Street Smart Naturalist

David B. Williams
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A free newsletter oriented toward building stronger connections to place through stories of human and natural history in the Pacific Northwest streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com

  1. 4d ago

    Of Oaks, Acorns, and Ants

    Originally posted in October 2021 and still relevant as this seems to be a good mast year. Over the past few weeks, I have been enjoying the acorns along Ravenna Boulevard, near our neighborhood. I first noticed them crunching under my tires as I rode along the road. Up to an inch long, the acorns were also abundant on the grass under the trees. Most lacked their handsome, little beret-like cupule but were still quite wonderful to behold and gather; I often see people harvesting acorns along the boulevard. Loaded with carbohydrates, proteins, and fat, acorns are a splendid food source for people as well as for animals, ranging from mice to black bears. In Lynda Mapes’ wonderful Witness Tree, she writes that the scientific name for oaks Quercus could be derived from the Greek “choiros,” or pig, an animal well-known for relishing acorns. Taking their relationship further, some animals convert the acorn’s hard shell into home. When I lived in Boston, one of my favorite “discoveries” was a colony of wee pismires inhabiting an acorn. Unlike many ants, which build their own nest, this species (Leptothorax longispinosus) is an opportunist moving into a prefab-site such as an acorn, rolled-up leaf, or grass stem. In an acorn, the ants usually are the second shell-exploiters, coming after beetle larvae or millipedes that had bored a hole through the shell and eaten the energy-rich acorn meat. After their fellow acornophiles exit, ants move in, clean out the debris (usually frass), and create a little condo of their own. Sadly, I don’t know of any acorn-dwelling ants in Washington, most likely because the state has only one native oak, the Garry, or Oregon, white oak. David Douglas bestowed the scientific name, Quercus garryana, to honor Nicholas Garry, secretary and later deputy governor of the Hudson Bay Company. More common south of Tacoma, particularly on the prairies around Nisqually and Ft. Lewis, Garry white oaks prefer sunny, open, well-drained sites. In Seattle one can find large Garry white oaks at Seward Park, Oak Manor, and Martha Washington Park. (Two street names, Oaklawn Place and Oakhurst Street (hurst is an ancient word meaning grove of trees), indicate that oaks were common or unusual enough to merit street name recognition near Seward Park.) Edward Curtis wrote in The North American Indians that Indigenous people from around Puget Sound would canoe down to the Nisqually plains and collect hundreds of bushels of acorns, which they roasted, ate raw, and used for bread making. Harvesting these delicacies involved active management of the land. Using fire, the Native people killed Douglas fir seedlings, which grow faster, eventually shade out oaks, and can take over an oak prairie, if not prevented so by fire, a process now occurring around Ft. Lewis and on the Mima Mounds, south of Olympia. Piqued by seeing the acorns along Ravenna, I have continued to seek out oaks and acorns around Seattle; they are everywhere. It’s not clear why the Ravenna oaks (which appear to be English oaks) are having a mast year. Masting, or mast seeding, is a synchronized production of seeds, often by an entire population of a single species. Scientists don’t fully understand why or how trees accomplish these coordinated boom and bust cycles but know that it is irregular and has a dramatic impact on a biotic community. Whatever triggered this year’s masting seems to have affected many of the city’s oak species as I have found many other locations with acorns. They come from one of the more than 44 oak species and cultivars in Seattle. (Worldwide there are more than 500 oak species; many are notorious for their promiscuous interbreeding, but I won’t dwell on such naughty, or evolutionarily adaptive, trees.) One notable location with acorn bearing oaks is near what used to be Oak Hill School, in northeast Seattle, which was built near Oak Lake, named for the Garry white oaks that formerly grew there. As Lynda writes in her book, oaks have long been intertwined with people. The Druids worshipped and whooped under oaks; the Vikings sacked and terrified in their ships of oak; and King Arthur and his pals discussed the great ideas of the day around their circular table of oak. And, of course, all species of oak are beautiful and inspiring, especially in fall as their leaves turn russet and red. The PNW is justifiably famous for our conifers, but we also have lovely deciduous trees, many, such as oak, which are just beginning to showcase their fall colors. Such trees are one advantage of living in a city with its diverse population of trees from around the world. I wanted to add that I have discovered another fine aspect of our local oak. The local distillery, Westland Distillery, makes a wonderful whiskey, which they age in Quercus garryana casks. I have had the good fortune to try this whiskey and it’s quite splendid. Next week is a bit nutty with talks. Don’t be shy about sharing this information with everyone you know! Thanks, October 4 – 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. To register. October 7 - Darvill’s Books - Orcas Island Public Library — 6:00 PM – In conversation with Amy Frost, former Executive Director of the Lopez Island Historical Society, for In the Range of Fire and Ice. October 8, 2026 – Village Books – Bellingham – 6:00 PM – In conversation with the co-founder of the North Cascades Institute Saul Weisberg for In the Range of Fire and Ice. RSVP for event. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Sep 24

    Coyote vs Seattle

    Alas for coyotes, they face one serious issue in Seattle; no roadrunners grace the wilds of my fair city. But perhaps this may be a saving grace. Instead of focusing their formidable skills on the pursuit of the legendary avian speedster, God’s dog, as some call coyotes, can concentrate on more attainable prey. A recently published study, based on 687 coyote scats collected from Seattle parks, found that coyotes rarely caught birds, roadrunner or otherwise, and instead focus on fruit and small critters. Samantha Kreling, lead author of the study in the September 2026 issue of People and Nature, and her colleagues discovered that the most frequently eaten items in a Seattle coyote’s diet were apples, plums, and cherries; rabbits (non-native Eastern cottontails, here due to our propensity to let our former pets out in the city); chickens (from chicken found in garbage and not backyard chickens); cats (though the latter is likely overestimated by the methods used as the same cat will often be detected multiple times); mice; and rats. The key, noted Sam, was that coyotes exploited our habits. “If trash is unsecured, compost is open, and picnic sites (or the like) are not cleaned up urban wildlife including coyotes will capitalize on them,” she said. In total, coyotes ate food from 65 families (24 plant, 41 vertebrate). As Sam told me, coyotes are incredibly opportunistic. If an easy meal becomes available, they will take it. For example, illegal dumping and poorly covered trash lead to coyotes taking pest rodents and human-generated food such as chicken, pig, and cow, whereas population density (people not coyotes) results in greater consumption of garden fruits, as well as rodents. The study further found that greener areas (with more tree canopy cover) support less diverse, non-anthropogenic diets and that in areas of lower household income and less tree canopy, coyotes eat more berries, particularly Himalayan blackberry. Not that we will be able to control what a wily animal like a coyote eats but we can at least be better neighbors, as well as more tolerant. Coyotes probably help to control rodent populations, particularly in areas rife with illegal dumping and poorly covered trash. They also help spread seeds of native plants and reduce those often-despised, vegetable-garden pests: rabbits. Nor are coyotes marauding carnivores, only eating our precious cats and dogs; they may pick off the occasional pet but rarely ones on leash or in fenced yards. Sam was also involved in another study of coyotes in Seattle. Using scat again, she and her colleagues compared coyote populations in rural and urban settings. Amazingly, Seattle hosts a population density nine times greater than found in wilder and rural settings. Estimated density in Seattle was .98/square mile or around 83 coyotes within city limits. “That might surprise people who think of coyotes as afraid of humans, but I think it just shows how ideal the urban setting is for coyotes,” said Laura Prugh, lead author of the study in Environmental Research: Ecology. Of particular interest is what affects coyote numbers and what doesn’t affect them. Researchers had hypothesized that the luxury effect—with wealthier neighborhoods having more tree cover and biodiversity—might lead to greater coyote density, but this was not the case. Conversely, impervious surfaces and pollution, which tend to lead to more dead coyotes, didn’t reduce the density. Human population density was the only factor that significantly influenced coyote density. More people equals fewer coyotes so why are there more coyotes in Seattle than in rural and wilder parts of the state? Urban coyotes benefit in several ways, in particular, the absence of two primary means of death. A coyote may have a greater chance of being killed by a vehicle in Seattle than in a rural counterpart, but that same coyote isn’t going to be shot or caught. Our species has long been instrumental in controlling, or at least attempting to control, coyote populations via hunting and trapping. A review study of 31 studies estimated that an urban coyote had a 41% greater annual survival compared to one in rural or natural areas; humans caused 77% of deaths across all studies. Food, either finding it or not being it, also contributes to the success of urban coyotes. Sam’s study showed that the cityscape led to dietary diversity twice as high compared to wilder locations. Plus, the absence of predators such as wolves and mountain lions, meant that coyotes were rarely eaten by anyone. Without these big competitors, coyotes are in essence the top dog and more able to exploit a wide variety of food resources. One part of the coyote story that the UW scientists do not know is the long term population dynamics. With just a single year, single season estimate, researchers cannot generalize if the number of coyotes in Seattle is growing or stabilized. Also uncertain is if their numbers trend with bunny abundance, as happens in many natural areas. Sam told me that it’s hard to predict what will happen here. Coyotes are relatively newcomers (arrival unknown but perhaps in the 1920s/30s); tend to have larger litters in cities; and have plenty of food and few means of death, so their population has the potential to continue to grow, but that is speculation and could change with changing conditions. She also stressed that Seattle has lot fewer coyotes than other urban environments. The reason is tolerance, or intolerance. We human residents are generally receptive to coyotes but not when a coyote acts in a manner we do not like, such as bothering our pets and eating garbage. We are incredibly fortunate that coyotes grace Seattle—even without access to Acme products or roadrunners—but if we want to keep it that way, we may want to become a bit more proactive in how we manage our pets and our garbage, as well as be more tolerant of such wildness in our midst. Saturday, September 26 - 11:30 AM - Eagle Harbor Congregational Church - I am excited to be part of the Bainbridge Island Book Festival. I will be sharing the stage with the eminent guidebook author Craig Romano. We’ll be interviewed by author and carnivore biologist Paula MacKay. October 4 – 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. To register. October 7 - Darvill’s Books - Orcas Island Public Library — 6:00 PM – In conversation with Amy Frost, former Executive Director of the Lopez Island Historical Society, for In the Range of Fire and Ice. October 8, 2026 – Village Books – Bellingham – 6:00 PM – In conversation with the co-founder of the North Cascades Institute Saul Weisberg for In the Range of Fire and Ice. RSVP for event. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Sep 17

    Poopitalism: The Exploitation of Dung

    Marjorie reminded me that I hadn’t written about poop in a while. Sadly, that is correct, so I thought I’d remedy the situation. Her comment came when we were walking along an ocean beach and observed a small outcrop of rock covered in generations of deposits by the residents. In this case, the producers were primarily Brown Pelicans and Brandt’s Cormorants though I suspect that various species of gulls and perhaps a crow or two also contributed to the whitewashing of the islet. I have seen and smelled (particularly below the visitor center at Cape Disappointment where the aroma of fishy poop is quite spectacular), similar guanoified rocks on many, if not, most coasts I have visited. Sometimes the splatters cover rocks such as I saw—merely a simple pimple of land—but at other times, the poop covers islands big enough to merit a name. Perhaps the most common, officially recognized moniker for these seabird-poop-covered locations is Bird Island. The name can refer to the nesters and/or to their coprogenic products, but I have come across other modifiers, or middle names if you will, between the first name and surname. I am sure that you can imagine the terminology and will not belabor the point. By the way, cairns are another location preferred by birds as landing and depositing points. Birds may rest, preen themselves, stand and scan the terrain, or dine. When birds consistently perch on a cairn, their depositional habits can also have a quite cheery effect on the landscape. Droppings add nutrients that several species of ornithocoprophilous, or bird-dung loving, lichen exploit. The elegant sunburst lichen (Xanthoria elegans), a name derived from their resplendent yellow and orange coloring, is often encountered on cairns at higher elevations and higher latitudes. When you see this sunny patch of color on a cairn, you can feel confident that some bird, or some mammal, such as a marmot or pika, spent some quality time high above his or her surroundings. I have not read of ornithocoprophilous lichens exploiting bird poop on oceanic rocks but do know of another species that relishes said guano. That species is Homo sapiens, and we have sought out these deposits for thousands of years. Like lichens, we wanted the nutrients, in particular nitrogen to use as a fertilizer. In contrast to humans, who produce water-soluble urea that we pee out to eliminate excess nitrogen, birds produce uric acid, which is insoluble and mixed with feces to generate the white paste found on the rocks I saw. Few groups of birds are better at creating Bird Islands than cormorants and pelicans. Both birds, of which there are quite a few species, are colonial, gregarious, and piscivorous, a trifecta of attributes that results in them nesting and resting together, sometimes in great quantities, and often generation after generation. As a result, they have created guano sites long utilized by people. Not surprisingly, our species’ penchant for poop has had significant negative consequences, ecologically and politically. In 2024, Mauricio Betancourt, an environmental sociologist, published a paper titled “Guano and the Rise of the American Empire.” His aim was to “expand on ecological imperialism theory by showing the centrality of guano for the origin and development of the U.S. empire.” Right now, we are in a rising tide of crap, so it seems fitting to discuss the connections between s**t and the United States. Dr. Betancourt’s focus is the guano on Peru’s Chincha Islands. Some of the best and largest in the world, the islands’ deposits totaled 15 million tons, about as much feces as modern residents of New York city would produce in 37 years. Beginning in 1845, the US started to exploit the poop. Over the next decade “guano mania,” and guano, spread across the country, particularly in states planting tobacco and cotton. In that ten year period, the US imported twice as much guano as coffee and five times more than tea. So valuable was the white gold that President Franklin Pierce signed the Guano Islands Act in August 1856. The GIA eventually led to the US claiming about 70 islands, mostly in the Pacific Ocean. Still on the books, the law states that “if a U.S. citizen finds guano on a territory not within the jurisdiction of another nation and claims it, it may be considered U.S. soil.” As the demand for guano heated up, it led to warfare, labor exploitation, and abuse of power. (I know, gentle reader, that you are shocked by this.) Extraction also destroyed habitat for birds, prevented uncountable numbers of birds from nesting, removed an important nesting material, and led to the “wanton killing” of birds. Similar to birds, our species eventually figured out a way to produce tidy packets of nitrogen and we no longer rely on guano. Unfortunately, we now produce so much excess nitrogen that it is causing new environmental problems. But back to the poop. Now that we no longer value the white gold, these guano islands are the domains of birds, who can live their lives and defecate in peace, and naturalists and birders, who can admire the birds. Long may they poop. Word of the week - Guano - Originally from Quecha huanu, which referred to any form of manure used as agricultural fertilizer. Guano first appeared in English in The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies (1604), by Joseph Acosta, Translated by E.G. He wrote in reference to islands off of Peru: “And this dung is so commodious and profitable as it makes the earth yeelde great aboundance of fruite. They cal this dung Guano….” There are still tickets left for my talk tonight in Edmonds. I will be in conversation with journalist Teresa Wippel at 6:30 PM at the Edmonds Waterfront Center. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Sep 10

    The Wolf Flower - Lupine

    In June 1982, ecologists Charlie Crisafulli and Jim McMahon were surveying the Pumice Plain at Mount St. Helens. Traveling by helicopter, they were seeking out life on the area most devastated by the 1980 eruption. Not surprisingly little stirred in the moonscape, but then they landed and came across a dab of purple and green, as if paint splotches had splattered across an endless field of grey. The stunning and surprising color was a flowering lupine, the first plant they’d seen for miles. Surrounded by a ring of seedlings, the plant had to be at least a year old, in order to produce the seedlings. Crisafulli, who eventually spent four decades studying the ecological recovery at the volcano, established a 200-square-yard study plot around that pioneering plant. Within four years, he counted 16,000 lupines in the plot; three years later, 35,000. “People sometimes ask me how I can go back and study the exact same place year after year,” he says. “I always tell them it’s never the same.” How had life found a way back? The deep ash and pumice held few nutrients, but lupines, like other plants in the pea family, have a special trick up their branches, or in this case, actually down their roots. Lupines have the ability to fix, or convert, inert atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form, which allows the species to thrive in environments inhospitable to most other plants. Technically, lupines don’t actually fix the nitrogen; they outsource that skill to bacteria, which do their good deed in nodules on the plant’s roots. Once the lupines enriched the soil with nitrogen, adding organic material to it when they died, other plants and then animals soon followed. Within a decade of the eruption, Crisafulli had documented more than 27 plant species in the study plot. A large patch of strawberries sprang up just outside it, probably from a single seed deposited in bird or mammal feces. Crisafulli eventually trapped a variety of small mammals on the Pumice Plain, including ground squirrels, mice, and shrews. Each has sped up the area’s recovery by caching seeds, burrowing through soil, and luring predators such as raptors and weasels. Lupines are one of the great stories of Mount St. Helens but that is not the only place they thrive. I have seen them throughout the Cascades and Olympics, on beaches, in the desert, in the tundra, and in cities. I cannot think of a habitat where I haven’t seen them and would argue that they are one of the more ubiquitous plants out there. Thankfully, as they are lovely. Lupines are primarily in the blue shades but also tint over to magentas and purplish with a few species dialing over to yellows. They range in size from low in stature to ones that top out at four to five feet tall. I am enchanted by the flowers, especially when they blue a hillside, as you’ll see is something that appealed to Mr. Henry David Thoreau, but what I like most are the leaves. With their palmate leaves (with 5 to 12 leaflets), they are particularly easy to distinguish. The structure, like our own palms, is perfect for catching water and I am always pleased to see how the leaves form a cup of a single droplet of water. The little aqueous orbs seem to be almost otherworldly in their ability to harvest light, as if the droplet is glowing from within. By the way, lupine originates in ancient Rome. Only a handful of lupine species (around a dozen) grow in the Old World, whereas more than 250 occur in North and South America. According to the great 19th century botanist Asa Gray, the scientific name (all species are Lupinus sp.) derives from the Latin term for wolf, because lupines “were thought to devour the fertility of the soil.” His contemporary Henry David Thoreau found this preposterous and wrote “this is scurrilous,” in June 1852. He was correct, considering lupines perform the exact opposite behavior by feeding the soil with nitrogen. Like many, Mr. Thoreau was quite smitten with the flowers. “It paints a whole hill-side with its blue, making such a field (if not meadow) as Proserpine might have wandered in. Its leaf was made to be covered with dew-drops. I am quite excited by this prospect of blue flowers in clumps, with narrow intervals, such a profusion of the heavenly, the Elysian color, as if these were the Elysian Fields. . . . That is the value of the lupine. The earth is blued with it.” What else needs to be said? Nice work Henry. Wow, thanks to all subscribers who came out to my book launch at Third Place Books last week. I was humbled and honored that there were 450 people who registered for the talk! About 350 showed up and bought 120 copies. Golly ned. If you missed the launch, I have two more talks this upcoming week. Sept. 16 - Burke Museum – 6:30 PM – In conversation with the great book reviewer Mary Ann Gwinn for In the Range of Fire and Ice. RSVP for event. Sept. 17 – Edmonds Bookshop – Edmonds Waterfront Event Center – 6:30 PM – In conversation with Teresa Wippel of myedmondsnews.com for In the Range of Fire and Ice. RSVP for event. I also had the pleasure to be on New Day NW on King 5 for a little chat about In the Range of Fire and Ice. Here’s a link. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 3

    Of Ancient Trees and Young Lava

    If you have been reading my newsletter for some time, you know that I have a deep and abiding love for Douglas firs. They have appeared as a subject many times, ranging from celebrating them in our backyard to describing their naming history to their use in dendrochronology for dating lahars on Mount Rainier. Well known and well regarded, Douglas firs are the quintessential tree of the Pacific Northwest. They grow from sea level to the subalpine zone and are some of the tallest, ginormousest (seems this should be word) trees on the planet. Recently, though, I saw Douglas firs in an almost alien environment, one so un-PNW that the trees seemed that they shouldn’t be there. Yet, they were. And they are some of the older Douglas firs growing anywhere. The location even merits a less-than-likely place name, El Malpais National Monument, the bad lands. Located a few miles south of Interstate 40 in New Mexico, El Malpais showcases numerous lava flows younger than 60,000 years old. The youngest is just 3,900 years old; the one we visited erupted about 11,000 years ago. Geologists refer to the flows as pāhoehoe and ‘a‘ā type rock. Both terms originated in Hawaii, the first in reference to ropy lava, often with browny-like texture, and the second to the sound one makes when walking across the ragged, jagged surface of ‘a‘ā. Fortunately, we were wearing rugged shoes, but I could still feel the sharp, craggy basalt through my soles. I first heard that ancient Douglas firs grew at El Malpais about 30 years ago. I, of course, had to go see them. Fortunately, my wife worked for a summer camp located nearby so I had a good excuse to seek out the trees. Serendipity was on our side. We ran into two park rangers who gave us directions to the trees: “Cross 3 cattle guards, take the first left, drive 1/2 mile, walk about 25 minutes till the road and lava converge, look for a salt lick, head east from it until the horse head skeleton, then go north up the lava.” This time we had more specific directions, or actually a specific location: latitude and longitude. We drove as close as we could, parked by the side of the road under a ponderosa pine, and headed onto the basalt, about 200 yards from the car. The surface was classic pāhoehoe and ‘a‘ā, undulating over a mix of the brownie texture and jagged cobbles, boulders, and flows. Never was the route level for more than a few feet; we had to pay constant attention so as not to fall on the unforgiving rocks. Atop the 40- to 50-foot-high flow were numerous trees: ponderosa pine, Rocky Mountain juniper, and Douglas fir. None were terribly tall; the 20-year-old Douglas fir in our front yard is as big as any tree we encountered. Dotting the surface were many downed trees, some with spiral trunks that looked as if an ancient giant had grabbed the tree in both hands and tried to squeeze out all the moisture. Eventually we made it to the GPS coordinates I had been given by a researcher. The Douglas firs were tall and straight but still not very big. Many had cones and we also saw several young, or at least small trees; in this environment a tree with a two-inch diameter trunk could be a hundred years old. At one downed tree, we could get a hint of the density of life. Every tree ring was at most a millimeter wide, as if the tree only parsed out enough nutrients to eke out an existence, but what an existence. In a 1997 report in the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, dendrochronologists described numerous Douglas firs with ages “in excess of 600 years,” as well as several over 700 and one 1,274 years old. They hypothesized that this wasn’t the lone tree born ten centuries ago. In addition, they dated the log of a Rocky Mountain juniper at 1,888 years old; it had germinated in 29 BCE and died in 1859. “We are confident that the malpais contains 2,000-year-old living juniper trees, and perhaps even older ones,” wrote the report’s authors. Although the lava flows look alien and inhospitable to my PNW, temperate, rain-soaked eyes, clearly they are firvana for the firs, pines, and junipers. Or as the researchers say, the environment is protective not stressful. The jagged terrain reduces access to loggers, individual harvesters, and animals; the minimal ground cover inhibits the spread of fire; and the textured surface creates areas where moisture can accumulate. I have no idea if we saw the 1,303 (1,274 plus 29 years since publication) year old Douglas fir but it was still glorious to be around the ancient trees of El Malpais. Using the tree rings to better understand climate variation, the dendrochronologists were able to reconstruct rainfall patterns covering more than 2,100 years. The trees revealed favorable climate conditions between 1024 and 1398, as well as two periods of drought. These dates correspond well with fundamental changes exhibited by ruins nearby. For example, in the middle 11th century, the great complex at Chaco Canyon (less than 100 miles north) peaked with an extensive road network that stretched for hundreds of miles. Then the first of the two droughts shown in the tree rings hit, causing Chaco to depopulate. I like to think that some of those early inhabitants or visitors to Chaco passed near some of the trees we saw on our visit. Perhaps they were as intrigued as we were by trees growing on the lava flows. Maybe they even counted the rings on trees that lay on the ground and wondered about the great age of those who came before. Whether they did or didn’t, I find it hard to imagine that anyone who sees these Douglas firs is not amazed by their tenacity and thirst for life. Long live Douglas firs. Always fun to be interviewed by my friend Feliks Banel for his weekly show Cascade of History. Not surprisingly, we chatted about my new book. Here’s a link. Tonight is my much awaited, at least by me, book launch of In the Range of Fire and Ice. There’s still time to register and attend the talk tonight at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Aug 27

    The Biggest Burn: Yacolt 1902

    2026 is turning into one of the worst fire seasons in Washington history. The reasons are many: a fourth straight year of drought, unusually hot weather, previous forest management, each play a role. The last is perhaps the most important in that forests across the state are primed to burn because of how we have managed them for the past 100 plus years. Intriguingly, the long held belief in Washington state that wildfire is one of the great evils of the world and must be held in check, which has dictated many people’s relationship to wildfires, can be traced back to a single fire, the Yacolt Burn of 1902, still the state’s most deadly. Some people say that a man named Monroe Vallett started the Yacolt Burn by torching the debris left behind after logging. Other people accuse workers who lit a wasps’ nest on fire and the flames spread out of control. More than likely, the Yacolt Burn originated at multiple locations and was fanned by warm, dry east winds coming over the Cascades and down the Columbia Gorge. No matter who is to blame, the “roaring tempest … swept death and destruction” that torched at least 238,920 acres in Washington. The fire began around noon on September 11, 1902, near the town of Yacolt, about 30 miles northeast of Portland. Within hours, the smoke led to chickens starting to roost. North of the school, flames exploded into balls of fire, killing eleven people out for a picnic, and fifty miles away the smoke-tinted sun caused people to drop to their knees and pray. By the time the fire mostly burned out, it had destroyed trees estimated to contain 12 billion board feet of wood; killed at least 38 people; forced at least 146 families out of their homes; ruined schools, churches, bridges, mines, and sawmills; and killed uncountable livestock and wild animals. The Yacolt Burn was so big and deadly it led to regulations and practices that have guided fire fighting in Washington state for more than a century. One direct result of the conflagration was the initial establishment of the Weyerhaeuser Company as a major logging concern. In 1900, Frederick Weyerhaeuser, who had started in the lumber industry in Illinois in the 1850s, acquired 900,000 acres of land in Washington state. At the time Weyerhaeuser’s company consisted of a handful of employees in Tacoma and a small mill in Everett. They had no plans to start harvesting their timber. The Yacolt Burn, though, torched 20,000 acres of Weyerhaeuser timber, and the company realized they needed to recoup potential losses. The solution, known as salvage logging, was harvesting burned-out trees that could be cut into usable lumber. Over the next two decades, Weyerhaeuser salvaged as much as 75 million board feet annually, ultimately helping to jump-start the company’s rise as the region’s dominant logging business and one of the country’s most prominent. Such salvage logging has continued to the present as a widespread and controversial technique across the Cascades. Studies have found that removing dead trees after a fire disrupts ecosystem dynamics; contributes to increased erosion because of road building; results in overall loss of organic carbon; and has a negative effect on cavity-nesting species, such as the Northern Spotted Owl, because of the removal of dead trees. As Weyerhaeuser expanded and thrived, the company began to lobby journalists and legislators, which soon resulted in statewide fire prevention legislation. Weyerhaeuser and other lumber companies also funded forest-protection associations to develop, promote, and keep in the public eye the idea that fire was the enemy of good forestry and needed to be defeated at all costs. The war against fire had begun, and the logging companies were its leading supporters. The newly developed policies around suppression also led to a new feature of the forests: fire lookouts. Beginning around 1915, these structures began to pop up on high points across the mountains with at least 450 lookouts eventually built in the Cascades. Those who staffed them had one primary goal: to spot and stop the spread of fires. In 1935, the USFS codified this operating principle under their 10:00 a.m. rule, which aimed to extinguish a fire by that time the morning after detection. Nine years later, the Forest Service started the Smokey Bear anti-fire campaign, and fire became a public enemy. After the Yacolt Burn, fire in the Cascades was no longer seen as an aspect of nature one could tolerate or as a process with ecological benefits. Like wolves and bears and other predators, fire, in the eyes of settlers, lumber companies, and government agencies, was the enemy. It was a menace that stood in the way of progress. It had to be stopped at all costs. We are now paying the consequences with forests and communities not resilient to fire. The above is adapted from my new book, In the Range of Fire and Ice, which contains a detailed account of the Yacolt Burn and its influences on wildfire policies in Washington state. My fire chapter also explores the deep human-fire connection, which stretches back thousands of years, and which has been essential to the structure of the Cascades’ forests on both sides of the divide. When I began researching the Yacolt Burn, I was surprised by how little information existed, including even a decent map. I eventually tracked down a variety of sources, contemporary to the fire and more recent, to tell the story. I also went out in the field with and talked to numerous wildfire researchers. Here’s one of the fascinating stories, still visible but only from space, of the Yacolt. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Aug 20

    Vampire Deception

    Plants in the genus Castilleja have long been one my wife’s favorite wildflowers. Not simply because they are lovely bursts of color exciting the landscape, but because of the name. Whenever we see one, we musically intone Cast-ti-LAAY-HAAA, and then giggle because, well, because we think we are being darned cute. Plus, how often does one have the chance to say such a melodic name, one derived from the 18th century Spanish botanist Domingo Castillejo? For us, it’s every time we see one, so perhaps we shouldn’t chuckle as often as we do. 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. 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 hew 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. 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. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Aug 6

    Ghosts of Seattle's Industrial Past

    It’s been a while since I wrote a strictly urban newsletter so thought I’d return to that subject this week. Specifically, I’d like to address two features in downtown Seattle. One was something I had long walked by but never thought about why it was there and the other was one I first noticed last year. I’ll start with my recent “discovery.” 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. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

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A free newsletter oriented toward building stronger connections to place through stories of human and natural history in the Pacific Northwest streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com

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  • Creator
    David B. Williams
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    93
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    © David B. Williams
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