If Eagle Landing Park could speak for herself, her trees would be her voice. I listen to the trees every day as the wind attacks from different angles. The rush of the wind causes a general whispering in the tops of the Douglas-firs, and a stronger wind causes the branches of the maples to clack together. The Douglas-firs look the same, day after day, but the maples show the seasons. More than any other tree, the big leaf maples affect my experience of the park. Now, their bare branches let in the winter sun, and the Park in winter is much brighter than at the height of summer. On those hot summer days, the shade of the maples can make the Park ten or fifteen degrees cooler than the official temperature at SeaTac Airport. On the perfect spring day, with a mist in the air, shafts of light angling through the high canopy of the maples can make the forest feel like a cathedral.

Today, as Kelsy and Komu and I walked through the park, I counted roughly 70 maple trees of 12 inches diameter or greater. It is hard to say, sometimes, when a cluster of maples is one tree or several. Of the more than 200 trees I’ve planted, none was a maple. There simply are no spaces left for a sun-loving tree like Acer macrophyllum, the Big Leaf Maple. If, as some people predict, human lifespans are significantly extended in the coming decades, and I could live to be two hundred years old, I would like to see how these maples mature. They can live over 300 years. The old giant in the middle of the park, at the Y in the trail, is probably about 100 years old. That single tree, or cluster of trees, covers about a thousand square feet with its canopy. The one tree is like a room of the park, a little ecosystem unto itself. The era of maples will draw to a close over the next several hundred years, and shade-tolerant evergreens like cedar and hemlock will shape the character of the park in the future.

Unfortunately, this majestic tree is near the trail, easy to climb, and inviting to children of all ages. It probably wouldn’t hurt if one child climbed the tree, but if two or three kids climb into it every day, it will begin to suffer. This is the biggest issue in the health of Eagle Landing Park: human impacts. Dog waste, trash, broken branches, trampled plants, pollution, noise, carving in bark, invasive species from nearby yards, even the occasional strong smell of jet exhaust when the air is stagnant. If one person does it, it’s not a problem, but the Park gets over 30,000 visitors per year. It should be the goal of each visitor to leave the park better than he found it. It only takes a small percentage of people breaking the rules to have a significant impact on the health of the forest and the quality of other people’s visits.

It occurred to me, today, after I’d already started this biography, that it is technically illegal for me to take one stone each day, even if I intend to return them at the end of the year. All 365 stones will probably only fill a peanut butter jar, and they probably won’t be missed from a beach covered in stones. Still, if each of those 30,000 visitors took home a stone, it could have an impact. Even though it’s technically illegal, and even though it could have an impact if everyone did as I did, I am still going to collect my stones this year. Eagle Landing Park suffers when each visitor rationalizes his impacts on the forest. The person carving in the alder tree may think it won’t kill the tree, but there is a particular tree in Seahurst Park completely covered in carvings, and it is suffering. I rationalize that the 365 stones give this biography a quality of authenticity as the words pile up, day by day, stone by stone. Maybe the person who pitches the beer can into the bushes rationalizes in the same way. If ten thousand dogs visit the park each year, which is not unlikely, and that waste is not picked up, that’s going to impact water quality in the near shore environment.

If Eagle Landing Park could talk, she would ask for relief from people like me who rationalize that a jar of stones won’t be missed. So, I apologize in advance for the small damage I will do this year, and I vow to compensate one hundred fold with stewardship actions such as invasive plant removal and planting native trees. If I live to be two hundred, I hope Eagle Landing Park survives the rationalizations of people like me.

Pictured at the top is stone #2 resting on the bark of the big maple in the center of the park.  Here is a recent photo gallery of fall colors of the maples of Eagle Landing Park.  Here is the Burien Municipal Code regarding the taking of any material from Eagle Landing Park.