Urban Scavenger Hunt

A baker's dozen of things to look for in your neighborhood.

Happy New Year. Below is my version of an urban scavenger hunt. I hope that you enjoy it and perhaps find some inspiration for further exploration. Although my knowledge is primarily Seattle biased and based, I feel confident that you can find these treasures in any large city and probably many towns.

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

1. 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.

   

   Salem Limestone; an ammonite from German; shells from Texas.

2. 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. 

   

   An urban menagerie in terra cotta and sandstone.

3. 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. 

4. Lichen - 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?

   

   Pilfered from Salish Magazine; see link above.

5. 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 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. 

6. Native tree - Seattle’s most abundant trees are probably its native Douglas firs; two other common natives are bigleaf maples and red alder, both of which pioneer disturbed habitat. I don’t know about other locations but I am sure that when you search 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. 

7. Ghost Forest - An offshoot of number 6. 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.

   

   A trifecta in Carkeek Park: stump, habitat for new life, and springboard notches.

8. 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.

   

9. 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.

10. Evidence for Historic Water feature - 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. 

11. Ghost sign - 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. 

12. California cooler - 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. 

    

13. 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?)

    

    I wish you a wonderful year 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.

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