365 Stones: A Biography of Eagle Landing Park

2012-02-27T00:17:00.000-08:00

It's harder to tell when people are appreciating nature. I can clearly see when they are abusing nature, but acts of appreciation can be quiet and contemplative. Nature was spectacular today, and deserving of appreciation. A woman and two children walked along the same tide pools where I was hunting for pictures of species. I could not hear if they noticed all the wonderful life at their feet. The only thing I heard was one of the girls exclaiming, "A tire!" I suppose the fact that it struck her as being remarkably out of place is a sign of some appreciation of nature. It is possible that the 90% of people coming to the park for some other main purpose are also appreciating nature in their own quite ways.

I took dozens of pictures today, finding all kinds of treasures that others overlooked. I was able to cull the collection down to 21 images. The anemone turned out spectacular. Photography allows me to see things better than I could with just my own vision. The camera captures and preserves small moments so that I can explore them later. The picture of the anemone looks like an animation, and yet you can see each individual grain of sand, giving the picture a gritty reality. The main show hasn't started yet--the spring exlosion of flowers--but I keep finding amazing little treasures like witches' butter, liverworts, and anemones. I had never seen any of these three species before this year, and the act of looking closer with my camera has led me to these discoveries. 365 species seems like a huge task, but at the rate I am discovering species that were hidden to me, I think it just might be possible.

2012-02-26T22:49:00.000-08:00

Life is strange. If they ever discover life on a distant planet, it won't be as weird and wonderful as life on Earth. Pictured above is a siphon of a clam. Actually, there are two siphons, one open and one closed, and I can't figure out if they belong to one clam or two. Nature invented clams, seaweed, spiders, and humans using the same four base pairs of DNA. A Douglas-fir tree 100 feet tall would seem to have little in common with the tiny mite living inside the lichen growing on its branches.They all started from strands of DNA. The hundreds of species living in Eagle Landing Park are not so much distinct entities as they are components of the whole system, like the various organs of the human body. If you examined each organ separately, in a stainless steel pan on the autopsy table, the human body would look alien enough. Only when you get all those organs working in unison does a human sometimes appear to be a beautiful work of art. The individual components of my forest often do look beautiful when photographed individually. Still, a geoduck on the freeway or fir tree in your living room would seem out of place. When the camera zooms in, evidence of the setting usually remains.

2012-02-25T21:39:00.000-08:00

The Find the Eagle contest has begun, details here. I need to find my books. I know I have books on identifying mosses, life in the tidal zone, lichens, plants, mammals, birds, and insects, but I can only find about half of my books. I suppose I could go to the library. For now, I am taking pictures and hoping I can look up the species later. Even better would be if someone saw the pictures and identified them for me. I would still look it up in the book, but it would save time. Of the 365 species I hope to find, I probably only know the names of about 100. This will be a learning experience for me as I get to know my park.

2012-02-24T23:04:00.001-08:00

Who cares what happens to Eagle Landing Park? It's only six acres. As I've said before, the larger biosphere would have been better off if the land had been converted to housing. If the entire six acres were paved, top to bottom, with not a single tree left standing, it wouldn't make much difference to the Earth. In my own community, even among people who visit the park regularly, fewer than ten percent of people who have heard of Eagle Landing Park take the time to appreciate it or help preserve it. If they can't let their dogs run off-leash at ELP, they will just take them somewhere else.

Someone burned a Qur'an, I guess. I don't know the details and I don't want to know. Because one book was burned, thousands of people are rioting and eight or more have been killed. The book wasn't the only copy of the Qur'an, or especially valuable in some way. The book was a symbol. If I had to guess at the psychology of the rioters, their reason must be something like, "If you attack this holy book, you attack us." Well, that's how I feel about my park. Not that I feel like rioting, since a riot of one just gets you thrown in jail, but I feel that if you degrade my park, you spit on me.

Why is it that so few people feel like I do? Fifty years after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring supposedly launched the environmental movement, why are environmentalists so complacent? Certainly, our rivers are no longer burning, and we don't spray children with DDT. What we have instead is the exportation of our environmental problems to China. We also have the steady loss of canopy in cities like Seattle. And in an insignificant park that no one has ever heard of, people degrade the environment on a daily basis, and their fellow citizens simply stand back and watch.

If it were just ELP, I guess we could write off one park, even if it is the home of my childhood memories and my environmental education. The problem is that all neighborhoods have their own Eagle Landing Parks under similar assaults. I have seen the degredation caused by drug use, off-leash dogs, inappropriate activities, and apathy in many other parks around the greater Seattle area. Entire slopes are turned to mud at Carkeek and Dash Point by dogs and kids. Westcrest Park has had a chronic problem with a section of the park being used for drugs and sex, to the detriment of the environment. Hiking far away from the city, I've seen sections of the ground in public parks where bullet casings covered the earth. If a group of believers can be incited to rioting over one book, but the global village can't be bothered about the slow and steady degradation of our shared natural resources, then there is no hope for humanity. If Eagle Landing Park cannot become healthier, then it is very likely that the whole biosphere will become sicker, to the detriment of us all.

Why don't people care? What would it take for people to start caring? To take action?

Today I saw three people in the park. A grandmother and two grandchildren walked down to the beach. I heard screaming. The toddler banged on things with a blue plastic rake and threw rocks in the water. The tween girl stuffed her pockets with shells and threw rocks in the water. If the grandmother made any effort to instill respect and reverence for nature, I did not see evidence of such an effort. Why did she bother to go to all the trouble of bringing her grandchildren to this remote beach when they could have thrown rocks at home? I guess Eagle Landing Park has a better selection of rocks.

2012-02-23T23:50:00.000-08:00

I have identified all the easy species, and now when I find a moss or a mushroom or a liverwort, naming the species can involve extensive homework. By the time I get to species number 365, I will be spending five hours at books and computers for every hour in the park. I am hoping that Project Noah will help, but so far it hasn't. My identification requests haven't caught the attention of the right person. I definitely wouldn't say no to some help on this project.

I am working on an idea, a contest called Find The Eagle at Eagle Landing Park. I will invite people to join Project Noah and help me reach my goal of 365 species. Whoever finds the most species would win a silver eagle coin, an ounce of silver worth about $35 to $50. Besides helping me identify the species and write this biography, such a contest would hopefully attract more nature lovers to the park, improving the percentages. Today, I only saw five people in the park, two young men followed by three young men, secretive, looking suspicious, and heading toward a secluded corner of the park. Perhaps they were members of a poetry club.

2012-02-22T22:54:00.000-08:00

Komu and I took the good camera into the park today to capture the interesting fruiting bodies of the liverwort. They look like something from another planet. They may have been there for years escaping my notice. Only by stopping and looking have I discovered so many interesting things about my forest. I think the resulting pictures are amazing, but I am often mesmerized by the pictures I have taken. They allow me to see more reality than first meets my eye.

The other day when I talked about the percentage of people who had various priorities when visiting the park, I miscalculated and came up with 110%. Also, it occurs to me that people can have more than one goal. I know that I do. I also tried to think about those percentages and whether I had distorted them. I thought about the percentages as I saw people on the trail. I don't think I am distorting the numbers.

50% have exercise as primary goal.
25% have evasion of laws as primary goal.
10% have legal dog walking as primary goal.
10% have enjoyment of nature as primary goal.
5% have no particular reason for being there.

As I stopped and took pictures, one man ran by us several times as he ran from the beach to the top and back. I saw five other people who were running or walking up and down the stairs. Five more people were families with children, taking them for a walk in the park. Whether that counts as exercise as a primary goal, I'm not exactly sure. The families I saw with children did not focus their attention on the beauty and fragility of nature. One kid was throwing a ball, and the two little girls were throwing rocks into the sea. I saw two people with a dogs on leash, at least as long as I was watching, and two more with dogs off leash. I saw several people smoking, even though they weren't old enough to buy cigarettes, and it didn't smell like cigarettes. Later, when I drove by the park in the evening, I saw a car parked with two people in the back seat, and the windows were to foggy for them to have been looking at owls or stars. I did meet a mother and her adult daughter who had a good digital camera and they asked if the eagles were around today. About five more people did not indicate, by their behavior, why they came to the park. So, counting myself, 3 out of 23 people may have been at the park for the primary purpose of enjoying nature. Today's observations would seem to support my perceived percentages.

If people have other reasons for visiting the park, how do I increase the percentage of people who seek out nature primarily for education, entertainment, and atonement? How do I get people to notice tiny magical filaments with prismatic dew drops? I can give a detailed argument why it is in the bests interests of the general public to improve their relationship with mother nature. Unfortunately, reason is not always persuasive. I know I often act against my own best interests even when I have facts and logic pointing me in the right way. Unfortunately, Nature seems to need a PR man most of all. I find this profoundly sad. Still, I do like to take my pictures. If my words won't work, I hope my pictures will help bump the percentages in Nature's favor.

2012-02-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

I was surprised by skunk cabbage today. I hadn't even been looking for it because I usually take pictures of skunk cabbage in March or April. I just looked up on the hillside to see what was leafing out, and the flash of yellow caught my eye. Even standing this close to it, I couldn't smell the skunk cabbage, possibly because of the strong wind, my cold, or both.

Other plants leafing out included snowberry, huckleberry, osoberry, blackberry, raspberry, thimbleberry, elderberry, and ocean spray. I will have to get out there with my good camera some time in the next week or so, to catch that fresh growth. I have said and will continue to say that the forest is just as beautiful at all the other times of year when no flowers bloom, but the arrival of flowers is a delight just as much as the arrival of snow or fall color. From the standpoint of photography, the flower gives you something to focus on. Endless bare branches make a nice pattern, but the eye wanders. Flowers work on us for the same reasons they perform their functions in the ecosystem: they stand out. In all the six acres of the forest right now, you would only find this bright yellow on the few blooming swamp lanterns. Like lanterns, they seem to light up the swampy, dark forest.

In addition to the swamp lantern, I found these odd little seedlings. Each stalk is as thin as fishing line. The seed husk sits on top of most of the stalks, each husk about the size of the tip of a ball point pen. Some of the husks have fallen off to reveal three little things that might be the start of leaves. I've never seen anything like it. They could be from outer space.

The wind roared through the tops of the trees, but down inside the forest, the wind was reduced to random little breezes that would barely move a leaf. The heavy waves came around the bulkheads to the south coasting on the energy they had. The whitecaps broke farther out, and the waves lost steam as they hit the beach at ELP.

I grabbed five stones without looking, just feeling for stones the appropriate size. Then I rolled them around my cupped hands and let one fall out. The red one was the winner of the daily lottery, and became the day's stone.

A Land of Opportunity

2012-02-20T18:58:00.000-08:00

Today I saw the first Indian plum bush that broke into full bloom, and I also saw a significant amount of new garbage. When I am in the park, my forest and my church, I often struggle to direct my thoughts toward the positives. At every turn in the trail, I am faced with reminders of the bad decisions of people resulting in harm to the park, with no lasting benefit to the perpetrators. I have a million reasons to be angry, but I don't want to be an angry person. I don't want to give those people control over my mind, which is in part what they seek with their deliberately thoughtless acts.

So, I paused a good while to admire that first blooming plum, I picked up some of the trash, and I decided to leave it for another day to come up with ways to prevent people from vandalizing my church. The plum tree was in the middle of the slope, north of the stairs. I had been watching most of the plum trees for weeks, waiting to see which would be the first to pop. I had not been watching that particular shrub, nor had I even noticed it was there until it was the first to bloom. I won't try to photograph it, since it is in the middle of the fragile slope, away from the stairs. I will wait for the trail-side plants to bloom, any day now.

As I have said previously, it was a mistake to make this land into a park in 2005. The ecosystem would have been much better served if dozens of homes had been built on this land and healthy forests away from the city could have been spared from development in return. Since it is now a park, and development is not an option, then I will try to help the forest contribute to the overall ecosystem as much as possible. Certainly, this forest, with its soil over 8,000 years old and its healthy trees, can provide much-needed ecological services to local species, human and otherwise. Where this forest could really benefit the rest of the ecosystem would be in the fields of education and culture.

Right now, I would estimate that 10% of the visitors to the park come here to enjoy, respect, protect, and celebrate nature. 50% seem to come here for exercise, to walk on the trail and stairs. 25% would appear to come to the park because it is a place where no standards of behavior can be enforced. This 25% likes to use the park as an off-leash dog park, a place to use illegal drugs and consume alcohol and tobacco (where they are supposedly prohibited). A portion of this 25% comes here specifically to inflict damage, knowing they will never, ever see a police officer or any sort of enforcement in the park. Another 15% come here to walk their dogs in a safe and legal manner. 10% don't particularly have a reason to be here. They come to the park because they are lost, to meet someone, or just because it was there. In our current culture, the smallest minority of park visitors come here with the intention of appreciating and admiring nature. This is based on seven years of observation. If others have a different view of the intentions of park visitors, I would like to hear their perspectives and the reasons for their conclusions.

If Eagle Landing Park is to have an impact on the environment, it could best do so by changing those percentages mentioned above. That is the goal of this biography, to make others love the park as much as I do. As I was walking through the park this evening, trying not to be angry at those who abuse public property for a slight and fleeting benefit, it occurred to me that Eagle Landing Park is a place where you can choose who you are, who you want to be. It is not Nature, like the wilderness you can find when hiking in the mountains, but it is a proxy for nature. It is a local interface with nature. This park is a place where the individual can decide if he wants to be one of those people who preserve and enhance nature, or if he wants to be a member of the group that deliberately destroys nature faster than her ability to heal herself. I can choose whether to spend my time worshiping my little ecosystem, or being angry at all those people while not changing their minds. Others who come here, especially the 25% specifically seeking this space as the vacant lot where misbehavior is permitted, have an opportunity to choose a new way. They can choose to become contributing members of society and help protect the forest. Or they can choose to continue causing pointless destruction that does not benefit them in the long run. Visitors to the park have a chance to atone. They have an opportunity to choose who they want to be, destroyers or protectors.

2012-02-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

Again I couldn't muster the energy for a full walk through the park, due to illness. Instead, I poked around the edges and saw signs of spring. The Indian plum is leafing out, not quite blooming yet. The tall Oregon grape has large flower clusters that haven't opened up yet. Some of the snowberry bushes are covered with fresh little leaves while other snowberry bushes remain dormant. Some trilliums have poked their heads up through the leaf litter while others are still sleeping.

Since I have been reading Pacific Feast, I decided to try a little nettle tea, to see if it would help my cold. I found nettles on private property that are just poking up, and I harvested less than five percent of the colony, with permission of the property owner. I was careful not to get stung as I snipped off the tops of two plants. I steeped the nettles in boiling water for fifteen minutes. It smelled a bit like spinach, so I added a little sugar before tasting it. With sugar, it was okay, nothing special that I would seek out. I can't say that it has particularly made me feel better so far.

60 minutes had a segment on the placebo effect. The book by Pojar and McKinnon is full of supposed medicinal uses of native plants, and I wonder if the effect may have come from the expectation of a cure. If I want to reap the benefits of medicinal plants, do I need to cultivate a peculiar ignorance? Do I need to believe in the power of the plant to heal me? I can believe in nature, I can believe in the potential goodness of humans and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, but I don't know if I am able to believe in the curative properties of nettles. I hope it can still work on a skeptic.

2012-02-18T12:51:00.000-08:00

I didn't know I would be taking so many pictures of rocks when I first started this biography. It started as a way to visually demonstrate the authenticity of the effort. Now, it is a ritual, and every time I go to the beach, I look for interesting rocks and interesting settings in which to photograph them. It has become a kind of language or code. I have not deciphered the code, and I don't know what the patterns of rocks mean. It probably means nothing, but the patterns feel like the communication of an essential truth.

I have been searching for a particular type of rock that would speak of the deep history of this land. I keep checking for fossils as the land opens up before it falls into the tidal zone. So far, that mammoth tooth or arrowhead has escaped my notice. I did find one piece of petrified wood, although it does not say anything specific about this forest. It may have come from far away, brought here by the glacier.

The stones are new every day, even though they are always the same. When you look across the gravelly beach, it seems the same as every other day. When I hunt for that particular stone that will star in the day's picture, I see just how varied and beautiful they are. So many are unique, created in processes I don't understand. The stones with perpendicular lines seem like that couldn't have been made by any sedimentary process I can imagine. If each stone could tell its story of millennia, I could learn of the fire and ice, rain and wind, accretion and erosion. Some rocks bear the scars of sudden dramatic events. Was one of them blasted out of Mt. Rainier the last time it experienced a major eruption?

2012-02-17T23:13:00.000-08:00

The day after I talked about how my forest makes me strong, I became deathly ill. Sure, it was only a minor cold, but I felt like I was dying at several points. I did not make the full walk through the park. Instead, I visualized the park. I tested myself to see if I could remember every tree, shrub, and blade of grass. I had no trouble remembering the major trees, the landmarks of the park. The two remaining sentries by the street, and the one that was sacrificed, now lying on the ground, becoming a nurse log. I could visualize every twist in the big maple by the Y. The maple and fir trees smashed up against each other make a memorable image. I could even think of the trees that were removed, for no good reason. There are sections of the park that aren't completely visible from the trail, and I could not be certain I remembered the number and orientation of those trees exactly right.

Some of the shrubs are just a mass, like the salal in the middle of the park. I remembered most of the individual ocean spray plants, with their distinctive arches. The red huckleberries are rare enough that I could think of both of them. I know the locations of all the surviving trilliums, those that haven't been plucked and killed by thoughtless people. The ferns are hard to remember in specific terms, since they are ubiquitous and fairly uniform. I remembered all the little trees I planted in the landslide, trying to stabilize it, before I finally gave up on that after losing dozens of trees. If I knew how to draw or paint, I think I could recreate a representation of the forest, although some of the proportions and exact locations might be a little off.

Some day I will actually be deathly ill, not just sidelined with a common cold. My beautiful dogs will probably be gone by then. When I am alone in that hospital bed, with the noise of distant TVs and the smell of medicines and sanitizers, I will close my eyes and take a walk with my dogs through my forest.

2012-02-16T22:05:00.001-08:00

In the late nineties, before I became interested in native plants, I worked hard for days to eradicate a patch of thimble berry plants near my kitchen window. It didn't work. They grew back bigger and healthier than ever. I am glad of that, and years later I came to appreciate them. The would come alive in summer, electrified by dozens of bees. The patch of thimble berry was about eight feet tall, fifteen feet wide, and forty feet long. What had been an eyesore and a problem became a treasure because of my attitude change and increased knowledge of ecosystems.

I did not set out to be an environmentalist. 15 years ago, if you would have told me that my future involved volunteering hundreds of hours for the benefit of the environment and helping lost dogs and cats, I would have said you were crazy. I am much different now than I was 15 years ago, not because I changed in a way someone mandated, but because I became aware of the value of things I once found worthless. As a kid, I only thought of the forest as a place to be alone. I did not care for the environment, and I did not hesitate to flatten any plant that was in my way. It was just growing there, so why shouldn't I trample it? If someone would have told me, "You have to change your ways for the benefit of trees and ferns and dogs," I would have resisted. The change came naturally, over time, as I learned things.

For ELP to be healthy, many people need to change their behaviors. Obviously, they are not going to change because I want them to. If I think it is vital for the planet that people change their ways, no one is going to listen to me. Instead, people ought to change because it is in their own best interests, which it most certainly is. By entering into a symbiotic relationship with your planet, you can become something greater than you were. I am the forest and the forest is me. Where I used to see some trees and a bunch of worthless plants, I now see a vibrant and beautiful ecosystem. I have integrated myself into that ecosystem in many ways, and I am smarter, stronger, and healthier because of my relationship with the forest. I am smarter in the sense that I understand how it all works. I understand most of the individual pieces of the ecosystem, and I see how they interact. I am stronger in the sense that I know where I belong and what I stand for. When trying to fit into other ideologies, such as capitalism or religion, I was constantly frustrated by the incongruities and hypocrisy. Capitalism is designed to fail. Religion is deeply in conflict with itself. Democracy, well, that is just a complete myth. Long before those ideologies came along, ecology flourished. Ecology made us, and we hurt ourselves if we try to destroy it.

I am not asking people to enter into a symbiotic relationship with their environment because it benefits me or because it benefits the environment, although both are true. People should take a different approach to nature for their own health and well-being, for their own enjoyment and entertainment. A world with trees and wilderness is just richer, more alive, than a world of highways and strip malls. Rows of similar houses with lawns and hedges are just boring and pointless. Wilderness is where we belong, where we can be alive.

2012-02-15T22:51:00.000-08:00

Today I set my iPhone up to shoot a time lapse of the clouds rolling by over Vashon. Well, the clouds hardly budged, but an eagle swooped through the scene, hunting a duck. The duck got away. That was the first time I had ever seen the eagle actually in the process of hunting. He had been in the perch tree, directly above that spot. He swooped straight down at the duck he had been watching, but the duck dove down under water. The eagle swooped back and forth, climbing and diving, keeping the duck underwater. When the duck came up for a breath, the eagle dove again, but the duck dove down deep and swam away. The eagle made a brief attempt at two more ducks about thrity feet away, but they flew off before he could reach them. The eagle gave up and flew up to the alder tree just above my head. Then he let out a loud call.

When I saw the eagle, I pointed him out to a man exercising on the stairs. He got to watch the whole episode. He said he had been coming to the park for years to exercise on the stairs, but that was the first time he had ever seen an eagle.

Stone 46

2012-02-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

I have dreams where I fly through the park. Instead of walking along the trail, I float along between the trees. During these dreams, I think, Oh, right, people can fly. Of course that is natural. How could I have forgotten. Then, when I wake, even though the dream wasn't real, it retains a sort of reality, like an extra dimension. I tried to shoot a video that would represent flying through the park. The app on my iPhone was not all that easy to use, and the end product does not match up at all with the feeling of my dreams. Also, trying to shoot a time lapse video while holding onto four dogs is not a recipe for success. I will try to shoot this video again, some day when I have more time and fewer dogs.

2012-02-13T18:12:00.000-08:00

Back in Eagle Landing Park, thinking about the homeowner's desire for order, color, and definition, I realized that my writing and photography about nature are usually focused on finding patterns, highlighting colors, and arranging details. When taking pictures, I have a selective eye. I look for something noteworthy or novel. I try to keep my horizon level. I may use techniques like the rule of thirds, leading lines, or framing. I balance light and dark. I find edges and accentuate shapes. These are the same artistic touches that are so detrimental to the environment in the homeowner's yard. The desire for order and structure makes a landscape of wild natives less desireable in this sense.

When I am writing about the park, or about anything, I follow rules, usually. I make a stab at correct grammar, and I try to stick to one topic at a time. I group my ideas into paragraphs. I usually have a point I am trying to make. A native plant garden in someone's back yard might not follow the expected rules for gardens. One particular example is that, in the typical garden, any leaf that falls is whisked away in order to avoid the perception of carelessness or untidiness. In nature, fallen leaves are healthy and natural. Lawns are supposed to be kept trimmed, neat, edged, green, lush, and groomed. Nature does not stay within boundaries, sprawls wildly, often shows brown leaves and damage, and resists any attempts at grooming.

A desire for order and structure can be useful and healthy even within ecosystems. One could add this order and structure through writing and photography, through the selective eye, rather than imposing a physical order on nature that would be stifling and destructive. Even in doing restoration within ELP, an ordered approach is helpful, attacking vertical ivy first and clearing the healthiest areas of all invasives first. I can even rearrange elements of the park into patterns temporarily if I put them back. The pictures below show today's stone in its natural state, with the other stones of the beach, and then highlighted in an artificial way that allows the viewer to see the details of one particular stone. Neither way is better. The isolated stone is simply easier to comprehend. Choosing particular details of the environment fits the habits of our minds. The stone will go back home some day, and nothing will be lost from nature. If viewing nature in an artificially ordered manner makes us like it more, then that can be a benefit to the ecosystem.

It is not enough for me to say that the typical suburban yard looks as if people hate nature. We need to understand the reasons for this bias against nature. One reason is that our system of capitalism punishes those who do not display their primary asset, their home, in the standard fashion. Another reason is the mind's natural tendency to impose order as a way of increasing understanding. A third reason is cultural bias that has not been questioned. A fourth reason may be that people do not understand the impact of their gardens on the environment. People think a garden is friendlier to the environment than a parking lot, which may be true, but not by much. A fifth reason could be security, as burglars might be more likely to strike at a home with a wild, unkempt yard, although I don't know that this is necessarily true. All of these reasons why people have a prejudice against nature can be overcome if they are examined. The main obstacle to a true appreciation of nature is the blind assumption by people that the way things are is the way things ought to be.

Eagle Landing Park would be in its best possible health if it was restored to all native species, and if every yard adjoining the park was also filled with native species. Eight parcels of private property surround the park. The two parcels that share the most linear footage of fence line with the park are very wild looking, although those properties are not necessarily any healthier than the park. When the majority of homeowners throughout Burien view a wild tangle of native plants as desirable for their own back yards, then I will have done my job and ELP will breathe easier.

2012-02-12T21:24:00.000-08:00

I didn't have time to visit ELP during daylight hours, so I had to grab today's stone from the roadside. I staffed the WNPS booth at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show. While I was there for three hours, talking to people about native plants, I observed people's behavior. Next to our booth was a booth for the rhododendron garden in Federal Way. They brought in two rhododendrons, one that was showy white and another that was small, orange, and like an orchid. In our booth was a healthy young hemlock tree. No one gave our little tree more than a passing glance. Hundreds of people stopped to admire the rhododendrons, some of them oohing and ahhing and making a big fuss. Were the rhododendrons more attractive or better than my little hemlock tree? Why?

For their gardens, most people choose bright colors, simple shapes, and order. Most gardens are unnatural. Especially the display gardens at this show. The ideal garden, according to the throngs of people who come to this annual event, is a perversion of nature. Gardening, or horticulture, is the opposite of nature. It is taking species out of nature and making them jump through hoops in tidy little circus acts. Gardening, as practiced, is not ecological. The gardening industry has a huge impact on the environment, shipping all those plants, introducing invasive species, disturbing native habitats, adding pesticides and fertilizers. If all of the space used for gardens could be converted to native plant ecosystems, the world would be a much healthier place. The book Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy describes what a benefit to our environment this could be.

Why don't people want native plants in their yards? Why is a flat green lawn bordered by flower beds and severely pruned shrubs considered more beautiful or desirable? Why is it that people walk through Eagle Landing Park and ignore nature as if it was a waste of space? Part of the reason is due to commerce and capitalism. Demand is manufactured for unnatural landscapes through images and poetic writing. A whole industry depends on cultivating a hatred of nature and natural beauty. The first thing you do when you build a home is to strip away nature, even the soil. Then you import plants from elsewhere and even import new, lifeless soil.

Everywhere I looked at the flower and garden show, I saw the manipulation and explotation of nature in unnatural configurations and uses. Even those displays that used native species tended to set them in neat configurations, tame, not wild. I hope my time spent at the flower show was of benefit to the people I spoke to, because I would much rather have been in my park, in nature.

2012-02-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

The eagles put on a show today. I saw them way out over the water, two small lines changing shape over the water as the flapped, basically two-dimensional. One chased another all the way to Eagle Landing Park, where the lead eagle dropped a fish and the second eagle dove down after it. I could not distinguish whether they were adults or juveniles. Moments later, I saw two eagles, I assume they were the same two, land in a couple of cedar trees. One had a white head and the other was a juvenile. The adult then flew by at eye level. The juvenile flew into the maple trees, a dangerous mistake by an inexperienced flier. The adults always land in the same spots, where they have plenty of room to take off. This juvenile amid the dense branches of the maples had to take some time to plot a course back out.

Later, after we walked out of the park and headed north, I saw two eagles side by side in the dead tree half a mile north of the park. Right near that dead tree, I saw a nest with fledglings in it a couple of years ago. The two trees, the nest tree and the perch tree, are right on the southern edge of Seahurst Park, near some homes. The homes are always quiet, as far as I have ever observed, and they probably don't shoot at the eagles. In 2008, a local resident took a picture of 18 eagles in the dead tree. The accompanying comments said there had been as many as 24 at one point. They may have all been related, all offspring of the pair that first nested in ELP in 1989. Maybe they will move back to ELP someday, or a new pair will begin nesting here.

2012-02-10T22:31:00.000-08:00

We hurried to the beach and back without taking much time to enjoy the park. Still, a quick visit is nice. The park can be just a place, sometimes. Although ELP is definitely alive, many uses of the park as merely a place can have little or no impact. Even if you are just passing through, it is a nice place to pass through.

2012-02-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

It's hard to say what counts as the first flower of the year in Eagle Landing Park. A currant started blooming before the snow and the ice storm, but that is probably a non-native cultivar planted in the park by mistake. A trailing blackberry vine has a couple of flowers, but those are probably a mistake by a confused plant that got its signals wrong. Indian plum, traditionally the first flowering native plant in local forests, is dangerously close to blooming. I feel like the Indian plum is teasing me with its big fat buds that won't quite open. Any day now.

Whales were reported at Vashon Island and West Seattle. I looked, but I couldn't see any from Eagle Landing Park. I have lived near Eagle Landing Park much of my life, and I've never seen a whale in person. I did see ducks and cormorants, and I heard a loon. A hummingbird was chirping while dive-bombing in a territorial display.

Red elderberry is starting to leaf out. The tips of the red huckleberry are swelling. Some of the snowberry bushes are leafing out while others look totally dormant.

2012-02-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

I wasn't the only one happy about the clouds, rain, drizzle, mist, and fog today. Many birds twittered about, filling the forest with sound. I heard flickers, jays, pileated woodpeckers, eagles, wrens, nuthatches, chickadees, towhees, and the varied thrush. The Indian plum is just about to bloom. One trailing blackberry bloomed, but it may have been just one confused plant. I brought all four dogs, knowing the trail would be less crowded on such a nice gloomy day.


stone 39 in the middle

2012-02-07T21:45:00.000-08:00

And now, a word about dog poop. If it was just one or two dogs, it wouldn't be a problem. When people bring their dogs to the park, they only see one or two dogs, and they might think it won't hurt anything if they don't pick up after their dogs. Well, it's not just one or two dogs leaving a mess. It's dozens every day. Dogs like to use their noses, especially my youngest, and he points out every pile of poop on our usual two mile walking loop. It's a lot. I mean, like, alarming. When you actually notice how much canine feces there is in one little neighborhood, and you multiply that by all the little neighborhoods in the Puget Sound watershed, that is a mountain of poop. No wonder the whales are sickly and declining.

Walking along the trail in Eagle Landing Park, you can't go ten feet without encountering a pile of crap. If you don't look down along the edge of the trail, you might not notice it. I have to watch the edge of the trail because I have to make sure that none of my four dogs eats a cigarette butt or any other detritus along the way. Especially on days with sunny weather, I'm looking at a parade of poop. Maybe this has something to do with my general dislike of people. Once you get to the beach, you are going to find poop there as well even though the tide washes it away twice a day.

Cleaning up after a dog isn't the most fun thing in the world, but if you adopted or bought a dog, that's what you singed up for. It's a shame that, after reading Jennifer Hahn's book on foraging, I can't sample a little bit of the seaweed in Eagle Landing Park just to see what it tastes like. The ducks and the fish and the little crabs and sea creatures don't have a choice. They have to feed in these shallow waters no matter how much dog poop washes into their home. And it all washes down there eventually. Even if you let your dog out into your back yard and don't clean up after him, it ends up in the storm drain and eventually empties into the Sound.

Many people let their dogs swim in the Sound at Eagle Landing Park, regardless of the leash law. If you do let your dog swim there, that's even more reason to clean up after your dog. Puget Sound is a cesspool. Besides the dog waste, there is all the oil from dripping cars, the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez oil spill every other year. Also, all the brake dust from a million cars winds up in the sound, with copper and other toxins. If you let your dog swim in the Sound, be sure to give him a bath later. And clean up after your dog.

2012-02-06T00:39:00.000-08:00

I don't like warm, sunny days like today. I prefer rain. I am more comfortable in the rain, and it keeps the crowds away. On sunny days, more damage happens to the park.

I have been told I am too negative, that if I want to rally people to the cause of protecting the park, I should focus on the park's positive attributes, make people fall in love with her. Well, I have been doing that for five years with the web site dedicated to the park, www.EagleLandingPark.org. That web site has hundreds of pretty pictures of the native plants of the park, and pages of helpful information. If it has had a positive impact, then that must mean the park really would have gone to hell without the web site. If people cause unnecessary damage to the park and I try to stop it, I am viewed as being too negative. If I would speak for the park, serve as her voice, what should I say? Should I say that nature is happy to be degraded if it gives a fleeting thrill to a thoughtless person? Even if we forget about what nature wants, there are other park patrons to consider. Some people, a few or many, come to Eagle Landing Park to enjoy nature. We can't do that at the skate park or the basketball court or the soccer field. If I tried to build a native plant garden in the middle of the baseball diamond, I would be arrested for vandalism. If I walked into a bar and started planting trees, I would be thrown out. The only local place that nature lovers can feel at home is in quiet places like Eagle Landing Park. Yet, if I dare to ask people to ride their bikes, swing their sticks, drink their beer, smoke their drugs in some more appropriate place, then I am the bad guy.

Mothers are the worst. You expect vandalism from boys of a certain age because that's what they do. Mothers, however, have the shield of motherhood, and because they are ostensibly caring for children, you are expected to accept anything and everything they allow their kids to do. Parents have allowed or encouraged their children to trespass on neighboring property, tear out plants, trample sensitive areas, and take home bags full of rocks and shells that they are just going to throw out sooner or later. Mothers look on with pride as their children blaze new paths through the native plants or hack up a sword fern with a stick. They encourage their children to scream. If you dare to suggest they ask their children not to damage or disturb the park, you will be greeted with scorn or rage. There are certainly parents who teach their children respect for nature, but they are not in the majority. Most of the mothers expect their children have a right and even a duty to destroy public property. That's what it's there for, so their children can have a moment's idle entertainment.

Today, two women walked up the trail with three boys flailing at the bushes with sticks. My youngest dog tends to get excited when people make sudden, inexplicable movments near him, so I moved to the side to get my two dogs far away from the stick-swinging boys. One of the women made a comment about one of my dogs. I kept my attention on the dogs in order to help the puppy feel calmer in the presence of the boys, and also to avoid telling the mothers they ought to respect nature. For keeping quiet, I got told I was rude. In the eyes of many, the family is so sacred that any transgression must be overlooked. In fact, we are supposed to praise the disruption a family causes because they are happy, which is the important thing. Okay, then, what about the family of eagles that has to abandon a place named Eagle Landing Park in order to find a little peace? What about the families of the Douglas squirrels and the robins and the flickers? Oh, only human families count. And if I even dared to think otherwise, it is proof of my antisocial behavior. People who destroy nature are normal, and people who think nature should be protected are negative.

I can certainly put it in a positive way, as I have been doing for five years. If you treat nature with respect, then it will still be here for you to visit in the future. If you would like to engage in sports where you can throw things and swing sticks, the taxpayers have provided facilities exactly for that purpose. If you would like to do illegal drugs, no one will know or care if you go to your own home and do them. If you want to have sex, then I think that's great! You can have sex with any man or woman who consents, and you can go do it at home where you don't have to trample a restoration project. And I applaud your use of condoms as long as you don't leave your used condoms in the park for any child or dog to find. I think it is great that you are riding a bike, and there are miles of road where you can do that. If you want to ride your bike on dirt trails, nearby facilities have been created just for that purpose. I want you to engage in any recreation that pleases you, and you will better be able to enjoy that sport if you go to the facility expressly created for that purpose. If you want to enjoy recreations specifically suited to a nature park, you can engage in bird watching, geocaching, beach combing, or simply walking in peace and quiet. You can walk your dog on a leash, which keeps him safer. You can take your dog to the off-leash park if you want him to run free and play. I suggest people learn to treat nature with respect for their own benefit and enjoyment. Nature is endlessly wonderful and fascinating, and the more you appreciate it, the richer your life will be.

If I were to speak for nature and be the voice of Eagle Landing Park, I guess I should say something like this. "All are welcome here. If you treat me gently, I can be a benefit for you in the future. I am utterly at your mercy, and I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy my many unique features found nowhere else in the city. We can work together, and I can benefit you as you benefit me. Any damage you cause me will take years to reverse, and I will appear degraded in the mean time. If you help keep this a beautiful place, then you will always have a beautiful place to come to. If you want this forest to look like a junkyard, then that is your choice. I can only be of value to you if you treat me as valuable. This fragile beauty is yours to embrace or discard. If you hurt me, you are only hurting yourselves, depriving yourselves of something that cannot be found elsewhere."

stone 37

2012-02-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

I had to find today's stone by the roadside because a busy day kept me from walking through the park during the hours it was open. Many people ignore the posted closing time, but I can wait until the next day. I can see my forest from the outside, and I imagine the damage by the beer drinkers and fire builders will probably be minor. We will go tomorrow.

2012-02-04T22:26:00.000-08:00

The bald eagle could see for miles on this clear day as she scanned the waters from the perch tree in the middle of the bluff. They don't seem to be using the nest tree this year. I have seen an eagle's nest a quarter mile north, and I wonder if they just moved to a new location. I have also seen neon green airsoft pellets in the park. The pellets might not physically injure the eagles, but they could cause them to look for a better neighborhood, without the nuisance.

The bald eagle population in the 48 states was about 400,000 a couple of centuries ago and they were reduced to about 400 breeding pairs by the middle of the 20th century. Hunting was one of the main causes of death even after hunting eagles was outlawed. Pesticides and habitat loss contributed to the decline. there are now over 100,000 eagles in the 48 states because those who care about their welfare have been able to exert more influence than those who still wish to kill them.

Eagles had nested in the land where Eagle Landing Park is since about 1989. It is sad that they had to move away since the land was made into a park in 2005. It is possible they could move back again if those people who wish to protect the eagles would exert their influence over this few people who choose to harass them and drive them away. Besides the kids with the pellet gun, eagles can be driven away by excessive noise, such as people screaming as they walk along the trail. I have no idea why people feel the need to scream in the forest. It seems like they wouldn't be too inconvenienced if they were asked not to scream in the vicinity of the eagles' nest. If some people would like the eagles to come back, then they should say it is not okay for these few people to drive the eagles away. If the friends of the eagles remain silent, then a thoughtless few will wield disproportionate power over our environment. If anyone besides me wants the eagles to come back, they should speak up.

2012-02-03T16:11:00.000-08:00

Most people who cause damage to the park wish to remain anonymous. I would like for them to say, publicly, "My name is _______, and I am proud that my dog crapped on the public beach every single day of the year. I think it is my right as an American to exploit the environment for my personal convenience." If people would come forward with the reasons they cause damage, maybe we could discuss how that would work out. If the environment is gone, because proud Americans used it all up, is it just too bad for Americans who come later? That's what they get for being born after us? I know I would like to see a land where there were giant trees everywhere you looked. I would like to see the wilderness of 1849, when the environment was healthy. People who came before me took away that chance. Our economy, and my ability to live my current lifestyle, is based on the destruction of the environment. I am not proud to say I am one of those people who is using up the planet's resources faster than they can be replaced.

The people who damage Eagle Landing Park will not come forward publicly and declare they have a right to do so. They conduct drive-by environmental crimes, knowing that no one is watching besides me. And what am I going to do about it? I can't punch everyone in the face who needs punching. By law, I am required to sit by and allow degradation of our public spaces. I can observe and report, but no police or local agency will respond. The taxpayers of Burien will not pay for protection of the environment. No significant group of people will approach the City Council and demand enforcement of laws that protect our common good. If I am the only one asking for enforcement, then I can be easily ignored.

"He who is silent is assumed to consent." "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." I would agree with both those statements. I don't want to be silent. I don't want to stand by and do nothing. What can I do? I am trying to help the park, my local environment, by making the park better every day. I do this by taking pictures, hopefully raising awareness, and by removing a little ivy every day. I would like to stop the damage that occurs daily. I have not found support in the community for enforcement of environmental laws. My goal has been to see the park healthier by the end of the year. At the rate people are working against this goal, I will not succeed. It may be a Sisyphean task to carry my 365 stones up the stairs. Perhaps it is my punishment for being a member of the generation that destroyed the Earth.


Stone 34

2012-02-02T15:46:00.000-08:00


Stone 33 with eelgrass

Jennifer Hahn spoke to the Washington Native Plant Society last night about her new book Pacific Feast. Her talk was entertaining and informative. I learned a lot about the strange seaweed species I see on the beach from time to time. I am not an adventurous eater, so I can't see eating most of the plants and animals she talked about. Even if I wanted to, it would not be legal or healthy to eat these things in Eagle Landing Park. Except for the berries. If people want to eat Himalayan blackberries, they definitely should. The environment would be better served if people removed the whole blackberry plant rather than just eating the berries. As for clams and seaweed, it is not legal to harvest them in Eagle Landing Park, and the water is too polluted. I wish she had a recipe for English Ivy Casserole.

Hahn emphasized stewardship, which is good. Her thesis is that eating local is good for the environment and good for your health. The main problem with this is that people should not be foraging for food on public lands near population centers because those lands need protection from overuse and abuse. If you go to the wild, remote areas where Hahn's advice could be followed, you are no longer very local. You've used those resources to travel 30 miles for one meal, or five meals. This is not environmentally sound or sustainable. I could see Hahn's book being useful for people who are going hiking or camping anyway. I don't see how the majority of people could get a benefit from her book, or benefit the environment, unless they are eating dandelions and blackberries.

Hahn suggested that when we take from the wild, we pause to say thank you to the environment for its gifts. This puts one in the right frame of mind, acknowledging that the Earth does not belong to us to exploit and that we have a duty to be good stewards. I support her suggestion, and I would be grateful if more people had that mindset. However, a better way to say thank you to the environment is to stop destroying it. The lifestyle of the average American is not sustainable or environmentally sound. I would venture to say that most environmentalists have not achieved a lifestyle where they do more good than harm to the planet. I know that is my goal, to be a part of the solution and not the problem, and I have not achieved that goal. Rather than pausing to say thank you to the environment when you take a fish or a clam or a handful of berries, it would be better for all if you said thank you by not driving your car or buying that new TV.

2012-02-01T22:06:00.000-08:00

When I lived in Colorado, I missed the forests and beaches of Washington, but I did appreciate the open sky and sun sometimes. I am glad to be back home. The darkness of the forest feels like home, and I can walk out onto the beach at low tide to get 360 degrees of sky and sun. The beach is part of Eagle Landing Park. It is important to the health of the forest in its own way. Eagles fish in the shallow waters, and nitrogen and calcium from digested fish fertilize the forest.

In the picture above you can see some little specks that are actually ducks. They eat the eelgrass growing on the sandbar. It is just at the right depth where it can get lots of sun and where the ducks don't have to dive too deep for it. This sandbar is maintained by landslides and by the constant erosion of soil into Puget Sound. At low tide, you can see where the eelgrass grows. It only becomes exposed to air, briefly, when the tide is -3 feet or more. Eagle Landing Park extends out about 300 feet westward from the high tide line, and the half acre of eelgrass, Zostera marina, is an important component of the park's ecology.


Stone 32

2012-01-31T23:01:00.000-08:00

During our walk tonight, Kelsy was the first of the four dogs to spot the rabbits. 320 pounds of dog can pull you right along when they get excited about bunnies. I don't think these bunnies are native to Western Washington. As far as I've been able to figure out so far, there are no rabbits or hares native to Western Washington. That means they are eating plants that should be reserved for native species. Coyotes are native to the area, however, and they may keep the non-native bunnies from becoming too much of a problem. Owls also eat them. The second rabbit we saw wasn't overly concerned about the approach of four large dogs. He eventually ambled into someone's hedge.

A dog can be quite useful in spotting wildlife sometimes. They can smell when an unusual critter is about. A dog's eyesight is not great in some respects, but if it moves, a dog can see it better than a person can at night. Kelsy cannot see her orange ball sitting in the middle of a green lawn, but if it moves, she's all over it. I pay attention to what the dogs notice. They have pointed out coyote scat in the area.

It seems like I have always had dogs, but there was actually a time when I was dogless. Way back then, I used to see foxes quite often. One fox in particular would come barking along every afternoon at four. Now that I have dogs with jingling collars and tags, foxes are always long gone before I come into viewing range. I assume they are still around.

2012-01-30T22:36:00.000-08:00

The screech owl called faintly tonight, a little distance away. I had to stop walking, stop crunching the gravel on the path, in order to hear it. I read that the screech owl holds still on the branch of a tree, disguising himself as a broken stub of a branch. In the dusk, when I looked out at the trees, I saw broken stubs everywhere, any one of which could have been my little screech owl.

As I walked through the park, I saw that three Garry oak trees have survived the snow, ice , and wind. They grow so slowly that I will be a very old man before I can stand in their shade. I hope they survive to provide shade for future generations. The Garry oak tree is dependent on humans for its survival. It is one of the few native species that actually requires human intervention. Well, all species need our intervention in the sense that we had better start protecting the environment before it is gone. However, Garry oak co-evolved with humans, and it adapted to a regime of fire clearing away the underbrush and faster growing seedlings. Now that indians are no longer burning the prairies for camas bulbs, the Garry oak relies on those individuals that are willing to provide it a home. Ironically, next to a paved street is the ideal habitat for a Garry oak. It doesn't need much. It just needs to not be shaded out by faster growing species like Douglas-fir.

If I had a typical house on a standard lot on flat land, I would plant a Garry oak prairie in my front yard, with native wildflowers. It would provide the openness that people like. The back yard would be full of rioting native plants growing thick and wild. The front yard could look very tame and civilized while still being great habitat with high ecological value. I have planted several Garry oaks in my yard, but not with the typical prairie flowers. I hope their positions, near the street and away from power lines, will give them a chance at living their full 300 years as the property is bought and sold. I like to visit the grand Garry oaks at the south edge of Seward Park and imagine what my oak trees will look like in a couple hundred years.

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

Eagle Landing Park is my church, and ecology is like a religion to me. I put on my Sunday best: boots, rain coat, and floppy hat. I gather the family, the four dogs, and head off to church. The sermon today is wind in the tree tops, and silence. In the light rain and gloom, no birds sing, not even the screech owl. I walk through the columns and arches of the trees and branches. It is a style of architecture that lifts me up and focuses my thoughts. Everywhere, my church is adorned with the artwork of nature, the infinite variety and complexity of leaves, branches, tendrils, and buds.

Nature is my Creator. It is a simple, undeniable truth. I am a part of nature, giving and taking. For my acts of charity, I give my time and labor to the church, restoring the ecosystem as I restore myself. My form of worship is to walk and watch, listen and learn. With my words and photographs, I hope to capture the beauty and magnificence of nature. I am in Paradise when I walk through the biosphere, and I do not look for another paradise elsewhere.

Nature, my Creator, has given me immortality. I am thirteen billion years old, the latest in a series of configurations of atoms reaching back to the beginning. The carbon in my body was forged in a supernova billions of years ago. The code in my genes is shared with all other species in this church. When I no longer keep my current form, I will return to nature and give my strength to her, living on forever in some other form, a part of my biosphere.

Life on Earth is sacred and singular. If life exists elsewhere in the universe, no other planet among the trillions of planets has life quite like that on Earth. My main purpose in life is to defend the sacred life of Earth against those who would abuse and destroy it. I protect this park, my church, as my own little corner of the biosphere, the place where I can have the most impact.

I have faith in science and nature. I believe that humans are capable of wisdom and kindness. Although people have abused and destroyed ecosystems for the past few centuries, I have faith that people will find it in their own best interests to preserve this Earth, to restore nature to her past glory. I kneel in my church to touch the soil, the living, breathing flesh of my Creator. I visualize a future where humans once again live in harmony with nature.

I come to my church to find peace. There may be others who appreciate the sacred and holy nature of this place, even if we don't outwardly express such thoughts to each other. Some come to the park for benign recreation that does not detract from the beauty of my church. A few people defile this church either out of ignorance of its beauty and significance, or out of deliberate malice. If there is a reason for these malicious acts, nature should not be the target. Justice is not served by harming this church. Those who harm my church cause harm to me. This place is my community and my home. Damage to the park wounds me. This is a choice on the part of those causing the damage, to hurt this place and hurt its people without necessity or reason. When they cause this meaningless destruction, they diminish their own lives. Those causing harm can also choose to end those practices and acknowledge the sacred beauty in this park. This park is me. This park is my identity. I am not one of those people who would deliberately harm this place and all the species present. My park, my church, allows me to know who I am and who I am not.

All are welcome in this public park, this church without doors. Nature bestows her blessings on all who enter the park. This church can accommodate all kinds, and all who visit this cathedral have the opportunity to give, to leave this place better than they found it. Anyone can worship here. Anyone can find peace and solace in this serene sanctuary.

2012-01-28T21:30:00.000-08:00

We saw the Great Blue Heron today. Spotting one made me realize that I haven't been seeing them much lately. I used to see one every day, but now I'm seeing the first heron of the year on January 28th. It could be that my walking routes and times have changed, or that the eagles have been eating them. They should reach a stable population if we don't interfere with nature too much. Many predators are gone from ELP, so the food chain is not what it used to be. Deer, bears, wolves, mountain lions, rabbits, elk, and others are gone from this forest, unlikely to return any time soon. The avian predators and the fish can still use this ecosystem as if it were an island, isolated by a sea of homes and pavement. Herons are somewhat tolerant of the presence of humans, but they will be disturbed from their fishing if you get too close. I snapped a picture of the heron for Project Noah, but the iPhone is not ideal for photographing birds. Some day soon, I will have to go hunting for birds with my telephoto lens on the good camera and see how many species I can bag.

If a heron was fishing in the shallow water, would you adjust your walking route to give him some space and avoid disturbing him? Most people hate nature, others are indifferent, and very few people actually appreciate and enjoy nature, judging by the way they manage their yards. As I walk my dogs through the neighborhoods between Eagle Landing Park and City Hall, I see that nature has been banished from most yards. They have grass and shrubs and maybe a few trees, but that is not nature. That is horticulture. The horticulture industry makes money by ruining nature. Horticulture, by definition, says that humans can improve on nature, that nature is inferior. Horticulture is what most people have and want in their yards. Very few native plants survive in the yards of suburban homes. In the neighborhood near ELP, many large native Douglas-firs remain, left standing when the homes were built. However, those trees are steadily being reduced in number, year after year. The sound of chainsaws is very common around ELP.

Bringing Nature Home is one of the best books ever written, and if I were King of the World, I would force everyone to read it. If everyone in Burien read the book and planted their yards full of native plants in place of those acres of lawn, Eagle Landing Park would be much healthier and happier. What I don't understand is why people think horticultural varieties and exotic species are more beautiful than the native plants that would naturally grow here. What is it that people hate about nature? It must be instinctive somehow, a primitive impulse from those days when we were more often prey than predator. Now, humans pose the greatest danger to humans. If this hatred of nature is left over from our evolutionary past, then we need to get over it somehow.

I did not always appreciate nature and native species. I used to be like everyone else, thinking a mowed lawn and a pruned hedge and showy flower cultivars were somehow better. I would say that education has made the biggest difference in bringing me around to loving nature and native species. The only reason I can think of that I ever held an anti-nature mind set is that I was brainwashed by society and commerce. If you would like to un-brainwash yourself, here is a partial list of excellent books to help you appreciate the gifts of nature.

Field Guide to the Rare Plants of Washington
Joseph Arnett
(2011) ISBN: 9780295990927

The Owl and the Woodpecker: Encounters With North America's Most Iconic Birds
Encounters with North America's Most Iconic Birds
Paul Bannick
(2008) ISBN: 9781594850950

The Emotional Lives of Animals
A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy - and Why They Matter
Bekoff
Jane Goodall
(2008) ISBN: 9781577316299

Birds of Washington State
Brian H. Bell
Shane Kennedy
(2006) ISBN: 9781551054308

Northwest Foraging: Wild Edibles of the Pacific Northwest
by
Doug Benoliel
ISBN: 9780913140130

The People of Cascadia
Pacific Northwest Native American history
Heidi Bohan
(2009) ISBN: 9780984252206

Rain Gardens
managing water sustainably in the garden and designed landscape
Andy Clayden
(2007) ISBN: 9780881928266

A Field Guide to the Common Wetland Plants of Western Washington & Northwestern Oregon
Sarah S. Cooke
(1997) ISBN: 9780914516118

Trees
Allen J. Coombes
(2002) ISBN: 9780789489890

vascular Plants Of The Pacific Northwest
Cronquist
Charles Hitchcock
ISBN: 9780295739878

Origin Of Species
Charles Darwin
ISBN: 9780785819110

Climbing Mount Improbable
Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
(1997) ISBN: 9780393316827

The Blind Watchmaker
why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design
Richard Dawkins
(1986) ISBN: 9780393315707

The Extended Phenotype
the long reach of the gene
Richard Dawkins
(1999) ISBN: 9780192880512

Collapse
How Societies Choose to Fail Or Succeed
Jared Diamond
(2011) ISBN: 9780143117001

Forest Restoration in Landscapes: Beyond Planting Trees
beyond planting trees
Nigel Dudley
(2005) ISBN: 9780387255255

Mushrooms
Neil Fletcher
(2002) ISBN: 9780789489869

Evolutionary Biology
Douglas J. Futuyma
(1998) ISBN: 9780878931897

Field Guide to the Slug: Explore the Secret World of Slugs and Their Kin - in Forests, Fields... (sasquatch Field Guide Series)
David G. Gordon
(1994) ISBN: 9781570610110

The Tree Collector
the life and explorations of David Douglas
Syd House
(2005) ISBN: 9781845130527

Restoring the Pacific Northwest
the art and science of ecological restoration in Cascadia
Society for Ecological Restoration International
(2006) ISBN: 9781559630788

Wild Plants Of Seattle
Arthur Jacobson
ISBN: 9790962291820

Animals in Translation
using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behavior
Catherine Johnson
(2006) ISBN: 9780156031448

Plants of Western Oregon, Washington & British Columbia
Eugene N. Kozloff
(2005) ISBN: 9780881927245

Gardening With Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest
Kruckeberg
Arthur R. Kruckeberg
(1996) ISBN: 9780295974767

The Natural History of Puget Sound Country
Kruckeberg
Arthur R. Kruckeberg
(1995) ISBN: 9780295974774

Living With Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest
Russell Link
(2004) ISBN: 9780295983868

Natural Capitalism
creating the next industrial revolution
L. Hunter Lovins
(2000) ISBN: 9780316353007

The Hidden Forest
The Biography of an Ecosystem
Jon R. Luoma
(2000) ISBN: 9780805064483

Native American Medicinal Plants

an ethnobotanical dictionary
Daniel E. Moerman
(2009) ISBN: 9780881929874

Hiking Olympic National Park (rev)
Erik Molvar
(1996) ISBN: 9781560444572

Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees
our intimate connections to trees
Nalini Nadkarni
(2008) ISBN: 9780520248564

Lichens of North America
Canadian Museum of Nature
(2001) ISBN: 9780300082494

Best Hikes With Dogs Western Washington
Dan A. Nelson
(2002) ISBN: 9780898868296

The Bond
Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them
Wayne Pacelle
(2011) ISBN: 9780061969782

Winter Twigs
a wintertime key to deciduous trees and shrubs of northwestern Oregon and western Washington
Patricia L. Packard
(2001) ISBN: 9780870715303

Champion Trees of Washington State
Robert Van Pelt
ISBN: 9780295975634

The Butterflies of Cascadia: a Field Guide to All the Species of Washington, Oregon, and Surrounding Territories
a field guide to all the species of Washington, Oregon, and surrounding territories
Robert Michael Pyle
(2002) ISBN: 9780914516132

The Red Queen
sex and the evolution of human nature
Matt Ridley
(1993) ISBN: 9780060556570

Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes
Kathleen Robson
(2007) ISBN: 9780881928631

Propagation of Pacific Northwest Native Plants
Robin Rose
(1998) ISBN: 9780870714283

Moss Gardening
including lichens, liverworts, and other miniatures
George Schenk
(1997) ISBN: 9780881923704

In My Nature: a Birder's Year At the Montlake Fill
a birder's year at the Montlake Fill
Constance Sidles
Alexandra MacKenzie
(2009) ISBN: 9780984200207

The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers, Western Region
Richard Spellenberg
(1979) ISBN: 9780394504315

Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife With Native Plants
how you can sustain wildlife with native plants
Douglas W. Tallamy
Rick Darke
(2009) ISBN: 9780881929928

4 miles today brings me to 75 for the year.

2012-01-27T23:06:00.000-08:00

15,000 years ago, Eagle Landing Park was buried under 3,000 feet of ice. If you stand on the beach today and look across at the Olympic Mountains, that's about half way up the highest peaks you see. Solid glacial ice. The glacier retreated by about 11,000 years ago, and Douglas-fir trees marched back into the barren landscape to repopulate the lands where they lived before the glacier. Those first pioneering Douglas-firs grew on soil lacking any organic material, any life. As those trees lived and died on this land for 10,000 years, the soil became alive, full of decaying organic material and teeming with bugs, microbes, and fungi.

Over 100 years ago, most or all of the trees were stripped off the land. The soil remained, mostly untouched. The living, breathing soil of Eagle Landing Park is 10,000 years old. The individual organisms may be young, but their genomes are ancient. The above-ground portion of the forest had to start anew, but the below-ground forest lived on after the logging, mostly unaffected. When the Douglas-firs grew again, those micorrhyzae were waiting for them.

The soil is very fluffy in most places. When I want to plant a small plant, I just stick my hand into the earth and feel around for the openings. I push the soil aside a little, distrubing it the least amount. To plant a larger tree, I need a shovel, but that is to chop through the roots of other plants in the way. Although I hate to disturb the soil, the living skin of the park, I do enjoy the feel and smell of having my hands in the soil.

Jon Luoma tells us there may be thousands of creatures under your foot each time you take a step. If I could count those critters, I would have no trouble reaching 365 species this year. One critter that does not belong there is the earthworm. Most worms that you see are not native. When the glacier retreated, the Douglas-firs marched into lands without most of the worms that we think of as naturally being in the soil. Those invasive worms may be changing the makeup of the soil, and they may make it difficult to restore Eagle Landing Park to the way it once was. Of course, no one made an accurate record of the forest before it was cut down, so we have to make educated guesses as we restore the forest to its former state of health. But as much work as there is to do above ground, removing invasive species, below ground the park is fairly healthy, as far as I know.

2012-01-26T21:20:00.000-08:00

I cataloged about twenty species for Project Noah today. It is an app and a web-based tool that lets you register the species you photograph. I set up a "Mission" for Eagle Landing Park. Hopefully others will join in and help me find 365 species within the park.

On the way out, a couple of kids about 11 to 13 years old were up to something. It sounded like they were making plans for building a fort or something. It's what I did when I was a kid. When I was young, we played in the vacant lot. There are no more vacant lots, at least not in this area, and public parks are serving that purpose. Having been a boy of a certain age at one time, I know that there is no more destructive force on the planet. It would be nice if someone, not me, could redirect them toward more positive uses of the park.

I understand the need for play. Having three dogs and watching out for a fourth, I certainly understand the need for play. But, as I am teaching my 80-pound puppy, there are lots of ways to play where no one gets hurt. He used to play too hard and make all the other dogs mad. Now he is learning not to bite, when they've had enough, and how to romp around without leaving a trail of destruction. He is learning what is okay to chew and what is not.

I see this as a real positive with Project Noah. It gives everyone a chance to play. Kids can do it, too. It's like geocaching, in a way. Instead of hunting for a hidden treasure which turns out to be a trinket or nothing, you hunt for hidden treasures that are hiding in plain sight, the plants and animals in your local park. I set up this entire biography of ELP as a game, a challenge to collect 365 stones on 365 consecutive days. I like the game aspect of Project Noah for the same reasons. It is a challenge. You have a tangible achievement each time you capture a trophy, a species, and no one gets hurt. The link to Project Noah is in the upper right corner of this page, and I hope you will check it out.

Stone 26 is lurking in the pool in the clay.

2012-01-25T22:24:00.000-08:00

Komu walked with me on another gloomy afternoon just before the sun set unseen behind the clouds. I couldn't take many pictures because of the darkness. We came up through the community beach property and cut down the bamboo encroaching on the Douglas-fir saplings. As I worked and Komu milled about, a screech owl kept us company with her melancholy call.

The call of a screech owl means dusk. I have heard them for decades in these woods, and that sound is just a part of the forest. Sometimes you hear two or three, but you almost always hear at least one. But you never see them. In several decades (at least) of hearing them, I have only seen one once. They are about nine inches tall and weigh five ounces. They prey on mice, voles, bats, insects, and even butterflies. They prefer open woods or the edges of woods.

After grabbing their prey, they need to return to the safety of the canopy or their nest because other birds prey on them. Great horned owls haunt these woods from time to time, although I don't hear them as often as the Screech owl. Great Horned Owls are ferocious hunters, and even eagles are afraid of them. Barred owls also come by these woods a few times a year. Although I would like to see the screech owls, I understand they need to stay out of sight of the larger predators.

You can hear them for yourself at dusk in the park, or listen to the recording on this page.

2012-01-24T22:58:00.000-08:00

The dogs didn't want to go for a walk today because it was rainy and gloomy, and someone in the house was eating. I was the only one in the park, and it was a dark day well before sunset because of the low, thick clouds. Near the bottom of the stairs, a sparrow called loudly to someone. I was the only one around, but I didn't know what to say. I think it was a Song Sparrow. He or she hopped around in the salmonberry. The high tide left very little beach. More of the south end had fallen away. You can see the exposed clay, the reason for the sliding hillside. Water hits that clay layer and can't go anywhere. The sandy soil sits on top of that water on the clay. I almost slipped and fell on the wet clay just standing there looking at the hill. Water runs out of the hill constantly, whether it's raining or not. High winds are coming tonight, although not at peak tides.

I came back up through the community beach property to the south. The skunk cabbage was not showing yet. A large clump of bamboo is leaning over the Douglas-firs I planted a few years ago, shading them out. I wish I had brought my pruning saw.

In a healthy forest, a landslide or a fallen tree is an opportunity for native pioneer species to fill in. In a compromised forest like ELP, each little natural disaster is an opportunity for unnatural invasive species to get a better hold on the forest. As the gloomy day got darker, instead of enjoying my walk in the woods, all I could think about was the work I need to do, and what could happen if we don't get these invasive species under control.

2012-01-23T22:24:00.000-08:00

The pileated woodpecker tore into an alder tree near the top of the park. Here is a video shot in 2008 of a woodpecker tearing apart an alder near the parking lot. Decaying alders may be more alive than when they were alive. Bats may nest under the buckled bark. Termites drill into the soft, rotten wood, and woodpeckers dig the termites out. Flickers may cut out a nest inside the trunk of a dead alder.

If you are patient and lucky, you may get to see two flickers do their courtship dance. They bob their heads at one another while making funny little squeaks.

In the picture above, there is a tiny little spider on the wax paper lichen. Look closely and see if you can find it.

These are the same stones I photographed yesterday, but with sun on them.


bug closeup

2012-01-22T17:55:00.000-08:00

Stone 22, white, with striped rocks.


Found on the beach.

The land is beginning to move on the south end of the beach near the bulkhead. A chunk of land plopped out onto the beach, and this skunk cabbage plant was mostly exposed. I took it home and potted it up. If it survives, I will plant it back in the park after this round of landslide is done. If it soaked in salt water, it probably won't live.

Local records indicate there were slides on the property that is now the park in the thirties and the fifties. During the Depression, men were paid a dollar a day to dig tunnels into the hillside in the park. This was mostly done to give them work, but it was also done to install drains in an effort to stop the landslides. The tunnels were big enough for a person to walk into, and they had to be sealed with rocks because neighborhood kids used to explore them. The only signs they exist are the clay drain tiles sticking out of the slope. There are three tunnels in the park. Even if the tunnels weren't there, water would still seep out of the hill all year round. The drainage tunnels have not prevented slides. Landslides should not be prevented because they are a natural process. The sand bars from Eagle Landing Park to Alki Point depend on soil coming out of landslides like those in ELP and Seahurst Park. Most of the shore is held back by bulkheads, so the areas that do slide occasionally are important to the tidal ecology.

I saw some white-winged scoters and a Bewick's wren. Five miles today makes 61 for the year.

2012-01-21T23:12:00.000-08:00

I would like to visit Africa to see the baobab trees. The only trouble is that I no longer want to travel anywhere without my dogs. That's okay because the trees of Eagle Landing Park are just as amazing as anything in Africa. Maybe the alders near the beach are not as massive as African baobabs, but they are sleek and graceful. Many homeowners consider alders a "junk" tree, something to cut down so you can buy a tree from the nursery. I don't see how any other tree could be considered more beautiful than the alder. Certainly no other tree is more beneficial to the environment.

People have the same variety of opinions about dogs, Canis lupus familiaris. Well, even my opinion of dogs varies from moment to moment. Mostly I think they are wonderful. In certain brief moments, I entertain the notion of taking them all to the pound. I took all four dogs for a walk in the park today. I stopped to take pictures, and sure enough, each time I sat all the dogs down and let go of their leashes, someone came along the path. It is amazing how quickly people come up on you when you are trying to set down a camera and gather four dog leashes.

People often ask me, "Are your dogs friendly?" Because I usually have about two seconds to answer, the default answer has to be "No." The true answer is Yes with an asterisk. Yes, my dogs are exceedingly friendly. However, when you get a dog on a leash in tight quarters, she can get tense, and there can be misunderstandings. I have been asked, "Are your dogs friendly" by a man with four dogs off-leash, smoking a cigarette in a park where smoking is not allowed. He did not have control of his dogs, and he kicked one because he could not control her. In this case, the answer would be, yes my dogs are friendly, but please keep your dogs away since you do not have control of them. When two dogs meet, and one dog is on a leash and the other is off-leash, it creates an imbalance, and a short bout of snapping and snarling might ensue, even if both dogs are otherwise friendly. When eight dogs meet in a confined space, and four are on leash and four are off leash, the results can be very unpredictable. I only have two hands, and it's hard to micromanage four dogs at once. If I just let all four dogs off-leash, things would probably work out okay, but that's not legal, and it's generally not in the dogs' best interest to be let off-leash in a park.

A woman with no dogs approached us before I could grab all the leashes. As my dogs ran up to her to be petted and greeted, she pulled up her hands and asked, in a rising voice, "Are your dogs friendly?" It sounded a little like, "Are your dogs about to eat me alive?" I grabbed them as quickly as I could and assured her they were friendly in that circumstance.

As a general rule, when someone asks if my dogs are friendly, if I say yes, one of the dogs will misbehave and embarrass me. If I say no, they will all sit there like the happiest, friendliest, safest dogs you ever could hope to meet. The people we meet have all sorts of attitudes toward dogs, and I cannot say that my dogs will behave themselves in every circumstance. For example, children often stare directly into a dog's eyes, right at eye level. In dog language, this is an aggressive gesture. Each of my dogs has barked at a child who was staring in this manner. I can't stop and explain to every child that staring like that is rude in dog language.

The bottom line is, yes, my dogs are friendly. They are among the nicest people I know. However, they do have a talent for misbehaving just at the crucial moment. They have never bitten anyone, human or dog. Kelsy and Karma work for Missing Pet Partnership, where Kelsy finds lost dogs and Karma finds lost cats. Komu, the puppy, is in training to find lost cats. They are not dangerous. It would be nice if people approaching us on the trail gave us a few moments to get organized so we can be on our best behavior. If one of my dogs misbehaves, I apologize in advance, and I assure you that you are not in danger. A little patience and understanding would be greatly appreciated.

2012-01-20T20:53:00.000-08:00

It would be hard to imagine a gloomier day, and I loved it. Ice fell from the trees onto snow no longer white. The cold rain fell through misty air. Puget Sound's glassy surface showed each raindrop as it fell. No one else ventured into the park except me and the ducks. They dove down into the eel grass beds for their meals. If you have to dive into Puget Sound for a living, you don't care if it's cold and raining.(I think the diving birds were horned grebes, but I didn't have binoculars, so I can't be sure.)

I don't particularly like the staircase because it attracts people who come to the park only for the stairs. (I have no objection to people climbing stairs for exercise. It is even possible that most people who climb the stairs also appreciate nature. There seems to be a minority of people who think the rest of the park is just something you have to get through to get to the stairs, and these people don't feel they should have to take care of the environment.) Even if I think the stairs fit the definition of Attractive Nuisance, they do make it much easier to get to the beach when the earth is mud and ice. Also, the stairs protect the slope. If a trail had been cut into the steep hillside, it would channel water, kids would make shortcuts, and the slope would probably slide much sooner than its natural schedule, wiping out the trail. In a natural environment, the stairs are violently unnatural, but they do protect the environment. The slope does appear to be getting ready to slide. This is landslide season, and the forecast for the next ten days calls for rain every day. The waves at high tide have hollowed out a cavern under the wooden steps closest to the beach. The alders north of the stairs are completely undermined. At the south end of the beach, near the bulkhead, water from a spring is cutting under an alder. There were small landslides in 2008, 2009, and 2010. I would be surprised if we didn't have another landslide soon. The wooden stairs at the bottom may fall into the sea, but the concrete landings will be the last thing to go. The concrete portion you see is really just a cap. All the weight of the stairs is supported by pin pilings that were driven into the earth as far as they could go. Each concrete landing is filled with Styrofoam. They look massive, but they are relatively light.

Falling branches bring the canopy down so we can study it. This branch fell from 70 to 80 feet. Stone 20 is pictured with at least three species of lichen. I think the one on the right is Lobaria. I will try to take a good camera and get a better picture.

2012-01-19T16:15:00.000-08:00

An ice storm hit the park this morning, bringing down a few large branches and making the twigs look stunning. The dogs stayed home because of the risk of falling limbs. I heard several large trees creak and crack. I cleared large branches from the path in several places. The hazelnut branches dipped down into the path. I left most of those alone because they should spring back up tomorrow when the ice melts. Mostly, I took lots of pictures, as seen in this gallery.

Hazelnut trees and a few non-native hazelnut trees make up the majority of the middle story, between the shrubs and the big trees in Eagle Landing Park. I might like to try a hazelnut someday, to see how they taste, but the squirrels and bluejays leave absolutely zero behind. If you think you see a hazelnut ripe on the branch, it will turn out to be empty inside. The native Corylus cornuta and the non-native Corylus avellana look very similar. The non-native has catkins that are lighter in color, almost white. The catkins of the native are darker, beige to almost brown. When I asked the scientist from EarthCorp if we should worry about removing the non-native Corylus avellana from ELP, he replied that it should be the last thing we worry about when removing non-native species. They are so nearly identical in form, habit, and function that the non-natives don't pose a threat. They aren't out-competing the native hazelnuts yet. They don't appear to hybridize with each other.

I walked a couple of miles on the ice, and collected stone 19, pictured below on driftwood.

2012-01-18T00:22:00.000-08:00

About five inches of snow fell last night. The red huckleberry pictured above has hundreds of tiny little buds ready to burst into leaf. Hopefully, winter will be done with this sort of weather after tomorrow, and buds can begin to open without too much risk of damage. Red huckleberries were prized by native Americans, who burned sections of the forest in order to keep the huckleberry plants healthy and plentiful. The burned huckleberry bushes would shoot up from the roots, forming lush new plants, and the trees that would normally shade out the huckleberries would have to start over again. I can think of only two red huckleberry bushes in the park, neither of which gets enough sun to produce much fruit. In the future, since no one will be setting ELP on fire, red huckleberry may dwindle away. If a major tree falls and clears a new opening in the canopy, that might provide an opportunity for a few new red huckleberries. You can read about controlled burns for huckleberry yields here.

Although ELP won't be managed with controlled burns, given the proximity of houses on all sides, it will be a managed forest in many respects. Humans will be choosing what species are planted in the park, and the forest will always rely on volunteers to control invasive species. Sections of northwest forest have been managed by humans for ten thousand years. Indians used natural processes, similar to wildfires started by lightning, to renew the forest so that pioneer species and plants that love sun could survive and flourish. Human numbers were small enough, from 10,000 years ago to 150 years ago, that this management of sections of the forest still left the majority of the forest to progress on its usual course. Those humans integrated themselves into the forest in ways that we cannot. ELP would suffer if too many people chose to forage for food from native plants within the park. We can integrate ourselves into the forest in ways that those first humans could not. We can photograph the natural beauty found there, and we can learn all about the more than 365 species within the park. Using science and technology, we can delve into the forest more than ever.

Today's walk took us from the beach to the library and back (4 miles), taking pictures all the way. A gallery of images from ELP and from around Burien can be seen here. Stone 18 is tucked in the crevice of the steps in the picture below.

2012-01-17T16:19:00.000-08:00

The two alders above are probably in the most need of help in the park. If they fall while the ivy is alive, they will spread the infection further. I will try to get to these trees soon. The section of forest below is actually healthy. I couldn't see any invasive species from the trail, although there may be something lurking in there. The health of this section is probably due to a robust colony of salal, which keeps invasive species from geting started.

Springtime pic of salal flowers.

Salal is very tough and versatile, growing in dry to wet conditions, full sun to mostly shade. Some people complain that it is almost impossible to kill in their yards, which makes me happy. Even though it is tough, it can also be tough to start. It needs that micorrhyzal association. I have planted salal in several locations in the park, in habitat where other plants are flourishing nearby, and it has died on me. It is a little sad, the number of plants I've inadvertently killed while trying to improve the park. Salal does not like extreme fluctuations in moisture, and organic material in the soil and micorrhyzae can even out the moisture. Until that association is established, you need to water it regularly, and not let it get too dry during our dry summers. Because of this fungal association with the roots, salal does not transplant well. You need to get the whole root, which is often eight feet long running just under the surface of the soil. If you dig up just the roots within a foot of the plant, it will surely die. King County hosts salvage events, where you can salvage native plants from sites scheduled for construction. You can use these plants for restoration in local parks, or for your own yard. I have seen acres of salal that were going to be bulldozed, but I couldn't take any home because it just wouldn't survive. Salal is an invasive plant in England. I would be happy to get back at them for what they've done to us with English ivy, but I don't want any plants to be invasive anywhere in the world.

Above is stone 17 with ivy and lichen on maple bark. 2 miles today.

2012-01-16T14:39:00.000-08:00

Humans are symbiotic with the biosphere to some extent, whether or not we choose to be. We breathe out carbon that trees need, and we consume oxygen that would poison the world if too concentrated. Beyond a few functions like that, humans are parasitic on the biosphere, even though we have the capacity to be symbiotic in all our functions. We consume the Earth's resources to the detriment of the Earth, and often to our own detriment as well. Our current economy relies on conspicuous consumerism, no matter how bad it is for us or the planet.

Members of a symbiotic relationship do not perform their functions for altruistic reasons. They do what they do for their own benefit, to become something more than what they could be alone. The forest of Eagle Landing Park is made possible by micorrhyzae in the soil. Invisible to us, this fungus in the ground allows trees to become big and strong, and grow much faster than they would without this fungal association. Fungi, often the main body of the organism that we see as mushooms, wrap around the tiniest branches of tree roots, coating them. The fungi provide better water and mineral absorption for the trees by being more efficient at interfacing with the soil. The fungi has a larger surface area, and it releases chemicals to allow the transfer of minerals. The trees, in turn, provide sugars to the fungi, for food.

All of the trees in Eagle Landing Park are connected underground by their roots and by the fungi that form this symbiotic relationship with them. Trees can exchange sugars, carbon, and minerals with each other by way of these micorrhyzal fungi. This may be the only thing keeping some trees alive. At the top of the park, near the beginning of the trail, a retaining wall was cut into the soil near a giant Douglas-fir. This excavation occurred in the well-known critical root zone. (The critical root zone is well known in the sense that anybody doing construction or landscaping would know about this, and if you don't know about the critical root zone, you should not be allowed within ten feet of a tree. According to the formula, they should not have done any excavation within 48 feet of that tree.) You could not get a permit to damage a significant tree on your own property with a retaining wall like this. Indeed, the plans provided for construction did not place the wall there. No one seems to know why the workers chose that spot for the retaining wall. They undoubtedly severed and damaged many main, vital roots for this giant tree. It may still succumb to the damage, as some trees take ten years to die after the fatal wound. However, it may survive because there is another large Douglas-fir about twenty feet uphill of this tree. Their roots must grow near each other, and this micorrhyzal association allows them to exchange nutrients, sugars, minerals, and water. Their roots interlock, providing stability. The two trees grow as a unit. One gets more light and the other can harvest more moisture. One trades sugars with the other, for moisture and support. Because of the symbiotic micorrhyzae, the trees are able to help each other survive. Throughout the park, you can see examples of trees of a species growing in groups of two or three, helping each other grow faster and better because of their root networks. Yes, they grow there because that's where the seeds fell, but they survived and flourished because of their connected roots and the micorrhyzae hidden in the soil.

Stone #16 is pictured above, front and center, with another interesting stone and two crab shells. The crab shell above is covered in barnacles, in what appears to be a mutualistic relationship. The barnacles get transportation to new waters for feeding, and the crab gets camouflage, looking like a rock with barnacles on it.

I saw a currant blooming today. A bad picture because all I had was my iPhone and my hands were shaking with the cold. (The currant is probably a cultivar and not a true native. It was planted when the park was built, and did not grow from local seeds.) The dogs and I walked 4 miles, to the beach, to the library, and back. 43 total miles.

2012-01-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

Nature is infinitely beautiful. The park changes every day, and beauty can be found in minute lichens or panoramic views. All that beauty would be wasted, if not for humans. One thing humans (some of them) do well, that so far seems to escape other species, is to be aware of the beauty around them. Trees don't know they are beautiful. Eagles don't think of themselves as majestic or graceful (I'm guessing). My dogs don't seem to fully appreciate all the wonderfulness of being a dog, and instead they are content to lay on the couch like a cat or something. Humans have the capacity, when they aren't busy destroying nature, of being that organ of the forest that can appreciate, record, remember, and enjoy. I think I would enjoy being a tree, living for fifteen hundred years, and seeing the forest evolve around me. I would be a Pacific yew, growing slowly, living two thousand years or more. The tree itself sees nothing. If not for humans, all of this beauty might be wasted. (Most of this beauty seems to be wasted on most visitors to the park. Many of them talk loudly and incessantly, which it seems they could have done at home. Others scream all the way through the park, which it seems like they could have done... never. Most of them also trudge up and down the staircase, either staring at the steps or lost in their thoughts, as if they were climbing stairs at the park&ride. Still others view the park as a place to throw their garbage or a place for their dogs to poop. While I'm sure that many visitors to the park fully appreciate its beauty, they seem to be in the minority.)

Another thing the forest cannot do is plan. If we are the brains of the forest, we can prepare for the future, such as landslides. Nature has handled landslides just fine on her own in the past, filling in the barren soil with pioneer species such as alders that grow rapidly and enrich the soil with nitrogen and organic debris. If a landslide happened today, exposing bare soil, it would be colonized by non-native, invasive species, such as blackberry, laurel, foxglove, alien grasses, butterfly bush, scotch broom, European ash, nipple wort, herb robert, and others. We know the hillside is going to fail, sooner or later. For the sake of the forest, we ought to remove all the invasive species from around the hillside, so that when the day comes, native pioneer species can colonize the bare soil instead of invasive species. This would require a coordinated effort of many volunteers and local government, which seems unlikely at this point. I hope the landslide holds off a few years.

Humans are uniquely suited to become the mind of the biosphere. Planet Earth would do just fine if humans suddenly vanished. In most ways, Earth would be much healthier if we left. However, if humans ever stop being a burden on the planet and choose to become an integrated member of their ecosystem, they could benefit the Earth by providing the services of memory, planning, and appreciation of beauty. We know the Earth will die some day, being swallowed up by the giant red sun in a few billion years. We ought to take advantage of that time to find a new home for Earth's life and beauty and ensure the survival of all the species of Earth. Humans, more than any other species (that we know of) have the capacity to be the most helpful, beneficial species on the planet. I hope they will get tired of consuming the planet to make more junk that will end up in landfills. I hope humans will choose a symbiotic relationship with mother Earth.

2012-01-14T21:58:00.000-08:00

The wind scoured the air clean today. The stagnant air that had given us nice sunsets has all been pushed out. It didn't quite snow today, but it might tomorrow. The trees creaked and moaned, and I remained alert as to which way to run with the dogs if a large branch or tree top came down. Although I have referred to Eagle Landing Park as unhealthy, that is only relative to what it could be. Compared to the typical urban landscape, ELP is quite healthy.

In Japan, they have a tradition called "forest bathing" or Shinrin-yoku. (NY Times, July 5, 2010) Proponents of this practice claim that exposure to compounds released by plants raises your immune function. So, while I am acting as a white blood cell for the forest, it is boosting my immune system as well. If it is true, then we are truly enjoying a symbiotic relationship, above and beyond the exchange of oxygen for carbon.

We evolved in a landscape of plants and sky and sand and wind, not asphalt, carpet, and LCD monitors. It makes sense that we would feel healthiest in an environment where our ancestors spent millions of years. (Perhaps not northwest forests, but natural environments.) While it may not make sense to hunt and gather in these woods for food, I can still hunt and gather photos and stones and strands of ivy. And species.

In the photo at the top of the page, a giant hemlock is visible on the right edge. This tree is not in the park. Eventually, some homeowner of the property north of the park will probably cut it down. Homes change hands every 11 years on average, and eventually the home will be bought by someone who likes empty space better than magnificent trees. ELP has a few moderately large hemlocks, but no giants. Many small hemlocks have been planted as part of the restoration.

On today's walk, I counted 93 trees with ivy on them. Most of those trees had the ivy cleared off before, and it is only just starting again. About ten trees had ivy all the way to the top. I should go through the park, while the leaves are off the trees and I can see clearly, and kill the ivy on those 93 trees. If I didn't have other obligations, I would love to spend forty hours a week restoring the forest. That reminds me-- I should check my lottery ticket.

The picture above shows how the alders at the beach are being undermined, especially by today's king tide. The tree on the left is hanging over empty space, like the stairs, and the only thing holding it up is the other three trees. Their roots are all bound together. I would imagine that their roots have even grafted together. Eventually, the whole group of trees will tip onto the beach. Maybe then we will see if their roots fused. When the alders fall, they will probably take out the stairs, too. Maybe they will get fixed then.

Stone 14 is pictured above, where I found it in its own little zen garden, with a bigger stone with barnacles. The sun is so low that a pebble casts a shadow. 3 miles today.

2012-01-13T21:12:00.000-08:00

On previous days, I have speculated about "If Eagle Landing Park could talk." The park can talk if we ask the right questions in the right way. Nature speaks to us through scientific inquiry. We can measure and test. This is what EarthCorp has done, measuring the extent of invasive species. For example, ivy covers 65% of the park. If we ask the park, "How are you feeling?" the answer might be "65% smothered in ivy." We can ask the same question in ten years and see if the ivy is reduced or eliminated.

Also, the naming of 365 plant and animal species is a measurement that can be compared to a later measurement. We can compare what species are present to what species exist in a healthy old growth forest. When we ask ELP a question, the answer could take a while. To become an integral part of this ecosystem takes time. I can perform my white blood cell function immediately. Becoming a brain for the park, remembering and planning, takes time.

One question we can answer immediately, or at least by the end of the year, is, "How does ELP compare to the forest in 1850?" Stumps remain of very large Douglas-firs, so we know the land had large trees before it was logged. Also, many of the native species present in the park were here when I first began coming to this land in the sixties. Ray Larson of the UW completed a study of the plants growing in the Seattle area before 1850. This list contains 164 species, although some of those species belonged in habitats not found in ELP, such as lakes, bogs, and streams. Arthur Lee Jacobson's book Wild Plants of Greater Seattle lists 514 species of vascular plants as being native to this area. Currently, I would say ELP has about 75 native species of plants. Diversity equals health, to a large extent, for several reasons. Diversity would indicate the forest had not been disturbed in a long time, allowing more species to find their niche. While that's not the case with ELP, diversity would mimic the health of old forests. Also, diversity protects against catastrophes such as disease, fire, and landslides. Having diversity of native plants would allow for quick recovery after a fire or slide, and diversity would prevent a disease affecting one species from having too great an impact on the forest.

This page on EagleLandingPark.org lists existing native species and invasive weeds. This list is one potential palette of plants that a healthy forest might have.

During this restoration process, one species of plant will not need to be added to the park: sword fern. It already covers large portions of the park. If it spreads into areas cleared of ivy, that's fine, but the park doesn't need any more sword ferns. It is one plant that seems to have held its own against ivy.

Two miles today. 35 total.

2012-01-12T23:13:00.000-08:00

I wasn't able to make the walk to the beach today because other commitments didn't allow me to get to the park before sunset. I had to harvest stone #12 and a strand of ivy from roadside boundary of the park in the dark. I spent most of the day with Karma, the search dog, looking for a lost cat in Snohomish. We did not find the cat we were looking for.

During the search, I followed Karma through acres of rural land and woods. Where the woods had been left intact, they were very healthy, with a minimal amount of invasive species. Out of this healthy forest, most property owners had bulldozed away every native plant to put in grass. One man planted a palm tree. In that neighborhood, they seem to have a tradition of making paths through the forest and underbrush by eating their way through on some sort of large mowing machine. Karma and I walked on a path carpeted with deer fern. I have tried on several occasions to re-establish deer fern in Eagle Landing Park. I don't know why, but every attempt has failed. These people were trying to kill deer fern, mowing it down to an inch high, and it was growing back healthier than ever.

I like native plants for many reasons. I enjoy them purely for their beauty, diversity, and character. I appreciate that native plants are part of a healthy ecosystem, whereas non-native plants cannot contribute in the same ways because they did not co-evolve. Most people seem to view native plants as the thing you get rid of so you can plant good plants. This way of thinking is completely alien to me. I have worked hard, for years, to make ELP a healthy ecosystem of native plants, just barely making progress against the constant pressure of invasive species. Meanwhile, people with healthy forest in their own back yards are mowing it down with contempt.

Eagle Landing Park should not have been made into a park in 2005. It would have been much better for the environment if these woods had been bulldozed and 18 condos had been built on this land. That way, 18 homes would not need to be built in healthy forest land in Black Diamond or Redmond. People living in these condos in Burien would be closer to the city than if the lived in those fringes of suburbia. 18 condos could have been built while saving 70% of the land as natural habitat. These six acres of unhealthy forest could have been sacrificed so that 18 acres of healthy forest could have been preserved. Since that didn't happen, and a small local park was created, then the next best situation, in terms of the environment, would be to make ELP as healthy as possible. It is just unfortunate and sadly ironic that it will take so much effort to make this forest healthy when they are bulldozing healthy forests elsewhere in the county.

2012-01-11T20:57:00.000-08:00

In the dead of winter, the park is bursting with life. The birds are all around, and often easier to see. Sun lights up the bright tree trunks and bare branches. Lichens in the canopy come down to where we can see them when storm winds clean the dead branches out of alders and madrones. Fungi that have been invisible in the soil all year make their presence known when mushrooms suddenly sprout. Of course people and dogs walk through the park every day of the year.

Even the earth comes to life, in a way, when winter rains cause the soil to move. Sometimes it creeps along, and sometimes it suddenly gives way. The alders in the picture above probably started growing vertically, and gradually tipped as the earth moved beneath them over the years. For the last several years, but not yet this year, a small landslide just to the south of the stairs has pushed sandy soil out onto the beach. A large, deep crack has formed at the beach at the south end of the park, perhaps indicating that a major slide will happen soon. The four alders pictured above have likely intertwined their roots, helping to lock the soil in place. Looking back from the beach, you can see the soil has been cut from underneath the west-most alder, leaving its roots in the air. It is being kept alive and kept standing by its neighbors.

The staircase was designed to allow slight movements in the soil. Each section of metal stairs can float around on the concrete pad at each landing. No section can move more than a foot before things fall apart, but it does allow for some motion. Each concrete landing is really just a cap. The actual foundation is a set of steel pipes pounded down into the soil as far as they would go. Since they are anchored deep in the soil, they will move less, unless the whole hillside gives way. The natural ecology of the shoreline depends on regular landslides providing new sandy material to the beach. Because of housing development and bulkheads along the shore, not many areas still allow the luffs to fall into the sea, so places like Eagle Landing Park are more important than ever to healthy ecosystems.

The concrete landings could also be an excellent substrate for lichens, although none have formed there yet. Lichens can take decades to grow. Hopefully, some of the branches that have fallen in recent storms can transfer lichen to that bare stone. These pictures show some lichens that blew down recently, allowing me to set them before the tripod.

Stone 11 is pictured below with some tiny little mushrooms. So far, I have not been able to identify this mushroom, but it might be Marasmius candidus. If you have any idea what it is, please give me a hint.

`The dogs and I walked a couple of miles, for 30 total.

2012-01-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

Komu, Karma, Kelsy, and Porter.

On today's walk through the woods, I counted 21 cedar trees larger than eight inches diameter. Several dozen smaller cedars are looking healthy and growing slowly. A few cedars planted thirty years ago are only about 18 feet tall. Others planted in 2005, that grow in full sun by the storm drain outfall, are about 15 feet tall. I have two hundred cedars in pots in my yard that are destined to be planted in ELP. They need to get a little bigger before planting them out. The EarthCorps report recommends planting 550 new trees in the park. Most of these will need to be shade-tolerant evergreens because all the open areas are taken. Cedars transplant well and have a high survival rate. They tend to grow slowly in the shade, so the three hundred cedar trees won't really impact the character of the forest for several decades. They can live for at least 1500 years, and they will play a dominant role, along with western hemlock, far in the future.

Some of the significant cedars are already giants. The one in the picture above is about four dogs wide. A cedar at Quinalt Lake has a circumference of 63 feet and a height of 159 feet. If the cedar pictured gets that big, with a diameter of twenty feet, the trail will have to be moved to a new alignment. In a few centuries. Cedars can grow in wet or dry, sunny or shady locations. They are not the dominant tree in most forests simply because they don't grow as fast as Douglas-firs and hemlocks. Cedars can take abuse. One near the middle of the stairs bears a long scar from another tree falling on it. It has wound about twelve feet long, but it is slowly healing that wound, covering the dead wood with new bark. Another cedar near the eagle viewing bench has been knocked over, and it has grown sideways for years.

I saw an eagle for the first time this year. Many other people had reported seeing them in recent weeks and months, but this is the first time I had seen one in over a month. I have been looking, just not at the right times.

Stone #10 is pictured below on someone's newspaper box. The mossy box is not in the park, but I walk by it every day.

2012-01-09T23:21:00.000-08:00

Pictured above is a Chinese fisherman hauling his nets. Actually, it is stone sculpture I found this afternoon, made by an unknown artist (not me). I suppose it could also depict a volunteer wearing a rain hat, hauling away a bundle of ivy.

Ivy is the most critical element of the ecosystem at ELP. If left unchecked, it will destroy the entire forest. I have cut through ivy trunks four inches thick with 25 annual rings inside. It can pull down trees in wind storms. It displaces native lichens and mosses and licorice ferns. Ivy blankets the ground so no new evergreen trees can seed themselves. Ivy never sleeps. Many trees in the park have been cleared of ivy once, but it is creeping back up them again. If you simply cut ivy on the trunk of a tree, it will grow new vines across the gap and reanimate the severed portion, eventually fusing and healing the cut. You have to cut a two foot gap in an ivy vine to keep it from reattaching itself. If you rip off some ivy and throw it on the ground, it will put out roots and turn into a new plant.

Ivy is one of the Gang of Four, along with holly, laurel, and Himalayan blackberry. These four plants are constantly spreading in the park. They are aided by European starlings, another invasive species. These four are evergreen and bird dispersed. Himalayan blackberry is not exactly evergreen, officially, but it does often hold its leaves over the winter, ratty but still green. Starlings eat the fruit of these four invaders and spread the seeds far and wide. If ELP were completely free of ivy, volunteers would still need to patrol the park for seedlings imported by starlings.

A visitor to ELP doesn't need to leave the trail to find a strand of ivy. It is right beside the trail in many places, so you can grab your strand of ivy to take home as payment for use of the park. If 30,000 strands of ivy are hauled away this year, Eagle Landing Park will be significantly healthier. I've hauled away nine strands so far.

The dogs and I walked four miles today, for 27 total miles on the year. Stone #9 is pictured below.

2012-01-08T17:27:00.001-08:00

I had packed up my camera equipment and started to leave because I didn't think the sunset would catch fire. I took one look back before I headed up the stairs. Good thing.

It started out as a sunny, clear day. The empty ferry headed back south, with the Olympics in the background.

The alder trees down at the beach are beginning to sprout catkins, getting ready for spring already. They just lost their leaves a few weeks ago. Alders are critical to salmon. They lean out over the water, and bugs nibbling on their leaves fall into the water, supplying vital nutrition to young salmon. While I was at the beach this evening, I saw a small fish jump out of the water. Couldn't tell what it was. Alders are important to the rest of the forest as well. They grow fast and die young. While they are growing, they fix nitrogen in the soil. A bacteria called Frankia grows in nodules on alder roots, supplying nitrogen to the alder tree and making it grow fast. Some of that nitrogen is released into the soil. When alders die, they leave behind fertilized soil to benefit the longer-lived trees. Many alders along the beach have tipped into the tide, one by one. They grow crooked on the steep bluff. You can tell there was a landslide in the 30's just north of the park, because all of the alders in the slide path are the same age, about 90 years old. Fallen alders are also in important element of a healthy forest. Coarse woody debris provides habitat for small critters like salamanders, and rotting logs enrich the soil. An alder may be more alive after it dies than when it was alive. As alders die, before they fall, they provide homes and meals for flickers, pilleated woodpeckers, and other birds and small mammals. The rotting wood becomes home to bugs, and woodpeckers rip apart the soft wood to get at the bugs and grubs. Alders are also a substrate for lichens, when pollution does not inhibit them.

Stone #8 is pictured with a clam shell, and with an unidentified lichen on a boulder. Below is one last picture of the sunset.

2012-01-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

Stone #7, pictured above, sits atop a chunk of tile, a chunk of brick, and an alarmingly white stone. The puppy wonders if any of them are edible. In the background is West Seattle. Four dogs helped with today's investigation of the park: Komu, Kelsy, Karma, and Porter. Karma is on loan from a friend. We walked a couple of miles in and around the park. We saw a ferry boat, riding high in the water with no cars, coming from Tacoma to points north. It is very unusual to see a ferry outside of one of the normal routes. About two dozen sailboats slid quietly by. A common goldeneye is in the picture of the ferry boat, but too small to see at this resolution.

On the walk through, I counted about 70 Douglas-firs over eight inches in diameter, and maybe thirty smaller Douglas-firs. Douglas-firs dominate the structure of the forest and influence everything else in the park. While the maples may die out in 300 years, those 100 firs should live to be as old as 1,500 years. If they live that long, they will change the flight pattern of planes approaching SeaTac because they will be 300 to 400 feet tall. 100 Douglas-firs is not very many for 6 acres. After we walked through the park, we walked around the block just uphill of the park, bounded by 25th, 24th, 146th, and 149th. This block is probably about four acres and contains about 17 houses, but it has about 75 Douglas-firs over 8 inches in diameter. This block also has many expansive lawns, and it does not feel dark and crowded with that many firs. ELP could have a much higher density of Douglas-firs, but it won't because they need sun to get started. I have planted a little Douglas-fir in every last little patch of sun. If these 100 Douglas-firs live another thousand years, they will be surrounded by hundreds of cedars, hemlocks, and grand firs. Those three species are shade-tolerant. 1,500 years from now, all the Douglas-firs will be gone, unless there is a massive fire or landslide that opens up the forest to sunlight again.

So, for the next couple hundred years, big leaf maple will determine the character of the forest. From 2212 to 3012, giant Douglas-firs will set the tone as other shade-tolerant evergreens fill in. From the year 3333 on, Eagle Landing Park will be dominated by Western hemlock, with some cedars and Grand firs. When those giant Douglas-firs fall in the 31st century, they will make nurse logs for hemlock trees to grow on. Western hemlock loves to grow on rotting wood. I wish I could be around to see the forest evolve. I can peer into the future, in a way, by visiting the last remnants of old growth forest around Puget Sound.

The eagles' nest tree is a Douglas-fir, and so is the perch tree, the only Douglas-fir between the top and the bottom of the staircase. Before the park opened, three Douglas-firs stood at the top of the property, where 25th Avenue meets SW 149th Place. To make the driveway, one of the three was cut down. It is now lying hidden in the salmonberry and thimbleberry, between the street and the parking lot. Theoretically, that fallen tree is supposed to become a nurse log, where huckleberries and baby hemlocks will grow. So far, it is not rotten enough. You can identify Douglas-fir by its rough, thick bark. This thick bark helps it survive fires. The reason Douglas-fir was the dominant tree when Europeans arrived in 1850 is that wildfires regularly cleared out patches of the endless forest. The giant old Douglas-firs were able to survive the fires because of their thick, insulating bark, and because their lowest branches were high above the flames. After those fires, Douglas-fir was the champion of colonizing those open, sunny, barren places. With Eagle Landing Park being surrounded by city, it's hard to imagine any scenario where a large fire would be allowed to continue that pattern of renewal.

So, as Eagle Landing Park becomes healthy, it won't necessarily follow the trajectory of healthy forests prior to 1850. It will become something new, natural and healthy in most respects, but always somewhat artificial because of its isolation and the proximity of houses. For now, the main goal in making the park healthy is to remove the invasive species. Pictured below is stone #7 in the grooves of Douglas-fir bark.

2012-01-06T15:06:00.001-08:00


Chrysothrix chlorina

The reader may have guessed by now that I launched into this project without a firm plan. That's okay because I have a goal of learning about the park, and writing about the park has led me to new ideas. Today's brainstorm is that I should be collecting 365 species over the course of a year. Birders collect sightings of birds and make their lists. Similarly, I will collect sightings of all the species I can identify within the park. This would include birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, vascular plants, lichens, fungi, and possibly soil microbes if I can get the right equipment. More than 365 species live in the park, if you include insects and microbes. The challenge will be in seeing them and correctly identifying them. Besides being a game and a challenge, it will also help me learn what Eagle Landing Park is about. What species live here and what species are absent can tell us about the health of the forest. Knowing what is lacking may help guide the restoration process. I will try to describe a species a day, including many that are new discoveries to me. As it turns out, I have discussed five native species in the first five days of the year, just like I knew what I was doing. They were Lobaria pulmonaria, Acer Macrophyllum, Polypodium glycyrrhiza, Tremella mesenterica, and Rickenella fibula, or lettuce lichen, big leaf maple, licorice fern, witch's butter, and a funny little mushroom without a common name.

Today's species, which I had seen before but not identified, is Chrysothrix chlorina, I believe. I would need a microscope to be certain. This little yellow lichen grows on the volcanic rock on the bulkhead at the south end of the beach. It is a crustose lichen that grows on the east and west coasts of North America. Lichens in general can be an indicator of pollution, and the absence of certain lichens can indicate the presence of pollution. For example, alder trees in the Olympics and Cascades, away from civilization, are often so covered with lichens that you can't see any of the bark. The alders in Eagle Landing Park have bark mostly free of lichens, suggesting pollution. We already know we get heavy pollution from cars, planes, and boats. Hopefully, in twenty years from now, the lichens will return to ELP when we have figured out how to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. Our walk today extended to Seahurst Park, and I noticed that the alders deep in the middle of the park were 75% covered in lichens, perhaps indicating that the forest had filtered out most of the pollutants by the time the air reached the middle of the park. Chrysothrix chlorina may not be terribly important to the health of the park, but the park may be critical to the health of many unnoticed species like this.

On today's walk, I also sighted the boundaries of zone 5 and took pictures of the plants in that zone. It is about a third of an acre, and it has ivy in less than 5% of it, compared to the entire park having 65% coverage in ivy according to the EarthCorps report. Zone 5 does have holly and laurel, though, which can be tough to eradicate. I will use a weed wrench when I can, or possibly try to dig the roots out. I have learned, after ten years of removing invasive species, to distinguish holly from any native plant, but it can be a little tricky for the beginner. Pictured below are a holly leaf and a leaflet (a portion of the whole leaf) of tall Oregon grape, Mahonia aquafolium. Can you tell which is which? They are pictured with Stone #6, by the way.

Oregon grape is on the left and holly is on the right. There are several good guide books to help you identify native plants, but I usually use Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon.

Kelsy and Komu and I walked five miles today, adding up to 18 for the year. We also collectedour strand of ivy. I didn’t see anytrash to pick up, for once. I started this spreadsheet which will eventually contain all 365 species identified this year. We also saw a bufflehead.

2012-01-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

What would Eagle Landing Park look like if it was healthy? EarthCorps prepared a report on that subject, and I hope that someone besides me will read it. Prior to the EarthCorps report, I had chopped up the park into 18 sections that I could identify by landmarks, as seen in this map. Stewart Wechsler, a steward who volunteers in Lincoln Park, recommends that restoration should begin with those areas that are healthy and free of invasive species, and expand outward from there. Although no section of ELP is currently free of invasives, section 5 on the map is the closest thing to healthy. Following Stewart's advice, I will work on section 5 this year to see if I can get that third of an acre completely free of invasive species. I shouldn't need to do much planting in that section, because it is already quite full of native plants. They should fill in any spaces left by the removal of invasive species. If I tackle one section per year, I can have the whole park healthy in just 18 years. Maybe I can recruit some help to make it go a little faster.

Stewart Wechsler is a fountain of information on the ecology of the Seattle area. He will be giving guided tours of local parks this weekend, and you can find the details at his web site. I hope to make at least one of these field trips. Stewart and I are two of the 512 graduates of the Stewardship Program since 1996. Together, these WNPS volunteers have contributed over $1.6 Million of restoration and education services to local communities over the last 15 years. Although I am not as knowledgeable about native plants and ecosystems as Stewart is, I keep learning, hoping to catch up. The trouble is, he keeps learning, and faster, so I may never catch up.

I have certainly learned from my mistakes. Money and time have been wasted by planting native trees at the wrong time in the wrong places. Compared to the 204 trees I counted the other day that I have planted, there may be another fifty or so that I planted that did not survive. Also, I have cleared areas of invasive species time after time only to have those areas become re-infested. So, if I succeed in cleaning up section 5, when I move on to the next section I will also have to keep an eye on the work I did in 2012 to make sure it isn't undone. Another mistake I have made is the removal of a native when I thought I was pulling an invasive weed. Rule number one in restoration: don't kill it if you aren't 100% sure what it is. This park has a healthy but dwindling population of native honeysuckle. Unfortunately, many volunteers with good intentions have killed certain honeysuckle plants, thinking it was an invasive weed like ivy or clematis. Not all vines are evil. I hope someone who reads this feels inspired to help with the restoration of ELP, but don't pull it if you aren't 100% sure it's an invasive species.

Stone number five is pictured above, to the right of the previous four stones. I also collected my strand of ivy, two bags of trash, and 3 miles, for a total of 13 miles this year. All three dogs came with me.

2012-01-04T14:08:00.000-08:00

A perfect day for epiphytes! The dogs and I walked in the rain, and saw only one other person in the park. I had my boots and floppy hat on, and my iPhone was comfortably encased in its Otterbox, so we were prepared to enjoy the rain. Also enjoying the rain were the epiphytes, organisms that grow on other plants, like licorice fern. In 1849, before colonization, licorice fern was common in all the forests of the Puget Sound basin, according to a report by Ray Larson of the UW. It is much more abundant in Seahurst Park, a mile to the north. Eagle Landing Park has small patches here and there on the maple trees. Until recently, ELP had a serious ivy problem, covering most of the trees, and displacing epiphytes like licorice fern. Now that most of the vertical ivy has been killed, licorice fern should be able to spread and florish. Growing on the rough bark of maples, this fern relies on rainfall for moisture and minerals. It is lush and green in winter, and often dies back in the dry days of summer. It is called licorice fern because the roots taste like licorice.

The witch’s butter that we saw yesterday tends to “bloom” in winter during the heavy rains. The mosses and lichens that cover madrone trunks and cherry branches also flourish during this wet season. Today I discovered a lichen that I had not seen in ELP before: Lobaria pulmonaria. This is an exciting discovery because Lobaria is thought to be an indicator of forest age and health. Old growth forests that are not subject to pollution or logging are covered with this lichen in their canopies. A constant rain of fragments of Lobaria is a significant source of nitrogen in the soil and helps the giant trees of the old growth forests grow fast, large, and strong. If I found Lobaria at eye level, hopefully that means there is much more growing in the canopy, out of sight, contributing to the health of the forest. A good book to learn about Lobaria’s contribution to forest health is Jon Luoma’s Hidden Forest: Biography of an Ecosystem. It is an excellent book that I recommend to anyone. Obviously, the book had an impact on me because I unconsciously borrowed from the title of his book in naming this blog. I will probably refer to Luoma’s excellent book many times in the coming 361 days.

The Washington Native Plant Society will host a talk about lichens:

Thursday, Jan. 5, 2012, at 7 PM. The program will be held at the Main Hall, Center for Urban Horticulture, 3501 NE 41st St., Seattle, WA 98195. Lichens of Western Washington – Their Contributions to Ecosystems by Katherine Glew, PhD, UW Herbarium Curatorial Associate, Lichen Collection

I collected stone 4 and a strand of ivy, and we walked about two miles in the rain, for 10 miles on the year. Coming back home, Kelsy and Komu enjoyed being dried off with warm, dry towels. Porter enjoyed sleeping on the couch, warm and dry, while we walked in the rain.

Lobaria

Licorice fern

Stone #4 on top of the cairn.

2012-01-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

If Eagle Landing Park could speak, what kind of visitor would she like? How can I be a contributing member of her ecosystem? The premise of this Biography is that I can serve the park by being her memory, but as I walked through the park today I thought of other ways I could benefit her on a daily basis. In addition to being a brain for the park, I can also be a white blood cell. As I move through her, I can identify and remove that which does not belong. Today I collected cans, bottles, trash, and ivy.

It occurred to me, a few days too late, that I should have called this project 365 Strands, and every day I could collect another strand of ivy. Well, I think I’ll leave the name unchanged, but the ivy collection is appealing. If every visitor to the park took home a strand of ivy, that would be 30,000 strands gone over the course of a year, which, unfortunately, would still leave plenty of strands for the next year. I am going to make a big ball of ivy with my strands, but other people might make baskets or mats. I took three strands of ivy today, to get caught up for the year.

I collected dog waste, of course, but I don’t think I will make a big ball out of that. It went straight to the trash can. I also picked up bottles and cans today.

Another thing I can collect is mileage. I am supposed to walk 5 miles a day for my health, and a healthy person is less of a burden on the planet and on society. Today, because of time constraints, the dogs and I walked the shortest distance from the front door to the beach without taking any shortcuts off the trail. The distance from the entrance of the park to the beach is about a third of a mile. Adding in the walk to the park entrance, today’s round trip was 1.14 miles according to the GPS. Yesterday we walked about five miles because we walked around Lake Burien with my brother and my nephew after walking through ELP. On January 1st, we walked about 2 miles, just going a little beyond the park. So, that makes 8 miles in three days.

Among today’s interesting discoveries were a yellow fungus and a yellow mushroom. The slimy fungus thing I had seen before. If my Googling is correct, it is called Witch’s Butter, Tremella mesenterica. The little orangy-yellow mushroom might be Rickenella fibula but I’m not certain. It looked like a tiny yellow flower blooming beside the trail. It is pictured with stone 3.

So, I think I have established a pattern for the year.

1. Collect a stone.

2. Collect an ivy strand.

3. Collect miles.

4. Take pictures.

5. Tell something about the park.

This will help me build a symbiotic relationship with the park, where I am a beneficial member of my local ecosystem. The park gets healthier, I get healthier, I spend time with my dogs, I enjoy time in the woods, I learn something new, and some aspect of the park is recorded and preserved for history. This is the essence of a symbiotic relationship: that all parties win, and that the components of the relationship become something more than what they would have been alone.

2012-01-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

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.

2012-01-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

The stone pictured is the first of 365 I hope to collect this year as I walk through Eagle Landing Park and record observations of the ecosystem. The Park is alive, of course, a biosphere arbitrarily sliced out of nature by encroaching houses. The six acres of Eagle Landing Park are in relatively poor health compared to the state of the endless forest in 1849, before colonization by Europeans. It has been my goal for the last ten years or so, and it will continue to be my objective for the rest of my life, to see this small forest returned to health, at least as much as possible given the ocean of pavement surrounding it.

I want to have a symbiotic relationship with these woods. Of course, the forest provides more to me than I ever could return. Oxygen, water filtration, air cleansing, beauty, peace, and habitat in my back yard that I can spend the rest of my life learning about. I have learned the ninety native plant species, and the twenty or so invasive plant species. I have learned about fifty of the one hundred plus bird species. I continue to learn something new every day. In return for this health and wonder provided by the Park, I want to provide a service that increases the health and wellbeing of the Park. On today’s walk, I counted 204 trees that I have planted in an effort to restart the natural regeneration cycle and displace the invasive species. I have planted hundreds of other plants and removed tons of ivy and laurel and blackberries over the years. This year, I want to provide the service of memory for the Park. I wish to write a biography of this entity, captured in 365 snapshots, 365 stones. On December 31st, 2012, I will take my jar full of pebbles down to the beach and set them free. After a year of daily walks through the Park with my dogs, I hope the Park is a better place than it was at the start of the year, healthier. Whether or not the Park sees a net improvement in health, these 365 stones will record what is happening, what the forest is like, and why it prospers or languishes.

Today, I took a picture of a very unusual cloud pattern above Eagle Landing Park. I also tried to shoot a panorama at sunset, but Vashon Island ended up fragmented, not quite stitched together properly. Porter, Kelsy, and Komu were my canine companions today. We walked two and half miles in and near the park. I had to lift my twelve-year-old dog up from the beach because the stairs are still broken at least thirteen months after they were initially wiped out by storm-driven waves. We did not see the eagles today, and it has been roughly one month since I last saw them. The woods are very bright, much brighter than the height of summer, because all the leaves are off the trees.