Street Smart Naturalist

About Street Smart Naturalist

A free newsletter oriented toward building stronger connections to place through stories of human and natural history in the Pacific Northwest streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com (https://streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

David B. Williams

Category

science · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Dec 2024

Latest episode

5 Nov 2026

Latest episodes

97 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   5 Nov 2026

   The Cascade’s Missing Mountains

   For too many years, too many people thought that the Native people of the Pacific Northwest didn’t venture into the mountains. This idea wasn’t just a trope of settlers and other newcomers, who often employed the concept as a means to justify making mining claims, harvesting trees, or taking land. So ingrained was this characterization of the Native people’s avoidance of the high country that historians, ethnologists, and archaeologists failed to even look to the mountains as landscapes valued and visited by the area’s long term residents. And, yet Indigenous people who lived in the vicinity of these mountains have incorporated their presence into their culture since time immemorial. Or as Rick McClure, a retired United States Forest Service (USFS) archaeologist, and Nathan Reynolds, formerly an ethnoecologist with the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, have written, stories centered on the Cascades run through people’s veins. In a scholarly article, they posit that stories help teach life lessons not only between people but also between people and the spiritual forces they share their home with.1 The volcanoes link past and present, myth time and daily life, landscape and spirituality. They are more than just physical features; they are members of the community, living entities that impact people’s lives. One way these relationships manifest themselves is in the many names by which the volcanoes are known. For example, a recent analysis by Puyallup Tribal language consultant Zalmai ʔəswəli Zahir, listed twenty different names for what is known as Mount Rainier, such as dəxʷwak’ʷ (Twana) and taqʷuʔman (Puyallup).2 The names of other volcanoes include kweq’ smánit (Nooksack) and kwelshán (Lummi) for Mount Baker; tda-ko-buh-ba (Sauk-Suiattle) for Glacier Peak; pátu (Cowlitz and Yakama) for Mount Adams; and lawetlat’la (Cowlitz and Yakama) for Mount St. Helens. On so many levels, it’s clear that the region’s long term residents have long visited and explored the Cascades. Ironically, it appears that non-Native people were the ones who weren’t visiting the Cascades. Or, they weren’t very good observers of the mountains, at least as illustrated by early maps. Consider the state’s five volcanoes. In 1792, when George Vancouver sailed into the Whulge, or what he called Puget Sound, he saw three of the five. He named them Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, and Mount St. Helens, which led to their subsequent placement on virtually every map to follow. Such was not the case with Glacier Peak or Mount Adams, which took decades for early explorers and cartographers apparently to notice and to place on their maps. The name Mount Adams wasn’t coined until 1839, when an energetic and enthusiastic promoter of Oregon, Hall Jackson Kelley, proposed that the Cascades should be known as the President’s Range. With their bold summits rising thousands of feet, the mountains are topped by “barren sides in the naked deformity of rock, lava, cinders, or whatever else might have come glowing…from the deep-caverned volcanic cauldrons below,” wrote Kelley in a Memoir he sent to the US Congress. Kelley gave little reasoning for his choice though it’s an obvious attention getter and one designed to appeal to politicians. Perhaps, in an attempt to make his names stand out and give them precedence over other names, Kelley substituted Adams for the long standing name of Mt. Hood in Oregon. Further illustrating the lack of geographic knowledge about Adams, other writers and travelers moved Adams north and applied it to Mount St. Helens, though only in written descriptions and not on maps. Not until 1853 does Adams begin to show up on a map (and most subsequent ones) and claim its place as the fourth volcano in the state. In particular, the Pacific Railroad survey—under the leadership of Isaac I. Stevens and with information provided by my pal George B. McClellan (https://streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/p/lava-lava-lava)—produced one of the more detailed maps to include Adams. The map, however, put Adams 20 miles east of where it actually exists. Glacier Peak presented a far greater challenge to settlers, miners, and explorers, none of whom mention it in 19th century journals or notes. Either they didn’t see the great volcano or didn’t deem it worthy of mentioning. The name does not appear in print until 1880 when an unnamed reporter for the Columbia Twice-a-Week Chronicle (Dayton, WA) wrote on September 11 that a group of hunters and prospectors were heading up toward Glacier Peak. “This peak is comparatively unknown even to the people of the state in which it lies.” August 31, 1890, Fairhaven Herald The name would not appear again in the newspaper until 1889, followed again the next year. Published in the Fairhaven Herald on August 31, 1890, the story mentions a F. I. Dunham, who was seeking out a low pass for the Great Northern RR. Dunham didn’t reach the summit but did report on the peak’s volcanic origins, as illustrated by “ancient lava beds” he saw. The article further noted that Dunham and his partner Tompkins were assisted by a Native guide “who was familiar with all the places through which the Indians were in the habit of bringing their ponies.” Intriguingly, Glacier Peak, with the modifier Great, appeared on a map in 1874. How the mapmakers got that information and why the name didn’t spread is unknown: the name wouldn’t appear again on a map until 1892, in W.H. Pumphrey’s Map of Western Washington. One reason the new name may have begun to spread can be seen on Pumphrey’s map. Just below Glacier Peak is the Monte Cristo mining district, which in the early 1890s was entering its heyday as the most famous mining area in the state. The name Glacier Peak eventually became widespread but maps as late as 1904 were still omitting it and some cartographers grappled with the spelling, such as Glazier Peak. Mr. Dunham’s recognition of the volcanic origin of Glacier Peak is notable because geologists didn’t report that it was a volcano until 1900. Two reasons contributed to the lack of understanding: the first was that Glacier lacked the classic volcanic cones of Rainier, Adams, Baker, and St. Helens. Nor had it erupted in the time when non-Native people explored and lived in the region. Glacier did, though, erupt between 1700 and 1800 and produced pumice and ash, along with lahars but geologists didn’t find the evidence until the 1980s. “The mountains at present active are Baker, St. Helens and as it has recently been ascertained Mt. Hood and probably Mt. Rainier also, though to a degree hardly perceptible from below. The Indians on Puget Sound state that another smaller peak to the north of Mount Rainier once smoked.” Report of George Gibbs Upon the Geology of the Central Portion of Washington Territory May 1, 1854 From myth time to modern time, volcanoes have been central to the residents of this region. The mountains have shaped landscape and culture. They have inspired us and they have scared us. Esteemed for their permanence yet also prone to self-destruction, Washington’s volcanoes are our state’s quintessential symbols, and with that comes a rich history of connection to their human… Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe (https://streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   29 Oct 2026

   The Cascades’ Most Commanding View

   The summit of Darland Mountain is nothing special compared to other classic Cascades’ peaks. No crags, cliffs, or steep rocky parts, it’s flat and open and hard to distinguish the actual high point. You can reach it by hiking or cross country skiing but when I visited it, on a warm September day, I arrived in a truck, bouncing along a 4wd road that crossed over Darland. The road, at least, is unusual because it’s the second highest in the state, reaching to 6,981 feet. I first learned about Darland from its biggest fan, the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. (He referred to it as Darling though no one knows why the name changed.) As a young man in the 1910s, Douglas hiked and camped throughout this part of the Cascades, east of Yakima, where he grew up. In his splendid memoir, Of Men and Mountains, he wrote of the summit of Darland: “This is without a doubt the most commanding view in the Cascades.” Heady words for such a low-key summit but as Douglas pointed out, to the east lay the golden brown valleys around Yakima; to the south, in Oregon, Mount Jefferson and Mount Hood; to the west, rose Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens, in Douglas’ day, a perfectly conical peak; and north of Adams, the jagged Goat Rocks and mighty Rainier. Growing on the slopes of Darland, wrote Douglas, were rich gardens of plants: lupine, penstemon, scarlet gilia, saxifrage, gentian, larkspur, mission bells, tiger lily, monkshood, arnica, Jacobs-ladder, St. Johns wort, wallflower, mallow, paintbrush, valerian, cinquefoil, and a “host of others.” On the summit, he found his favorite, the splendid avalanche lily; “it’s stimulus is the raw wind, cold thin earth, chill nights, and icy waters of the Cascades.” After reading Douglas’ book I had wanted to see the summit and had the opportunity when I tagged along with two researchers from Central Washington University, Dr. Ali Scoville and her student Jenna Chapman. They were here to study Clark’s Nutcrackers, a handsome gray bird with black wings and prominent bill. Well known to many visitors to the Cascades as camp robbers, the birds are smart, resourceful, and inquisitive, and central to one of the most enduring and important ecological relationships in the Cascades As Douglas noted from his time on Darland, nutcrackers relish the nuts of the summit’s most distinctive tree, whitebark pine. The nutcrackers were “feverishly tearing the cones apart for the seed…work[ing] the tops of the trees.” The pines reminded him of “the wind-blown trees that the Knights of the Round Table, according to Tennyson, looked for among the crags.” I know not of what these fine, medieval gentlemen sought but think that whitebarks are one of the loveliest trees in the Cascades. They are also one of the most overlooked, losing out to the big trees below, which grab all the attention and far more of the visitors. But those who venture higher are rewarded in seeing what ecologists such as Ali call a keystone and a foundational species of the heights. By providing food, water, and nesting sites for other species, the impact of whitebark pines is essential to the community health of the ecosystem. Because of them, numerous plants and animals have been able to colonize and thrive, often after the ecosystem has been disturbed. Without whitebark pines, the high elevations of the Cascades, particularly east of the divide—as well as large swaths of the Rocky Mountains—would be far less diverse, and because this ecosystem crowns the mountains, the effects spread down mountain multiplying the importance of the trees. We first encountered whitebarks about 2,000 feet lower, as we ascended the Middle Fork Ahtanum Creek valley. I was immediately taken with the architecture of multiple arms, skirting up to form a broad crown, so unlike the surrounding subalpine firs and their classic arrowhead shape. The arms mimicked the base of many whitebarks, which consisted of several trunks sprouting next to each other, like what happens in a garden when you sew too many seeds together. In fact, this is what occurs with whitebark pines. Not only do Clark’s Nutcracker relish whitebark cones, but they are also the principal disperser of the trees’ nuts, or seeds, which is the key to the relationship between the species. After harvesting nuts, which they store in a pouch under their tongue, the birds fly (hundreds of yards up to 18 miles) from their source and bury, or plant, the seeds. They do so by excavating a shallow trench with a side-to-side bill sweep, depositing the nuts, and then covering the trench with pebble, twigs, and other debris. A typical cache contains one to five seeds. When the seeds germinate, they often do so en masse and generate several, close-growing, fused or contiguous trunks, again so different from the typical shape of most other Cascade trees. At the summit, the whitebark pine further stood out, primarily because a lightning strike-caused fire burned 4,000 acres on the top of Darland in August 2009. The trees’ multiple stems and many branches, crisp, bleached, and stark, created a forest of ghosts, beautiful yet ominous against the crystalline blue sky and backdrop of Mt. Adams. Unfortunately, wholesale deaths such as this might be the future for whitebark pines, in part because of fire but also because of disease, the outbreak of mountain pine beetles, and climate change. If whitebark populations continue to suffer, the effects will also spread to Clark’s nutcrackers, resulting in the complete rejiggering of this high-altitude ecosystem. “If we can understand why this change is occurring, then maybe we can do something about it,” says Ali. Ali’s words exemplify one of the central themes of my book In the Range of Fire and Ice: the importance of research and better understanding the life histories of the plants and animals of the Cascades and how this can lead to better management. This stands out most clearly with Mount St. Helens where the concepts of ecological succession—the process of plants and animals replacing another species over time, such as in a disturbed habitat—were completely rewritten. This in turn has had significant implications for land management around the globe, all due to what scientists learned at the volcano. Other areas in which more research is helping include management of fire (on both sides of the Cascades), carnivores, such as wolverines and wolves, and whitebark pines. Not only do many of these studies rely on new research but also on what is known as TEK, or Traditional Ecological Knowledge. This is knowledge obtained through observation and experience gleaned from living on and in place for generations. Such knowledge, practices, and beliefs may be held in stories, legends, myth, and place names, as well as simply being passed down from elders. Long disparaged by non-Native scientists, TEK is becoming more and more widely accepted by researchers, who have begun to realize the limitations of what is often described as Western science and to acknowledge that there is more than one way to learn about and from plants and animals. None of the new and shared knowledge guarantees either good management or long term stewardship but it does, at least, point in a better direction and a way to a better future for humans and the more-than-human world. I can only hope that such ideas continue to spread as more and more people continue to take a saner, long term, science-based approach to preserving, conserving, and managing the precious ecosystems that we call home. November 5, 2026 - Kingfisher Books - Coupeville, Whidbey Island - 5:30 PM - I will be discussing In the Range of Fire and Ice. RSVP for event. (https://kingfisherbookstore.com/events/6441020261105) Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe (https://streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   22 Oct 2026

   Pikas, Mountain Goats, and the Milky Way

   Marjorie and I had a lovely trip up into the Cascades this past weekend, the highlights of which were pikas, a mountain goat, and the Milky Way. We were backpacking just past the Kendall Katwalk—the famous ledge of rock blasted into a shear rock face in 1975—and spent the night near Ridge Lake., about eight miles from Snoqualmie Pass. PikaI don’t think we have heard or seen as many pikas on any recent hike as we did on this one. They seemed to be everywhere they were supposed to be, that is amid the fields of scree (which would be a great name for a rock band!). We saw many sprinting across their home landscape quickly and agilely as if they were on a flat level surface instead of one laced with pitfalls and boulders that dwarfed their fist-sized bodies. Below, I note the phenomenal all-terrain abilities of mountain goats, but pikas rival their larger alpine dwellers in their adroit movements across a challenging, uneven landscape and surely deserve more respect than they get. We also had the joy of being serenaded by pika eenks as we fell asleep, one of the most defining sounds of the higher mountain communities. Most were their typical single-call notes but occasionally one of them had what pikaologists describe as a “long call.” It consisted of call notes, either singular or a up to three, strung together for a few to 10 or 15 seconds. Males typically produce this sound whilst pursuing a mate though both sexes produce these long calls in autumn, often in territorial issues. No matter why my little pals were making such noises, they were a true pleasure to hear. Mountain GoatsAs we settled into our camp, I was looking at a steep cliff glowing in the sunset light when I noticed a brilliant white blob amidst the fall foliage. I suspected it was a mountain goat and confirmed it with my camera. Goatologists refer to topography such as this as escape terrain, which I like to think of as steep and fractured craggy cliffs where I would be unhappy, being the wimp that I am. (Depending on the study you read, escape terrain slope ranges from greater than 25° to up to 80°.) As the name implies, it’s the area where mountain goats go to get away from predators, and new research shows that having access to it may be essential in areas where predation risk is high. Short, stocky, and heavily muscled, mountain goats excel at moving through their rocky, cliff-studded landscape. They have a relatively light skull, at least compared to bighorn sheep, and narrow bodies, both of which aid in balance. When mountain goats climb not only do their legs aid in propelling them up, but they also use their massive neck muscles and a sort of “locked” humerus to help pull themselves up a cliff. But their greatest asset is the one with the most contact with the ground. Each of their four hooves has two, pointed toes made of hard keratin wrapped at the base in a pliant, coarse pad that extends beyond the keratin. This combination of pointed, hard, and textured acts like Velcro, providing traction on a variety of surfaces. In addition, mountain goats can spread their toes and grip uneven terrain, sort of like a wrench. It’s a bit of a stretch but mountain goats could be called a well-muscled mountain octopus equipped with eight clinging devices, a superb sense of balance, and low center of gravity. In his excellent book on mountain goats, Douglas Chadwick called them “possibly the best and most complete mountaineer that ever existed on any continent.” Milky WayOne of the advantages of an autumnal camping trip is an early sunset. Not only did the 6:20 disappearance of the sun mean darkness at a sane hour, as well as many hours of dark, it also meant getting up several times in the night, thus giving us several opportunities to revel in the Milky Way. Although not as bright and brilliant as we had seen it earlier in the summer in New Mexico, when the Milky Way was truly milky, this weekend’s hazy band of galaxies still thrilled us. When I see the Milky Way, I can’t help but feeling an atavistic, and jealous, reminder of our ancestor’s night skies, along with wonder and awe inspired by the countless particles of space, many with the potential for life such as on our planet. More than these deep senses though, seeing the Milky Way lets me know that I have reached a place of quiet darkness where I can experience the profound beauty of the cosmos. Doing so always makes Marjorie and me joyous and content. October 27 - Red Barn - Wenatchee River Institute (https://wenatcheeriverinstitute.org/programs/community/red-barn-events.html/event/2026/10/27/red-barn-event-range-of-fire-and-ice/572393) - Leavenworth - I have the honor and joy to be in conversation with the wonderful writer Ana Maria Spagna. It should be fun and perhaps a bit funny. By the way, here’s a link to a little article (https://www.leavenworthecho.com/stories/new-book-traces-human-and-natural-history-of-cascades,192490) in the Leavenworth newspaper about the book. Word of the Week - Kendall Katwalk - For several decades the Pacific Crest Trail lacked its namesake crest for the 50 miles between Snoqualmie Pass and Deception Pass. Then in 1975, legendary trail builder Elmo Warren and his team completed what is now known as the Kendall Katwalk, which Warren called “the hardest piece of trail ever built.” The route follows the proposed Cascade Crest Trail, which was planned in 1935 but never built, most likely due to money and safety issues. To build the walkway, Warren’s team used gas-driven Pionjar drills and dynamite to blast the 6-foot-wide trail into what was known as The Comb. They followed a route of red paint that had been dropped on the rock from a helicopter; the paint had been contained in beer bottles. According to one article, this 600 foot section cost $10,000 for foot to build,1 whereas another article stated the entire 51 mile section between Snoqualmie and Deception cost $800,000.2 I have not been able to determine who Kendall was though the peak name has existed since at least 1894, when it appears on a King County map. No one died or was injured during construction of the Katwalk though two people were injured, and one died blasting the sections to the north to Ridge Lake. Curiously, the name Kendall Katwalk does not start to appear in print until 1995. References: * Michael Egan, “The Kendall Katwalk," Columbia: The Magazine of the Northwest History, Winter 2005-06, pg. 38-42. * William Longwell, Jr., “North from Snoqualmie on the new Pacific Crest Trail,” The Mountaineer, 1977, published in July 1978, pg. 11-22. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe (https://streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

Who has been a guest on Street Smart Naturalist

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Kyle Artelle
• Paul Paquet
• John Gregg
• George McClellan
• Dr Andrew Smith

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