Street Smart Naturalist

David B. Williams
  • 5.0 (1)
  • PERSONAL JOURNALS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

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. SEP 25

    What the Dickens

    For many years, I have been a fan of Charles Dickens’ novels. In case you didn’t know, he was quite the writer. His books are funny, atmospheric, and rich in detail, both personal and geographic. He also came up with some splendid names, including Mr. Pumblechook, Inspector Bucket, Sargeant Buzfuz, Uriah Heep, and Harold Skimpole. Skimpole, a scheming mooch, comes from one of my favorite books, Bleak House (published serially from 1852-1853), which details the epic case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Bleak House also contains two splendid references to geology. (If you don’t want to read it, there’s a wonderful 15-part BBC series.) The first is in the book’s amazing opening paragraph. London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. Megalosaurus—the word and name for an extinct animal—had entered the lexicon on February 20, 1824, at a Geological Society of London meeting. William Buckland (also famous for his passionate study of coprolites, or fossil poop) described fossil teeth and bones from a carnivorous reptile at least forty feet long and weighing as much as an elephant. In honor of its larger-than-life size, at least larger than any known, living land animal, Buckland named it Megalosaurus, the Great Lizard. His description was the first ever of the group of extinct animals that would be named and classified as dinosaur. That historic event though wouldn’t take place until 1842, when Richard Owen coined the new word. Few probably truly understood the size or significance of Megalosaurus until the year after the first publication of Bleak House. On June 10, 1854, at the grand reopening of the Crystal Palace, the public got to see the world’s first life-sized models of dinosaurs. Despite the existence of the term in scientific circles, very few people used the word dinosaur; the most common descriptor for the models, which included Megalosaurus, along with Igaunodon, and Hylaeosaurus, was antediluvian beasts or monsters. Made of brick, tiles, cement, and iron, the fantastical creatures had been created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807-1894). I’ve long been fascinated by Mr. Hawkins, a sort of Zelig for his times. He drew illustrations for Charles Darwin; hosted an infamous New Year’s Eve dinner in a dino, which included Richard Owen; attended the infamous meeting of the first presentation of Darwin’s and Alfred Russel Wallace’s theory of natural selection; worked on the first life-sized dinosaurs in the USA (only to have them destroyed by nefarious means); and still had time to be a bigamist. About a decade ago, I wanted to write a book titled The Man Who Invented Dinosaurs, but no one was interested so I abandoned the project. One can still see Hawkins’ antediluvian beasts at the Crystal Palace in London, as the photograph below shows. Fortunately, most of them have been restored to their former beauty. Anatomically incorrect—primarily because Buckland, Owen, and others in the first generation of paleontologists lacked enough specimens—the Crystal Palace Megalosaurus were scientifically up-to-date and must have been exciting to see for those who had read Bleak House. Even for those who hadn’t, the Crystal Palace dinosaurs were stunning, and the beginning of the world’s long-term love affair with all things dinosaurian. As exciting as is Mr. Dicken’s mention of Megalosaurus, I am a bit more partial to his second reference in Bleak House. It comes about a third of the way into the book when Mr. and Mrs. Bayham Badger visit Esther Summerson, one of the key characters in the novel. Mrs. Bayham Badger had previously been married to the now dead Captain Swosser and Professor Dingo, neither of whom, along with Mrs. Badger, possessed a first name. "People objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the north of Devon after our marriage," said Mrs. Badger, "that he disfigured some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragments of those edifices with his little geological hammer. But the professor replied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The principle is the same, I think?" I am not recommending that everyone go out and follow in Professor Dingo’s footsteps but it is noble thought and I was glad to learn that my passion for building stone has had a long and illustrious history. I admit that I have joked about whacking off a building chunk or two when leading building stone walks but want to make it clear that I have never done so...yet. I have been known though to peel up layers of weakened sandstone and even splash vinegar on a building or two to test whether it was made of limestone or sandstone. I am certainly not the first to point out Dicken’s fascination with geology. Geologic musings, his and others, regularly showed up his newspaper Household Words, as well as in other publications where he wrote. Here’s one of my favorite observations of his, which is technically about science but clearly an homage to geology: “…in those rocks she [science] has found, and read aloud, the great stone book which is the history of the earth, even when darkness sat upon the face of the deep. Along their craggy sides, she has traced the footprints of birds and beasts, whose shapes were never seen by man. From within them she has brought the bones, and pieced together the skeletons, of monsters that would have crushed the noted dragons of the fables at a blow.” (The Examineer, December 9, 1848, p. 787-788) As Adelene Buckland wrote of this passage in Victorian Literature and Culture in 2007 (v. 35. p. 679-694), “This ideal science is geology.” I can add nothing further to this fine observation. And, a quick note to let you that I will be taking a two-week vacation from my newsletter. I will return on October 16. October 14 - Secret’s of Seattle’s Botany - 6pm (Zoom) - Birds Connect Seattle - If you asked early citizens of Seattle which natural feature best symbolized the region, few would have hesitated in responding “Douglas firs.” These trees were everywhere, but they were not the only plants in the area. In this talk, David describes the presettlement botanical landscape of Seattle by examining modern clues, such as neighborhood names, big stumps, and big trees, that provide hints for telling this story and for showing the complexity and beauty of Seattle 150 years ago. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  2. SEP 18

    The Tides They are A-Changin'

    Several years ago, Marjorie and I and Taylor (our pooch) decided to canoe the Duwamish River in Seattle. Our plan was to put in just above the sort of confluence with the Black River; I use sort of because what’s left of the Black River is the merest remnant of what was the former outlet river of Lake Washington. We would then float about 11 miles down to the mouth of the Duwamish at Elliott Bay. As experienced canoeists from Utah (Taylor included), we thought the trip would take a couple of hours, taking advantage of the gentle current. We were having a dandy time, aided by a downstream wind, until about mile 5, near some Boeing buildings, when paddling became much harder. It felt like we were now going the opposite direction—upstream against the current. Perhaps, we thought, we were bonking, not having eaten much, but then we came to a startling and never-before-encountered canoeing experience. We were paddling upstream, not against the river current but against the Pacific Ocean and the incoming tide, a phenomenon not felt in our Utah-canoeing careers. Who would ever think of tides on a river? Clearly, we hadn’t. Suffice it to say, with our tails between our legs (though Taylor didn’t cotton to such behavior), we abandoned the trip and headed home but not before a wee bit of an epic getting back to the put in. (That’s another story.) I am regularly reminded of this experience, primarily because friends of ours annually put together a river trip on the Skagit River. Each August, when the weather is fine and the timing is right, the trip begins a few miles from the mouth of the river. We paddle down river with the current to a massive sandbar, where we pull the boats up on the sand, establish a base of fun (eating, sitting, strolling, swimming, etc.), and hang out until we get to embody a cliche—a rising tide lifts all boats. (Apparently, this aphorism relates to the economy but being literal and more nature focused, I prefer to stick to its true meaning.) (Above is a 53-second video of the advancing tide.) This is one my favorite times on the sandbar: watching as the tidal advance moves toward us. At first, it seems far away, barely inching forward, but then you look again and you realize, wow, the front is hauling tuchas in our direction. As the tide floods in, everyone gets in their boats, waits patiently until they float (which is not quick with four people and a dog), and heads out into the river. Aided by the incoming Pacific Ocean, we then paddle the couple of miles back to our put in. (This reminds me of the legendary Utah river trip question of “Do we end the trip where we started?” No we don’t…unless you’re on the Skagit!) Truly a delightful day! Our recent adventure got me thinking about tides in Puget Sound and wondering which river has the greatest tidal influence. By this, I mean, on which river do tidal waters travel farthest upriver. Figuring this would be pretty easy to find out, I reached out to several potamologists I know. Reader, I was wrong. No one tracks such fascinating information; it would require setting up numerous gauges along rivers, which costs too much money and doesn’t really aid those who focus on riparian issues. My river-focused colleagues told me that how far a flood tide travels depends primarily on the gradient of the lower stretch of the river. The shallower the gradient the greater the incoming water propagates upriver. Not surprisingly, geology dictates the gradient. In Puget Sound, lower gradient rivers, such as the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Duwamish, and Sammamish, were carved during the last Ice Age beneath the Puget lobe glacier. In contrast, higher gradient rivers (on average 10x steeper), such as the Stillaguamish, Nisqually, and Deschutes, formed post-glaciation as rivers draining the Cascades cut into the Ice Age sediments. In other words, the tidal influence should tend to be greatest on rivers in the glacial valleys (low gradient) and less in the post-glacial valleys. River gradient is not only the primary factor influencing the tidal/river interface, but also the most fixed, at least relative to the human time scale. Far more mutable are downstream flow, tidal magnitude, wind, and atmospheric pressure. For example, winter tends to have the highest tides, but winter river discharge rates tend to be higher, too, which prevents upstream propagation. In contrast, a lower high tide in summer might travel farther because of less flow in the river. Also on a human time scale is development. Dredging, straightening, and wetland alteration have all altered river discharge and tidal advance, as have dikes, tide gates, and levees. In other words, how tides influence Puget Sound rivers is complicated, incredibly dynamic, and always variable. Consider the river where I first encountered the protean world of tide vs river, the Duwamish. Below are two graphs illustrating the variation caused by tides. Looking at the graph, I realize that Marjorie, Taylor, and I had been on tidally-influence waters the entire time we floated the Duwamish. We had been fortunate to have spent part of our river trip on an ebbing, or slack, tide and not the entire time battling the flood tide. Two things stand out about these graphs. On the upper one, you can see the trouble we faced on our canoe trip—during flood stage the discharge is negative, meaning the entire river is basically defying the most obvious effects of gravity (e.g. water flows downhill) and headed backwards. The second is simply how the river changes so dramatically with the tides; it’s a beautiful manifestation of how water is the life blood of the planet, pulsing rhythmically with the twice-daily interactions of the moon, sun, and Earth. As I have written before (Tethers of Tide and Time and Tide), most of us (and I recognize that I am one of us) overlook or ignore this astounding feat and feature of the natural world. I get this tidal blindness. We don’t have to think about the tide; it has little apparent effect on our daily lives, except perhaps with an unusually high or low one. Yet, tides are arguably one of the planet’s great natural history events, and for those who live in Seattle or near a coast, they are also one of the easiest to see and to experience. So, go on, get outside and watch the wonderful changing of the water but make sure you look at a tide chart ere you do. Word of the Week - Potamologist - One who studies rivers, from Greek potamos (river). A printer named George Smithfield appears to be the person who coined this splendid word in 1829, though potamus has been plying its way through English for centuries. Consider such words as Mesopotamia (between two rivers) and hippopotamus (river horse). Still Time to Register September 19, 2025 - HistoryLunch - HistoryLink - I have long been a fan and supporter of this fine organization. If you are not aware of it, the website is the site for history about Washington state, often bringing to light overlooked, under appreciated, and forgotten but vital stories. HistoryLunch is their annual fund raising event and I am honored to be the keynote speaker this year. The event is titled Is the Mountain Out? So if you want to support a worthy cause, come on by. Here’s the registration link. September 20, 2025 - Clima Incognita: Planning For An Unknown Climate – Jaipur Literature Festival: Seattle – Town Hall – 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM – I will be in conversation with author John Vaillant (Fire Weather, a brilliant book) and Brinda Sarathy (professor and Dean of the University of Washington: Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences). Should be fun and interesting, along with the rest of the festival. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  3. SEP 11

    Dead Trees Still Tell No Lies

    Recently, I had the good fortune to be interviewed by Bellamy Pailthorp, the environmental reporter at KNKX radio. We chatted about my Dead Trees Tell No Lies essay from my book Wild in Seattle. Because of this, I decided to repeat this essay, which originally made it into your mailboxes in October 2023. I’ve made a few updates in the story. Here’s a link to our conversation. And, at the bottom of this newsletter is a coincidental connection about berries (which I wrote about last week) and a Union soldier in the Civil War. Trees die every day of every year but something unique happened late autumn or early spring 1,100 years ago. Numerous Douglas firs perished, not because of disease or fire, the two typical culprits of that era, but because of an earthquake, or quakes, one of the most noteworthy seismic events in recent Pacific Northwest history. Still extant, the dead trees, some more than several hundred years old when they died, occur at six locations across Puget Sound. Price Lake (just east of Lake Cushman on the Olympic Peninsula) - A quake-induced stream-impoundment submerged a forest. Researchers sampled 21 trees, including several that required an underwater chainsaw, which sounds sort of nutty and fascinating. Hamma Hamma (Hood Canal) - A rockslide dammed a creek forming a lake that killed a forest that the geologists found. Dry Bed Lake - Yep, once again the earth shook, rocks trembled and fell, and created a temporary lake. Researchers were only able to collect these trees in a severe drought. Lake Washington - This time an entire grove slid into the lake, off the SE end of Mercer Island. They are still there, standing upright. In 1916, the top of one tree pierced the 78-foot ferry Triton carrying 25 passengers. It sank but no one was hurt. Lake Sammamish - Another grove, another landslide, more dead upright trees. Note two clusters on the map below, which may indicate two slides or a loss of trees. Several of the snags stick above waterline. West Point (Discovery Park, Seattle) - The ground snapped, trees died, and one was carried by a tsunami to a beach. This random event may have been witnessed by people who seasonally camped there to harvest shellfish. Lucky them. In December 1992, geologists published a series of papers with a startling conclusion: around 1,100 years a massive earthquake whacked the Seattle area, causing uplift of 23 feet. The quake occurred on what the scientists dubbed the Seattle Fault, a 25-mile zone of weakness running from Issaquah through downtown Seattle to the eastern edge of Bainbridge Island. (When you ride the Bainbridge Ferry, you pass by Restoration Point, thrust out of the water when the land shattered.) Relatively shallow, the quake measured about magnitude 7, not much stronger than the 2001 Nisqually earthquake but with much more significant ground shaking because it occurred closer to the surface. When (not if) a similar quake hits again, it will cause billions of dollars in damage. One question that has long niggled geologists is the specific date (more exact than “about 1100 years ago”) of the quake, or quakes. The more details, such as timing, magnitude, and extant of damage, researchers have, the better they can model and predict future earthquakes and, they hope, help planners prepare for worst case scenarios. Geologists have known since 1992 that the best evidence for a precise date could be found in the annual growth rings of trees, which respond directly to climatic conditions preserving a detailed record of the history of a tree. They further knew that the quake created numerous geological events that killed or buried trees across the region. All the geologists had to do was locate trees, get samples, and read the evidence. In September 2023, in a research article in Science Advances, an international team reported that they had solved the dating mystery, narrowing the date of the quake(s) to 923 or 924 CE. It is a tour de force and beautiful example of science, taking a unique set of features and combining technology with old school-out-in-the-field, mucky, muddy detective work to answer an essential question. After the researchers gathered the trees, which they did over the past 30 years, often in less-than-ideal situations, they compared ring-width patterns. They also compared the trees with an absolutely dated reference set of 27 cores from Vancouver Island that spanned the years 715 to 1990. And, finally, they independently radiocarbon-dated the samples. Everything pointed to 923/924 but what was surprising is that the researchers found that there may have been two quakes, one on the Seattle Fault and one on the Saddle Mountain Fault (near Lake Cushman and labeled in the map above as SMFZ), that acted as double-blow, rupturing the ground twice within hours to months. This is not good news. We all know that one quake is bad. If a second quake struck shortly after, infrastructure and emergency planning, not to forget the landscape itself, would be vulnerable and prone to more catastrophic issues. But now that these scientists have provided the information on what did happen and what could happen, planners have the opportunity to help build in more resiliency. As my pal Scott says, “Get to work you.” All too often in our modern world (unfortunately, now more than ever) people question science and scientists, claiming that they have agendas or are only interested in making money from their research. Over the past 25 years I have interviewed dozens of scientists—in academia, government, and consulting—and have found all of them to be committed to doing the best work they can without any agenda or financial gain. This study certainly exemplifies the best of what scientists do: solve a mystery to help further our understanding of our world, often with the goal of making a better world. September 19, 2025 - HistoryLunch - HistoryLink - I have long been a fan and supporter of this fine organization. If you are not aware of it, the website is the site for history about Washington state, often bringing to light overlooked, under appreciated, and forgotten-but-vital stories. HistoryLunch is their annual fund raising event and I am honored to be the keynote speaker this year. The event is titled Is the Mountain Out? So if you want to support a worthy cause, come on by. Here’s the registration link. September 20, 2025 - Clima Incognita: Planning For An Unknown Climate – Jaipur Literature Festival: Seattle – Town Hall – 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM – I will be in conversation with author John Vaillant (Fire Weather, a brilliant book) and Brinda Sarathy (professor and Dean of the University of Washington: Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences). Should be fun and interesting, along with the rest of the festival. October 14 - Secrets of Seattle Botany - 6pm - BirdsConnectSeattle - I will talking about what Seattle looked like botanically when the first white settlers arrive. This is a virtual class. Here’s a link to register. Just after sending out my newsletter on berries last week, Marjorie was helping our friend Andy Nettell of Stellar Books. He had asked her to transcribe a letter he had from June 12, 1864. It had been written by a Union soldier named Laurenz to his mother. He was located in Georgia and his troop had recently gotten a resupply of rations after minimal food for the previous 12 days. Fun to read of the ripe berries (dew, straw, and mul), and other fruit, that he ate. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  4. SEP 4

    A Bounty of Berries

    This past weekend we hiked up to Marmot Pass. Called by one guide book writer the Champagne Walk of the Olympic Mountains, it is famed for its wildflowers. We were too late for the wildflowers but timed it perfectly for berries. We saw black, red, blue, pruinose, yellow, and orange ones; yummy, mealy, and disappointing varieties; and ground hugging, shrubby, and sky-reaching plants. It was truly a stunning display of fecundity and hope for future success for what is a berry but an investment in the next generation. More prosaically, what is a berry? My botany pals would define a berry as a fruit produced from the ovary of a single flower that has fleshy pulp and multiple seeds. In contrast, a drupe (e.g. avocado and peach) has a stone and pome (e.g. apple and pear) has a core. Then there’s aggregate fruits (not a berry, such as raspberries and blackberries) produced by a single flower that has more than one ovary, and accessory fruits (e.g. the non-berry strawberries), which originate from a developing plant part other than the ovary. Since most of my friends, and I suspect, most of yours are not botanists, or pedants, the more practical definition, and the one that describes what I encountered, is a small, generally edible, pulpy fruit. By the way, can you name the world’s most popular berry? Until recently I did not know the correct answer and was rather surprised by it. Before providing the answer, let me share some of the “berries” we saw on our hike up to Marmot Pass. Devil’s Club - One of the more lovely fruiting plants, but also one of the more scary looking, armed with enough spines galore to keep most beasts away. Bears, though, laugh—why shouldn’t they—at such feeble defenses. They consume gazillions of the red fruit, soon depositing them across the landscape, like an ursine Johnny Appleseed, though in a less hands-on, more behind-the-scenes method. Botanists refer to this fecal-based system of seed dispersal as endozoochory and have found that it is a fundamental way that seeds of a many plants are dispersed. Ecologists also refer to diploendozoochory, in which seeds pass through two or more guts, such as when a cougar eats a mourning dove, and poops the remains of the bird, and the berries the bird consumed. Ain’t life and death and poop fascinating? Technically, devil’s club produces drupes not berries. Serviceberry - Members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition regularly encountered and ate serviceberry, mentioning them 63 times; they could not though agree on spelling the name, which they did 13 different ways, including service, servis, and survice. Most sources claim that the name comes from the shrub’s resemblance to the European service tree (Sorbus sp.). In contrast, William Bryant Logan in his book Oak: The Frame of Civilization, claims the name comes “because its tasty fruits set in spring just about the time that the ground thaws enough to bury the dead.” Serviceberries are actually pomes, like apples. Juniper - At the high point of our hike, we found one of my favorite subalpine plants, the common juniper. Ground hugging and often overlooked, the needley shrub produces small, pruinose bluish berries. Well, actually they are not berries but are fleshy cones, most famous as the flavoring for gin; the word gin comes from genever, the Dutch name for juniper. Perhaps surprisingly, the species we saw, Juniperus communis, is the species first used in flavoring this gift from the gods; the species is circumboreal, including the Netherlands, the original home of gin. Salal - Arguably the quintessential understory plant of the PNW, salal produces a dark blue to black fruit, long relished by Native people. David Douglas noted the name as salal, not shallon (the name used by Meriwether Lewis and which is now the specific epithet), and that it was abundant (“as is very correctly observed by Mr. Menzies.”) Douglas first encountered it on April 8, 1825 and wrote: “On stepping on the shore Gaultheria Shallon was the first plant I took in my hands. So pleased was I that I could scarcely see anything but it.” After tasting the fruit, he added: “by far the best in the country; should the seeds now sent home rise, as I hope they may, I have little doubt but it will ere long find a place in the fruit garden as well as in the ornamental.” Nor are these berries; instead they are the swollen sepals encasing the seeds. Huckleberry - At last, a true berry! In 1859, Henry Custer, a topographer on the Northwest Boundary Survey, summed up many people’s modern experience with this amazing berry. “To withstand the temptation of a large tract literally covered with these delicious berries goes beyond the moral strength…To halt & eat & to eat & halt is all you can do under these circumstances; and if, during an hour or two, you can manage to bring yourself…through one of these belts where these berries grow exclusively, you may say you have done well.” Huckleberry comes from the English whortleberry, also known as bilberry (Nordic origin), blueberry, hurtleberry, and blaeberry (Scottish). Not surprisingly, Lewis and Clark had their usual spelling challenges with the word, going with hucklebury, huckkleberry, and huckleburry. With autumn in the air—at least I have been grasping at any sign of the impending loveliness of fall that I can—hikers in the mountains will see fewer and fewer wildflowers. We may be saddened by the loss of color and aroma and beauty of the mountain ranges’ floral delights but I know that I found equal pleasure in enjoying and celebrating the bounty of berries, be they berry or drupe, pome or swollen sepal, accessory fruit or otherwise. And, I know that next year, these future nuggets of life will continue the great circle of existence, feeding the senses of human and beast alike. Perhaps you thought I’d forgotten my question. I have not. Bananas are the most popular berry in the world. In fact, bananas are by far the most popular fruit in the world. September 6 - Waterfront Park - Opening Day Celebration - I’ll be down at the Waterfront, at the south end (east side of Alaskan Way S, between Yesler Way & S. Washington St.) at 3:00 and 5:00 P.M. giving short talks about the history of this area. September 14 - Green Lake Walk - 11:00AM - Green Lake Library - I will be leading a free, one-hour, walking tour of the Green Lake neighborhood. Here’s the info to register. You need to call the library. October 14 - Secrets of Seattle Botany - 6pm - BirdsConnectSeattle - I will talking about what Seattle looked like botanically when the first white settlers arrive. This is a virtual class. Here’s a link to register. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  5. AUG 28

    From Tide Pools to the Stars and Back

    Last week, I had the privilege of seeing one of the most famous boats to ply the Pacific Ocean: the Western Flyer. Built in Tacoma in 1937 for the sardine fishery in Monterey Bay, California, the 76-foot boat achieved its notoriety through Ed Ricketts’ and John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez. The book details the collecting trip they made in the summer of 1940. Best known as the model for “Doc” in Steinbeck’s novel, Cannery Row, and author of the legendary Between Pacific Tides, Ricketts, and Steinbeck, planned to survey marine life by collecting in the infamous sea. To do so, they chartered the Western Flyer. The boat’s subsequent life was not nearly so celebrated. One Seattle-based owner changed the boat’s name to Gemini and moved it to Alaska to harvest red king crab. Another owner used it to transport salmon; this owner also crashed and sank the boat. By 2012, and additional owners later, the Gemini was in the Swinomish Channel, moored under the Twin Bridges near the Swinomish Casino. Neither seaworthy nor remotely ship shape, it sank again, was refloated, then sank yet again, this time for six months. Refloated for a final time, the derelict, mud strewn, more-or-less wreck was towed to Port Townsend and docked by a new owner. He had plans to refurbish the Western Flyer and use it as a tourist attraction in an artificial moat in Salinas, California, Steinbeck’s hometown. Finally, and fortunately, in February 2015, marine geologist John Gregg bought the battered boat. As a long-time fan of The Log from the Sea of Cortez, Gregg worked with the Western Flyer Foundation and Port Townsend Shipwrights Co-Op to restore the legendary boat with plans to make it available as a research and teaching vessel. They finished the restoration in 2023, and the boat is now meeting their goals with education and scientific programming. (If you are interested in the full life and times of the Western Flyer, check out Kevin Bailey’s fine book The Western Flyer: Steinbeck’s Boat, The Sea of Cortez, and the Saga of Pacific Fisheries.) Fully restored and updated, the Western Flyer now docks at Moss Landing, about 15 miles north of Monterey. I was lucky though to see it at Old Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey. Even better, volunteers for the Western Flyer Foundation were offering tours. We saw what had been the original sardine hold, now converted to an area for teaching and examining specimens; the updated engine (now diesel and electric); the tiny rooms and minimal bunks where the crew and Steinbeck and Ricketts slept; and the slightly larger captains’ quarters, where Steinbeck’s wife slept. We also saw the good luck antlers atop the mast, which the guide told us was a Sicilian tradition. We also saw a shot glass found wedged between the walls of the boat; it (and other glass on the boat) bore the etchings of barnacles. Another highlight was the original toilet, or as the guide said, “the john where John sat.” Although I know basically nothing about boats and ships, I could recognize the beauty and skill of the restoration, and suspected that under the paint and below deck, the work was just as amazing. If you cannot visit the Western Flyer, and even if you can, one great way to experience the boat is to read The Log from the Sea of Cortez. It’s a fun read, with colorful descriptions of people and place, and many, many tales of collecting animals. It’s also surprisingly funny, thought-provoking, and inspiring. Here are some of my favorite lines from the book: * A breakwater is usually a dirty place, as though tampering with the shoreline is obscene and impractical to the cleansing action of the sea. * In a way, ours is the older method, somewhat like Darwin on the Beagle. He was called a “naturalist.” He wanted to see everything, rock and flora and fauna; marine and terrestrial. We came to envy this Darwin on his sailing ship. He had so much room and so much time…This is the proper pace for the naturalist. Faced with all things he cannot hurry. We must have time to think and to look and to consider. * This little stream, coming from so high up in the mountains and falling so far, never had the final dignity of reaching the ocean. The desert sucked it down and the heat dried it up and on the level it disappeared in a light mist of frustration. * We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerers. Possibly it feels good to these men to be superior to animals, but it does seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it. * A curious sea-lion came out to look us over, a tawny crusty old fellow with rakish mustaches and the scars of battle on his shoulders….Then, satisfied, he snorted and cut for shore and some sea-lion appointment. They always have them, it’s just a matter of getting around to keeping them. * Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again. As someone interested in the natural world and history, and long a fan of Steinbeck’s writing, I was thrilled to be aboard such a lovely and lovingly cared for boat. Not only did it feel like an homage to the past, and to deeper connections to Steinbeck and Ricketts, but it also felt like a tribute to the future, to the next generations of scientists who are seeking to better understand the natural world around them. Perhaps their work will be as inspiring as that done by the crew of the Western Flyer in 1940. This is my 40th podcast of this newsletter; I am surprised and honored to note that these podcasts have now been downloaded more than 42,000 times. Golly Ned. Two upcoming events September 6 - Waterfront Park - Opening Day Celebration - I’ll be down at the Waterfront, at the south end (east side of Alaskan Way S, between Yesler Way & S. Washington St.) at 3:00 and 5:00 P.M. giving short talks about the history of this area. September 20, 2025 - Clima Incognita: Planning For An Unknown Climate – Jaipur Literature Festival: Seattle – Town Hall – 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM – I will be in conversation with author John Vaillant (Fire Weather, a brilliant book) and Brinda Sarathy (professor and Dean of the University of Washington: Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences). Our panel should be fun and interesting, along with the rest of the festival. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    7 min

  6. AUG 21

    Lava. Lava. Lava!

    On August 20, 1853, future Civil War general George McClellan camped along Wenas (or Wee_Nass, as he wrote it) Creek, about 15 miles northwest of Yakima. It was his 22nd night out as part of a multi-month exploration of the Cascade Range. His task: finding the best route for a train over the mountains. (No secret, he failed.) That day, he and his survey team had crossed Cowiche Creek and Naches (Nah_Chess) Creek and several low ridges before entering the Wenas Creek valley. The land was “extremely barren,” wrote Lt. McClellan, with nothing but sagebrush and “almost literally, no grass.” He did though see a small cactus, apparently his first, but he reserved his main excitement for geology: “the volcanic formation still prevails—lava, lava, lava!” (Because he was not specific, McClellan could have been referring to one of two lavas in the area. The younger is the Tieton Andesite, a circa 1.6-million-year-old volcanic flow that came from the Goat Rocks area. The older lava is the 16-million-year-old Grande Ronde Basalt, one of the many basalt flows that originated on the Columbia Plateau. The two layers look quite similar, dark and cliff forming with hexagonal columns.) This was neither the first nor the last time George would note the geology during his time in the PNW. (If you are interested, I have written about McClellan twice before: McClellan of the Cascades and McClellan in the PNW.) Throughout his writings he peppers his observations with descriptions of a plate tectonic range of rocks: basaltic columns, veins of quartz, milky quartz, transparent quartz, epidote, trachyte, chalcedony, granite, porphyry, syenite, and scoria. He described clay slate “apparently acted upon by heat,” which “bore a close resemblance to mica slate.” He noted a petrified tree and how the stones in one river were more angular than “they were yesterday.” He also saw a small eruption of Mount St. Helens. Lucky fellow! This is not the vocabulary of a someone who failed Rocks for Jocks 101; this is the vocabulary of someone who ranked first in his class for Mineralogy and Geology when he graduated from West Point in 1846. (His classmate, George Pickett, in contrast, graduated 57th out of 59 cadets, which could help explain his later failures in life!) At West Point, McClellan used two classic textbooks: Edward Hitchcock’s Elementary Geology (1844) and James Dwight Dana’s System of Mineralogy (1837). (Still influential a 140-plus years later, Dana’s book was still being referenced—After James D. Dana—in my college mineralogy course book.) Thick, well-illustrated, and detailed, the books would have provided curious George a good introduction to the nascent field of geology, which was still trying to flesh out the differences between what was seen and what was described in the Bible. Part of what fascinates me about McClellan is that in the 1840s, few geologists had been to the western US and seen its complex and dynamic and, often, young geology, which makes his use of the terms he did even more impressive. For instance, Hitchcock wrote that trachyte and young basalt were not known in the US and he had no clue about our region’s volcanoes, such as Mount St. Helens. (Hitchcock also added this lovely phrase that pumice was “light enough to swim on water.”) Geology was not George’s lone field of observation. His plant list is as remarkable as his list of rocks. “Immense quantities of black-berries, raspberries, thimbleberries, red huckleberries, Oregon grape, salal berry,” reads one journal entry. Others mention wild cherry, hazel, oak, large sorrel, cedar, Douglas fir (“these celebrated giants of our western forests” and “still gigantic—about 6 ft diameter and 300 ft. high,”) maple, blue bunch grass, strawberries (“their flavor was excellent,”) various grasses, sunflower, and wild sage. He also noted what many modern travelers observe when crossing the Cascade crest, that “since passing to the E side of the mountains the fir has disappeared and the pine taken its place.” Little Mac had the bad fortune to experience other natural phenomena still common around Mt. Adams in late July and August. Mosquitoes (spelled musquitoes) were “very annoying” and “disposed to be intimate,” he wrote. He and his men also met with yellowjackets, which “give rise to very graceful capers on the part of our animals,” and horseflies, which were “similar to but a great deal larger than the Jersey sandflies.” Even though McClellan didn’t always write sympathetically about Indigenous people, he carefully described how Native fishers had built a fish weir to harvest salmon and trout near Kechelus Lake. “The fish dam we passed this morning is formed by setting up at intervals across the stream tripods of timber, about 20 feet high. One big down stream, and the other two in the direction of the dam. Horizontal logs are tied from one frame to the next and vertical ones (with the slope of a plane of the two upper logs of the tripod) lashed to these. A wattling laid against these closed the passage to the fish: and from stands below the salmon are speared by men standing ready for them.” Unfortunately, for George, he was not successful himself. “Tried fishing but the wretches would not rise to the fly.” Perhaps surprisingly to modern readers, McClellan commented regularly on fire. Of particular interest was smoke, which “interferes greatly with the view, and will be a source of great inconvenience to us in the mountains.” The expedition also passed through great burns with huge, blackened trees and scores of area of downed timber. And, impressively he recorded how the forest changes post fire. “We observed today that in many places when the timber had been destroyed by fire it was replaced by growth of a different kind.” His comments confirm what fire ecologists have begun to understand over the past few decades, that fires, even on the west side of the Cascades burned far more regularly than they do now. I think that I have about tapped out the vein of McClellan’s natural history observations in the PNW. Although his military and surveying careers are suspect and often criticized, I still find him fascinating and someone who might have been fun to travel with. But then again, I am biased toward anyone who takes the time to notice the rocks around them. Perhaps he should have devoted his life to the wonderful field of studying geology and not to the military. Word of the Week - Chalcedony - The broad name for a group of cryptocrystalline forms of quartz, which includes chert, jasper, flint (silex), and agate. In college, I learned that you cannot tell them apart without a microscope. Chalcedony comes from Latin through Greek via the Book of Revelation, which has perhaps the most detailed list of minerals in the New Testament. George would have learned from Dana’s book that rocks, such as chalcedony, “whose structure appears the most purely impalpable, and the most destitute internally of any similarity to crystallization, are probably composed of crystalline grains.” September 6 - Waterfront Park - Opening Day Celebration - I’ll be down at the Waterfront, at the south end (east side of Alaskan Way S, between Yesler Way & S. Washington St.) at 3:00 and 5:00 P.M. giving short talks about the history of this area. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  7. AUG 14

    Mr. Bun in Seattle

    For many years, I have referred to every rabbit I see as Mr. Bun. I have no idea why but do know that this year I have been seeing more Mr. Buns around my fair city and its surroundings. They are sprinting across roads, hopping through yards (ours included), gallivanting in parks, flitting in fields, and skittering into smeuses. They’re eating garden vegetables, getting squished by cars, and getting eaten by other urban residents of the furred and fowl kind. Curiously, no one has surveyed the population (of Mr. Buns, not us) to see how many little lagomorphs dwell amidst us or why they seem to have proliferated this year, as well as periodically in the past. One researcher I corresponded with told me that he and other local scientists suspect that the burgeoning bunnies have not taken over city wide. Instead, they seem to proliferate in one or a few neighborhoods and then, like any urban hipster, move on to new grounds, after wearing out their welcome. Said researchers and others have proposed various theories for the intermittent population booms. Some blame it on religion: an excess of Easter bunnies, initially given as a gift, which morphs from cute to the gift that keeps on giving, resulting in guerrilla releases of the surfeit Mr. Buns into city greenspaces. Others point to our penchant for converting yards to bunny-feeding salad bars generally lacking in predators. Climate change could also contribute; a mild winter or two might enable more breeding for longer periods of time with the consequent booming bunny population. Then there are coyotes, who are no strangers to eating Mr. Buns; they thrive in Seattle and probably play a role in limiting the rabbit population. Clearly, it’s not clear as to why the population of bunnies in Seattle has exploded this year. Or has it. The perceived increase could merely be that Mr. Bun and their progeny are out and about more or that I live in a neighborhood where religion, habitat alteration, climate change, and predator abundance have combined to boost our bunny numbers. What we do know though is that Seattle’s rabbits are not from around here. Washington has five native species in the Leporidae family. East of the Cascades are Nuttall’s cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii), white- and black-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus townsendii and L. californicus), and pygmy rabbits (Brachylagus idahoensis). In the mountains are snowshoe hares (L. americanus). The San Juan islands, in contrast, is home to the other non-native, the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Washington is also home to another member of the order Lagomorpha, the pika (Ochotona princeps), the well-known and well-loved, lithic-living mammal of the high mountains (generally). The Mr. Buns we have in Seattle are eastern cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus) and they arrived in the Puget lowland in 1927. In that fateful year, Charles D. White, manager of the King County Game Farm in Auburn obtained 24 cottontails from Kansas, which would be raised for future hunting purposes. (As a 1928 Seattle Times article noted, cottontails “furnish targets for the younger generation of sportsmen.” At the time, the paper printed a twice weekly column of sportsman’s gossip. Did sportswoman not gossip?) After 13 of the Kansas bunnies died from eating cabbage, bunnyman White released the remaining 11 to fare as they might and fare thee well they did; by the next summer their progeny had spread to Enunclaw, Kent, and Sumner. If it’s okay, I’d now like to split hares and dive into the language of bunnies, rabbits, coneys, jackrabbits, and such. Turns out that rabbit is one of those words with more questions than answers, primarily as to its origin, which in the words of scholars is uncertain or unknown. Perhaps rabbit comes from the Hebrew for copulate, on account of their fecundity; or maybe from Robert, or from the Walloon, or other northern European. Either way, rabbit has been popular since about 1400. Another idea is that rabbit might have developed simply to refer to the young animal, from the French use of -et or -ot for the diminutive. An adult “rabbit” was once known as a coney. (Young rabbits are called kits and a litter is a kindling.) Etymologists like to point out that coney originally rhymed with honey but now rhymes with bony. The reason is the original coney (rhyming with honey), which even made it into the Bible, developed connotations not used in polite company. Long before the rise of rabbit, hare was the term for such an animal. From a scientific point of view, hare refers only to animals in the genus Lepus, such as our snowshoe hare, and not to other genera, such as Sylvilagus. You’ll note from above that the two Washington state jackrabbits are Lepus; all jackrabbits are hares but not all hares are jackrabbits and, no jackrabbit is a rabbit. According to Dr. Andrew Smith, co-author of an authoritative text on lagomorphs, pikas make up about a third of the total number of species in the order Lagomorpha, hares and jackrabbits are another third, and rabbits, such as cottontails, the final third. The word jackrabbit is a newcomer, originating, most likely, in the nineteenth century American West. Not surprisingly, the word has an auricular origin, from the resemblence of the ears of the hare to the ears of the jackass. Thus, initially jackassrabbit, which shriveled in the arid landscape to jackrabbit. Like all hares, jackrabbits are born precocial, meaning with hair and open-eyed, in contrast to altricial cottontails, born blind and hairless. But what about Mr. Bun, you ask? It’s also newish word. Bun comes from Scottish dialect and originally referred to a squirrel and didn’t become associated with rabbits until the middle 1800s. I am so glad I live in an age when it does. Given the present state things of Mr. Buns and their progeny, I suspect that Seattle will continue to be home to many an eastern cottontail, as well as many other non-native animals and plants. While some may discourage and condemn these newer members of the Seattle community, they do make the city more interesting, provide joy for some, and food for others. Word of the Week - Smeuse - According to Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful book Landmarks, where I learned of smeuse, it is a dialect term from Sussex and refers to a “gap at the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal.” September 20, 2025 - Clima Incognita: Planning For An Unknown Climate – Jaipur Literature Festival: Seattle – Town Hall – 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM – I will be in conversation with author John Vaillant (Fire Season, a brilliant book) and Brinda Sarathy (professor and Dean of the University of Washington: Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences). Should be fun and interesting, along with the rest of the festival. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  8. AUG 7

    Global Warming: A Screed

    “We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud, anymore.” Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture - 5/8/2025 ‘Do you believe in climate change?’ is not really a meaningful question, because climate change has existed as long as the Earth has existed. Vivek Ramaswamy, self-described conservative American nationalist - 9/19/2023 “That’s why climate change is the perfect enemy. They get to control your life to deal with it, no matter what’s happening.” Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense - 8/13/2019 “By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.” Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator, 3/12/2025 FYI - This newsletter is a screed, toned down from what I planned, but still not my normal newsletter. It was prompted by yet another horrible proposal from the present administration. “Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Tuesday the Trump administration would revoke the scientific determination that underpins the government’s legal authority to combat climate change,” wrote Maxine Joselow and Lisa Friedman in the NYTimes. When I read comments such as Mr. Ramaswamy’s, I see a perfect example of illogic used as a talking point. By making a patently false equivalent, he’s trying to sow distrust of modern science, which clearly shows that we are on a dangerous path and that we need to change our actions. And, when I read Hegseth’s, Rollins’, and Zeldin’s comments, I feel I am encountering people who themselves have succumbed to exactly what they condemn, that they are spreading crud and are kowtowing to a zealot. As a thought experiment, let’s change the topic from climate change to cancer: Why should I worry about cancer, since the cells within my body have always been growing and multiplying? Of course, no one says anything like this when they have cancer. When people get a diagnosis, they don’t take the fact lightly. They recognize that normal no longer applies, that cancer has so altered their body’s long-term life processes that they must respond. If not, they will die. In response, most people choose to attack cancer with vigilance, which typically involves extreme measures such as chemotherapy or radiation. With human-caused climate change, planet Earth basically has cancer: the normal ways that the planet’s climate changes over time are completely out of whack and sped up. There is no doubt in the scientific community that the modern warming of the planet caused by human action, along with our failure to act to counter the change, is unprecedented. If we don’t address this issue, the planet won’t die, as with cancer, but Earth’s human and more-than-human inhabitants surely will suffer, as we have been witnessing over the past couple of decades. I have to think that those who doubt this statement are not paying attention, are getting their information from a dubious source, or choose to ignore the facts. No matter why people such as the president and his minions reject the peer-reviewed science about human-caused global warming, the consequences will affect every being on the planet, mostly in negative ways. In the PNW, here’s a very short list of some of the ways the warming climate has been playing out: * Instead of snow, we get rain more often in the winter. The warmth and moisture cause plants to grow off-cycle from when animals are looking for food. Also, without a slow-melting snowpack, there is less water in rivers in the summer, which is bad for fish, hydropower, and irrigation. * A combination of drier conditions and heat waves leads to more frequent and more severe fires on both sides of the Cascades. The forests that could buffer climate change and provide a refuge for plants and animals are being lost. Smoke releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and damages the health of anyone who breathes. * Warmer water in Puget Sound has led to the arrival of unusual fish such as salmon shark and mola mola; increased populations of jellyfish; fewer nutrient-rich and more nutrient-poor marine invertebrates; and more toxic algae blooms, all of which contribute to worsening conditions for the plants and animals that have long resided in our inland sea. As with cancer and our bodies, we know what we need to do (such as reducing carbon output), and we have been doing some of it but clearly not enough. And the list above illustrates the negative, compounding effects of our lethargic response. Fortunately, the way to help the Earth is not nearly as bad as radiation or chemotherapy are for our bodies. In fact, we have far better science that informs us about how to address climate change than we have about our own bodies. What we need are politicians and governments willing to act, willing to listen to scientists, willing to show humility, willing to take responsibility, willing to act like climate change is the single most important threat to the health of Earth and all of her residents. As a person who would like to live with a healthy planet now and into the future, I am saddened and outraged that people in power are undoing the regulations, policies, and ongoing science that are in place. Their actions are short-sighted, scientifically-bankrupt, morally indefensible, and destined to cause lasting damages to humans, more-than-humans, and the planet itself. It is inane and insane to think that we can deregulate ourselves into a better future. The worst policy adjustments to choose are the ones that undo the many, and often bipartisan, measures that protect clean air and clean water, prevent toxic emissions, and decrease our carbon footprints. Any one who has been reading my newsletters knows that I try to take a hopeful approach. I wish that was the case with climate change and the present administration but clearly their world view does not align with hope. All I can do is to continue to live in a manner that I think is in accord with my values…and perhaps periodically let my anger burst forth. Next week, I will focus on bunnies. On a much lighter note: Tuesday, August 12 - 6:00 P.M. - There are still a few spaces in my Stories in Stone walking tour for Birds Connect Seattle. The 1.5-mile-long walk looks at building stone ranging in age from 80,000 to 3.5 billion years old and from across the globe. Word of the Week - Screed - A speech or piece of writing characterized by vehement or protracted criticism or complaint; a rant, a tirade. In the OED, the first definition of screed is a narrow strip of fabric and my usage of the terms appears to come from the idea of lengthy speech, as in reading a long list, or long strip. Screed, in fact, is a variation of shred, as in a shred of cloth. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min
See All (43)

About

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

Information

  • Creator
    David B. Williams
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2025
  • Episodes
    43
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © David B. Williams
  • Show Website
    Street Smart Naturalist

You Might Also Like