When I lived near the Ravenna Park in the late 1990s I walked in the park everyday. I saw red-tail hawks, stellar jays, tons of crows, especially by the the walking bridge, and a snowy owl. That park is magical. I'm assuming when you mention the Ravine you're talking about Ravenna Park, but I could be wrong.
Delightful vignettes, touching the wonders around us, no matter where we live. Molly saw a Cooper's hawk catch a too-heavy-to-carry-roadrunner years ago on the dirt road in front of our house in rural New Mexico. The more you watch the more you encounter.
My own wonderful moments comes from a small plane flight that took us over the recently devastated landscape above and surrounding Mt St. Helens. The vast, blasted forests were shrouded in ash. Closer in, the still steaming debris fields were dotted with concentrations of white steam suggesting buried and still melting ice from the Dog's head Glacier. We flew above the log-choked Spirit Lake before skedaddling back to Olympia. I've forgotten who were my acquaintences on that flight, but am ever grateful for this up close, perhaps surreptitious flight path that gave me a fifteen or twenty minute glimpse of the appropriate use of the word "awesome."
Finished Wild in Seattle and now in wife’s pile of books to read. Starting your book on the big Seattle landscape change. Amazing to think the founders and those who came later had the forthright to see the city needed to grow to succeed.
On an urban birding expedition a few years ago, my birding buddy and I were on a wooded but still quite suburban road parallel to 509 when we spotted a pileated woodpecker on a tree just off the shoulder. I have never seen one in the city, before or since.I snapped some pictures of it hopping up the tree and giving the tree a few pecks.
Only later, when looking at the pics, did I realize it was also putting its ear up to the tree. I was less surprised that it did that than the fact I had never heard they do that.
# # # #
I went on a deep dive into Deep Time for a program I gave to the West Seattle Rock Club. I started out taping 10 pieces of paper side to side, each with a header spanning a decade of a person's life who lived from 0-100. Folks placed Post-It Notes of life's milestones under the appropriate decade.
Next I had a slideshow where one centennial lifetime is shrunk down to one milimeter, and used that as my standard of measure on a historical time line.
First there was a ruler, where two centimeters back was tge Roman Empire, 12 centimeters was the end of the Ice Age.
Soon we all went outside and, on a 50-meter tape measure that I ran from a street sign, added mega fauna extinctions, the first and last human cousins, the first use of fire, etc.
Then we went back inside and the slideshow continued with shots from Google maps and a superimposed yellow line starting from the same street sign.
Five blocks away, the dinosaurs went extinct.
I continued through other major ages of planet Earth on the same scale of one century per milimeter. 4.56
billion years got us from West Seattle to Puyallup. 13 billion years got us to just outside Vancouver, WA.
If I were a programmer, I would create a tool that would allow someone pick their own address to superimposed this timeline of geological milestones upon. It's really a good way of making sense of these otherwise unfathomably large numbers.
(If anyone has such skills, or wants my spreadsheet to put together their own journey, hit me up.)
A B&W tv in 1980? C'mon ... 1960 I could believe
Yes, that's what we had. When I went to college, one of the great surprises was seeing Wizard of Oz and discovering that Oz was in color. Who knew?
When I lived near the Ravenna Park in the late 1990s I walked in the park everyday. I saw red-tail hawks, stellar jays, tons of crows, especially by the the walking bridge, and a snowy owl. That park is magical. I'm assuming when you mention the Ravine you're talking about Ravenna Park, but I could be wrong.
You are correct. Ravine is the bottom of Ravenna.
I love that magical spot.
Delightful vignettes, touching the wonders around us, no matter where we live. Molly saw a Cooper's hawk catch a too-heavy-to-carry-roadrunner years ago on the dirt road in front of our house in rural New Mexico. The more you watch the more you encounter.
Lucky Molly. I always love seeing roadrunners when we are in NM.
It is a wonder-filled question indeed.
My own wonderful moments comes from a small plane flight that took us over the recently devastated landscape above and surrounding Mt St. Helens. The vast, blasted forests were shrouded in ash. Closer in, the still steaming debris fields were dotted with concentrations of white steam suggesting buried and still melting ice from the Dog's head Glacier. We flew above the log-choked Spirit Lake before skedaddling back to Olympia. I've forgotten who were my acquaintences on that flight, but am ever grateful for this up close, perhaps surreptitious flight path that gave me a fifteen or twenty minute glimpse of the appropriate use of the word "awesome."
wow
A great question, lovely answers, and a beautiful use of the word "lagniappe".
Thanks. I am a big fan of lagniappe, the word and getting one.
Finished Wild in Seattle and now in wife’s pile of books to read. Starting your book on the big Seattle landscape change. Amazing to think the founders and those who came later had the forthright to see the city needed to grow to succeed.
On an urban birding expedition a few years ago, my birding buddy and I were on a wooded but still quite suburban road parallel to 509 when we spotted a pileated woodpecker on a tree just off the shoulder. I have never seen one in the city, before or since.I snapped some pictures of it hopping up the tree and giving the tree a few pecks.
Only later, when looking at the pics, did I realize it was also putting its ear up to the tree. I was less surprised that it did that than the fact I had never heard they do that.
# # # #
I went on a deep dive into Deep Time for a program I gave to the West Seattle Rock Club. I started out taping 10 pieces of paper side to side, each with a header spanning a decade of a person's life who lived from 0-100. Folks placed Post-It Notes of life's milestones under the appropriate decade.
Next I had a slideshow where one centennial lifetime is shrunk down to one milimeter, and used that as my standard of measure on a historical time line.
First there was a ruler, where two centimeters back was tge Roman Empire, 12 centimeters was the end of the Ice Age.
Soon we all went outside and, on a 50-meter tape measure that I ran from a street sign, added mega fauna extinctions, the first and last human cousins, the first use of fire, etc.
Then we went back inside and the slideshow continued with shots from Google maps and a superimposed yellow line starting from the same street sign.
Five blocks away, the dinosaurs went extinct.
I continued through other major ages of planet Earth on the same scale of one century per milimeter. 4.56
billion years got us from West Seattle to Puyallup. 13 billion years got us to just outside Vancouver, WA.
If I were a programmer, I would create a tool that would allow someone pick their own address to superimposed this timeline of geological milestones upon. It's really a good way of making sense of these otherwise unfathomably large numbers.
(If anyone has such skills, or wants my spreadsheet to put together their own journey, hit me up.)