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.

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. 

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.

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. 

 

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.

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. 

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.