Monday April 4, 2016

Week 1

Date: Sunday, April 3rd, 2016

Weather: Partly cloudy

Temperature: 67˚

Location: The Dump No Material Whatever ravine, Wedgwood

The place I chose is a mysterious patch of wilderness in North Seattle, two blocks away from the house I grew up in. It has no label in google maps, and, as far as I've seen, there is no posted sign identifying it other than the strongly worded "Dump No Material Whatever" that marks my chosen entrance point off 40th avenue by 89th Street. It is owned by the city, but it isn't a park, its protected land (I'm not entirely sure what its protected for, I think it has something to do with preserving the watershed and ecosystem of Thornton creek which the ravine is connected to at the bottom of my hill.) For this reason its technically illegal for me to trespass on it, but I've been doing it for as long as I can remember– as do all of the children in the area with the same illicit curiosity. I'm mindful not to damage the environment– to tread carefully on the hillsides in order to prevent erosion, and never to venture too deeply. My chosen spot is just a few feet beyond the "Dump No" sign, on the hill side before it spills into the ravine bellow.

(That nameless patch of green is the Dump No Material Whatever ravine)

An average, run of the mill rich-people house

So I'm perched here, this hill, overlooking a spectacular ravine. This is a truly wild area, untouched by human activity aside from those excessively large homes, poorly hidden under vegetation and perched on the hill tops around me. The wealthy have long had an affinity for "nature," particularly "private nature," so they've done everything in their power to claim this neutral zone and seal it off from the rest of the community– even though the city has made it clear that it doesn't belong to anyone. But if they can't buy the forest, they will buy the view. So, even though I sit here in secret unowned land I can't help but feel like I am intruding in someone's back yard– in someone's private fantasy. 

But, whether I'm a trespasser or a guest, this space is still beautiful. The warm, gentle sunlight spills through the trees and ignites the leaves and mosses with energy. The greens and the greens and the greens are splattered like finger paints on a canvas of brown– a kindergartener's art project– at once simple and chaotic. 

A gust of fresh, cool air and little white flower petals drift down from the canopy like snowflakes– I have no idea where they came from. There's an impressive accumulation on the ground now, probably enough to cancel school in Seattle but laughable by Boston standards.

The view from my spot, into the ravine

The air is so clean here, so honest. A complex palette of crisp, sweet flowers and robust, almost offensive soils. Life and death at once in my nose. There's something underneath it all too– a base that I can't quite identify, something I can sense on the air that I can't see or hear...

The forest hums with a soothing, yet intricate sonata. The persistent splash of an unseen creek provides the rhythm and bass for the birds to compose their improvisational melodies of chirps and twitters– sometimes rudely interrupted by a squirrel's musically-challenged yelp.

A cacophony of caws burst from the sky above– I look up. Dozens of crows dance between the trees with frantic urgency. What are they doing? Suddenly a great brown blur slices through them– a hawk? Or eagle? At first I think the nameless bird of prey is on the attack, but I soon realize the opposite is true, it looks like the crows are chasing it. As soon as the commotion started it was over and I was left listening to the regularly scheduled soundtrack and wondering what the hell just happened.

Weird lumps rise out of the ravine like islands in a sea of mud

Now for specifics– the soil in the gorge bellow is dark and soaking wet, and the plant life down there is very different than it is on the hills, where things are much drier. There are no trees down there, or far fewer, instead there are just bush-like formations that I can't identify, very large with dozens of thin stems jutting out in every direction and small, oblong leaves. There's great leafy things that look like they'd be alright in a hipster's organic salad (water plantain?)

Close up of sapling surrounded by flower petals

The higher up the hill the more trees there are. I few are coniferous (western red cedars– those I do recognize) but most of them are deciduous. The dominating type is a very tall tree with a smooth light brown/off-white trunk and small oblong leaves They're patchy this early, some don't even have leaves at all. Right next to me there are ferns (sword ferns?),  nasty looking bush-like plants with spiny leaves like a holly tree, and many tree saplings of at least the two types of trees I've previously identified. There are also smaller green plants mixed in with the dirt and clutter of the hillside, and there are white toadstools jutting out from the side of the stump I'm sitting on.

Besides the crows and unidentified raptor from earlier, the birds were almost entirely heard but not seen. I did end up seeing one hummingbird though, and of course I saw a few squirrels.

On my way out, higher up the hill, I saw the patch of trees that was the source of the flower petal snow. They might be western flowering dogwood trees.