world, one of my favorites is the deep time of our past. Stretching back 4.54 billion years, that great abyss of planetary eons is why the world looks as it does. Fortunately, I, and you, if you so desire, have an easy opportunity in downtown Seattle to encounter one of the oldest exemplars of Earth’s deep time. Minnesota’s Morton Gneiss is 3.5 billion years old and was long used as building stone. It appears in the Exchange Building (2nd and Marion), the Westlake Light Rail station, and the 1800 Ninth building. If you’d like a profound experience, I encourage you to go find this lovely rock, to touch it, and to reach back, back, back to the early days of Earth and to bond with the deep time that binds us all together.
These are just a few of the uncountable number of interactions I have had with the wild in Seattle. I would love to hear about yours. Please share them in the Comments section.
May 14 - I will be in conversation with Mr. Mossback, aka Knute Berger, about Wild in Seattle at Island Books on Mercer Island at 6:30pm.
Every Wednesday at Noon: And, to clarify what I wrote last week about my show on Space101.1 FM. Every Wednesday at noon, they will broadcast me reading one of the newsletters that appears in Wild in Seattle. For those who tried the link last week, it may not have worked because I messed up the links. Here’s the link again; it works now.
May 17 - Seattle Super Saunter - FYI - Join others in walking the length of Seattle, a self-guided roughly 20-mile adventure from the city's northernmost point (the shoreline South/148th street light rail) to the southernmost point (Garden of Gethsemane Church of God in Christ). It should be great.
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