Street Smart Naturalist

I like to think I am pretty good at reading maps. I understand topo lines and can tell a valley from a ridge from a summit. I know to look for scale and that sometimes 39-foot cliffs don’t show up on a map with 40-foot contours. I also know that maps can lie and mislead and that people use them for political or other sinister purposes. That being written, I didn’t expect to question my navigational talents via a small map illustrating part of a Washington State Park. But I was.Over the weekend, my

2025 began with a burst of color in our yard. Along the wall in our backyard, I spotted a patch of brilliance, the astonishing yellow-gold of a slime mold. It looked a bit like a two-dimensional broccoli, with radiating stems topped by little balls, each about 2 millimeters wide. The growth on fir needles, cones, and sticks was less diverse, basically rows of lemon-colored balls. I have seen slime molds many times before on hikes but never in our yard; I took it for a good omen for the

I have long been enamored with maps so I thought I’d begin 2025 by exploring one of my favorite’s. In 1891, Augustus Koch produced his Bird’s Eye View of Seattle, a glorious illustration of the city. As he noted on the map, it came out just 18 months after Seattle’s Great Fire. Koch was illustrating the city’s rise from the ashes.Like many his age, 49 years old, Augustus Koch had fought in the Civil War, where he had been draughtsman making maps. For the past two decades he had traveled the country

Happy Holidays to all.A couple of weeks ago I explored the world of ghost creeks in Seattle. Now, I’d like to turn to ghost lakes. Like ghost creeks, these are bodies of water that have been overlooked, buried, or long forgotten. They are far rarer in the city though some still rise from the dead and haunt their former landscapes. I know of only two, Seattle ghost lakes that merited names. The northern one was Oak Lake. Located roughly between North 100th and 107th streets and Ashworth Avenue North

As a map and geography dork, one of my little pleasures is being a gnomon. This is particularly true when my shadow is directly in front of me as I walk north on a city street. When that happens, I know it is celestial noon because most streets in most cities are laid out due north/south, which means you also have a gnomonic ability. Therefore, I was confused when walking up Fifth Avenue in downtown Seattle. (I was also a bit taken aback simply by the sun being out in late November.) The reason for

One of my joys of discovery is heading down an absorbing path of seeking out more information in newspapers and scientific journals, reaching out to friends and colleagues, or delving into the books waiting to be probed on my bookshelf. No matter where these paths lead me, I feel I am rewarded by the knowledge I gain and the connections I make.I have had this happen many times in my writing life, including this encounter on a very cold winter day. My wife and I were walking with a pal of ours at

Greetings all. Several people suggested that they would prefer the podcast and newsletter packaged in one email, so here it is. Again, any thoughts on this experiment with podcasts would be great. As occurs in many cities, ghosts thread the landscape of Seattle, quietly passing by us everyday. Endless and ceaseless in their travels, despite some of our efforts to thwart their movement, they occur in every neighborhood. None of them call attention to themselves, though they occasionally burst out and

Greetings readers of the Street Smart Newsletter. I am trying something new and am creating a podcast based on my newsletter. As you will hear, it’s pretty basic, just me reading the newsletter. I have no idea how this will go but figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try. My plan, if this works, is to record my future newsletters and possibly to go back and record some of my previous ones, if I can figure out to do so without having to send you announcements about that.If you already have a