The Street-Smart Naturalist by David B. Williams
I had to leave Seattle for a week, right when I was getting a feel for my new city. To keep up my momentum, I went into Kirkland’s Parkplace Books and asked for a book on Seattle that I could read while I was gone.
They pointed me to a book called “The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle,” which is turning out to be a very interesting book indeed. It’s like a field guide to the city. It talks about the geology, plants, bugs, animals (eagles, geese, etc.), the geography, and so on, that exist in and around the urban area of Seattle.
I especially like that Williams wrote the book in an engaging, first-person narrative style. I haven’t even finished reading it yet, and I’m already recommending it to people. What a great idea!
Yeah, it’s an excellent book and very different from your typical city guide. The trees that predate the European arrival and managed to evade destruction ever since are particularly interesting to me. There’s a spectacular Gary Oak (referred to in the book as the Oak Manor oak) where Summit intersects Belmont on Capitol Hill; it’s just a couple of short blocks from Top Pot so you can pick up coffee and a donut before or after visiting the tree.
In Austin we have a Very Old oak, called Treaty Oak. Some crackpot tried to poison it a decade or two back (half succeeded), and it was one of the few times both the Extreme Liberals and Extreme Conservatives of that town united in outrage. It was astonishing how much hot water that guy got in for attempted herbicide.
Love this book. I did a short interview with the author a while back.
OH! I remember the Treaty Oak poisoning! There was this huge effort to save the Treaty Oak Acorns… It seems like the sale of the Treaty Oak acorns was paying for Treaty Oak rescue or something. I’m a little fuzzy on the details. I was a starving student at the time and wouldn’t have been able to get an acorn.