I wouldn’t even have noticed her as I pulled into a parking spot for an appointment but when I got out of the car, she advanced toward me from the other side of a fence surrounding a water retention pond—that retained no water I could see—and told me in no uncertain tone of voice NOT to notice her three fuzzy balls of chicks that scampered nearby. The little killdeer mother fixed her dark eye on me and emphatically focused all my attention on her, calling loudly, demanding that I leave her premises. Or else. The father killdeer flew up as reinforcement and gamely fluttered, dragging one wing to draw my attention in his direction. The little chicks had meanwhile disappeared into the jumbled rocks that covered the slope of the would-be pond. I did very briefly look around but didn’t want to further stress the brave, self-sacrificing parents, so stepped back, murmuring what I hoped were soothing sounds, and took just one quick photo.

What were they doing in such an unpromising looking environment? Was this marginal, scrappy looking place much more in their eyes? They didn’t seem to have any competition for whatever food they foraged for among the rocks but neither had they any shelter other than their own camouflage. Was that why the mother was so vocal? I let them be, but kept them in my thoughts.

When I returned home, I looked for more information and found this description on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website:

[See: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Killdeer/lifehistory:]

Killdeer inhabit open areas such as sandbars, mudflats, and grazed fields. They are probably most familiar around towns, where they live on lawns, driveways, athletic fields, parking lots, airports, and golf courses. Generally the vegetation in fields inhabited by Killdeer is no taller than one inch. You can find Killdeer near water, but unlike many other shorebirds, they are also common in dry areas.

A list like that certainly didn’t preclude the barren seeming environment where I found them, though there wasn’t so much as a blade of grass to be seen among the rocks. What could they possibly find to eat? The Cornell site went on to say that killdeers are “opportunistic foragers” who feed “primarily on invertebrates, such as earthworms, snails, crayfish, grasshoppers, beetles, and aquatic insect larvae.” 

I was somewhat mollified and had to trust that the parents knew what they were about but the place still troubled me. Had we no better locations for this little family? It appears they aren’t very choosy; Cornell reported that, “Killdeer nests are simple scrapes often placed on slight rises in their open habitats…The nest is a shallow depression scratched into the bare ground, typically 3-3.5 inches across. After egg-laying begins, Killdeer often add rocks, bits of shell, sticks, and trash to the nest.”

Rocks were about all they had; perhaps bits of paper blown over the fence added to the décor.

Maybe the killdeer were “just fine.” I resisted the impulse to rush over to the birdseed store and buy something for them. But I know I’ll be on the lookout for them next time I’m in that area. Willing myself to trust Mother Nature and this mother killdeer. But still feeling distraught that we pave over so much for our “convenience” and leave so little for any other beings.

The sky cleared and the sun’s heat prevailed for Memorial Day this year, but my friend and I would have walked down to the Masonic cemetery in any weather short of a downpour. Neither of us has family members interred there but we enjoy finding the graves of notable pioneers and recalling their stories and family connections. We wandered the rows and searched out intriguing monuments and discovered ones we haven’t noticed on other excursions. We are unabashed history nerds.

The cemetery was organized in the 1850s to provide a dedicated place for burials for the new communities forming by Tumwater Falls and further down the point of land jutting into Budd Inlet named Olympia for its spectacular view of the Olympic Mountains. American settlement was just getting under way in this area, but with life there is death and the newly formed fraternal organization of Masons stepped up to provide final resting places for the pioneers as was needed. The first burial was for James Yantis in 1852 even before the cemetery grounds had been designated; perhaps his passing galvanized the community. Brother Mason Smith Hayes donated several acres of his land and other early settlers, Clanrick Crosby, Ira Ward, and Nelson and Anna Barnes, matched his generosity with more grants of land nearby. In time, a Jewish cemetery was organized and consecrated grounds set aside for Catholics.

This visit, I was especially set on finding gravestones honoring Civil War veterans. There must have been a sizable number of veterans looking for a fresh start after the ravages of the war in the eastern half of the country, as we found several rows of specially marked headstones indicating service in that terrible conflict. Many of them cluster around a rather plain monument dwarfed by two huge trees but visible by virtue of a flag floating over the site. It is simply inscribed, “Erected in Memory of the Union Soldiers and Sailors of the Civil War, 1861—1865.” We paused to contemplate their possible life stories and the arc of history that brought them to Olympia and to wonder how many of them carried war wounds that contributed to their eventual deaths in the new country.

I thought of Margaret’s father who was wounded several times but somehow still managed an active life until death finally took him in 1899. His grave was not located in the area for old soldiers but in a different section entirely. Although brevetted as a major general for his courage and remarkable service, Thomas Irving McKenny was buried in the family plot with no mention of his service during either the Mexican War or the Civil War. He enlisted to fight for the Union as soon as possible from where he was living in Keokuk, Iowa, and was quickly thrust into the thick of the conflict in nearby Missouri where the Union Army struggled with Confederate troops as well as guerilla forces that terrorized the countryside. Thomas’ most famous military feat, however, was being sent in disguise across-country alone to infiltrate the campsite of General John Fremont and, under secret orders from President Lincoln himself, relieve the wayward general of his command. It’s a complicated but dramatic story, often recalled by the family and emblematic of the kind of person Thomas was.

I have often pondered what it meant to Margaret to have such a dashing and heroic father. His funeral procession to the cemetery from their family home in the heart of the town was ceremoniously and with impressive pomp conducted by the members of the Grand Army of the Republic of which he had been the local head, joined by many town people, a walk of several miles. His character and accomplishments were generously praised in the high-toned language of the day for all to hear and acknowledge as a loss to the community and the family.

Margaret was an impressionable fourteen when he passed away. Some of that stature surely rubbed off on her; she was not at all averse to being lauded as the General’s daughter even many years later in her life. The mantle of command it conferred only added to her own authority when she spoke up for various conservation causes. Her own grave is not part of the McKenny family plot; her ashes were scattered, most likely in a place known only to close friends but somewhere she cherished and worked to save.

Wild pigs? Ah, maybe it’s the seals hauled up on the old pilings, grumbling and exchanging the news of the day.  But as we walked on the trail through the Woodard Bay forest, the mysterious querulous sounds we heard seemed to be coming from quite a different direction than where the seals gathered. Then I remembered other walks and the same puzzlement that resolved itself when we reached an area where we could see the source of the commotion: it was the cormorants which nest high up in trees similar to Blue Herons. There they were, large, dark birds, calling, chatting, murmuring, flapping, circling, settling in their raggedy nests, at home, gossiping and for all I know, cracking jokes or planning fishing expeditions. Every once in awhile, a section of the birds would rise up and wheel off to fish. They were a sociable group.

Recently, I was gifted with a small charming book of woodcuts by the eighteenth-century English naturalist and artist Thomas Bewick that features “a compendium of collective nouns for birds.” Many of us know that a flock of crows is dolorously called “a murder of crows.” Other examples include “a chatter of Parakeets,” which perfectly describes them, and how about “a scold of jays?” “A trembling of finches” and a “swatting of flycatchers” is apt, and joyous examples such as “an ascension of larks,” “a charm of goldfinches,” or “a spiral of creepers” are delightful. No one knows exactly when these monikers entered the common language—and how many are used today—but they are a reminder of how closely people lived with birds and knew their personalities and habits in more rural times. Perhaps we should once again fill our language with metaphors and colorful descriptors that bring birds into our daily lives in all their wonder.

And cormorants? They are identified as “a swim of cormorants” which is certainly descriptive but only half the story. We ought to come up with a word worthy of the clatter they make in their nesting villages up in the treetops.

On Jan. 17, 1957, in her regular newspaper column in the Olympia News, “Words About Birds and Flora,” Margaret wrote:

“Since very early days Olympia has been a city of trees, of tree lovers too. Many of our early settlers came here from the far East and brought with them memories of village squares and streets shaded by the stately vase-shaped American elm. My father who came here in 1867 said, even then, that Olympia looked like a New England town. Main Street, as Capital Way was called at that time, was lined with big-leaf maples and set between them were huge bushes of sweet briar roses, the latter brought here by the first Scotch pioneers.”

Her remarks were part of a campaign just beginning then to plant trees on the main streets of Olympia and restore some of the grace and serenity of the pre-automobile city. The historic street trees of Olympia had gradually been lost to street widening and other developments and were sorely missed by citizens like Margaret who had known the “old Olympia” of slower-paced days. No one spoke then of “eco-services” that trees performed, or of climate change, or any other of today’s concerns, but there was a strong feeling of something important having been lost and of the need to restore something of the beauty and connection to the natural world that trees so nobly represented.

Olympia City Mayor, Amanda Smith, duly convened a committee of which Margaret was a leading member to design and implement a tree planting program. The committee enthusiastically enlisted school children as active partners. Many classrooms featured “money trees” where children could affix their pennies and dimes in a glittering display to help fund the acquisition of trees. The Chamber of Commerce, many local service clubs, the Olympia Audubon Society, and others all pitched in to support this civic betterment effort. By March of 1957, the plan to plant seventy trees on Capitol Way had blossomed, from the edge of the Capitol Campus on 14 Street to the new bridge over the freeway on 25^th.  A ceremonial planting began the work, with dignitaries and committee members present, Margaret among them.  Soon fifty red maples and twenty red hawthorns transformed that section of the city’s main thoroughfare.

Those particular trees have succumbed over the years since then, but the tradition of planting a canopy of trees along Capitol Way and other main streets has endured. Thank you, Margaret, and all who have carried on the program all these years. Olympia is still a city of trees. And tree lovers.

In 1915, when she was about thirty years old, Margaret built her own home on Water Street and 22^nd Avenue. It was a two-story modest bungalow that housed herself and her mother and had the ground floor space dedicated as a classroom for her private school. There she taught local children using the Montessori philosophy and methodology mixed with healthy doses of nature study, her signature contribution.

That part of Olympia was sparsely built at that time; development was scattered and all around her were woods, a view of the Deschutes River and the distant Black Hills. She had only a few neighbors and lots of room to enjoy the wildlife just beyond her doorstep. She had managed to squeeze her house into a standing grove of Douglas firs and accompanying tangle of under-story bushes. Being an avid botanist, however, she went on to collect and nurture a noted wild flower garden that added beauty and colorful interest to the towering firs.

In a letter to a friend, she proudly listed her glorious bounty of that April:

The trilliums in my wild garden have been so beautiful this spring. It is wild woods all around my house, trilliums, bleeding heart, Solomon’s plume, fairy bells, corydalis, Thalictrum, Vancouveria, Vanilla leaf, wild ginger, all growing as in the original woods.

This list is a blueprint for anyone’s native plant garden!

This January I had a fall and dislocated my shoulder, leaving me lop-sided with one working arm, so when it began to snow…. and snow… and snow in February I watched helplessly out my living room window as our trees filled with the heavy wet snow, bent over in agony, and broke. One after the other. And still it snowed as I went to the window all that day and saw the jagged remains of trunks, the large branches dangling, the bushes crushed under the weight of the accumulation.

Flash forward to Spring and a massive clean up campaign! Most of the damage was done to non-native trees, our beautiful lacy-leaved Japanese maples. Our side gardens had all been planted with native bushes, ferns, vines, and ground covers. They all survived and looked none the worse for the snowfall. We have been gradually making over our garden to these hardy locals for the sake of the birds, other pollinators, and also ourselves, so we could learn about native plants at first hand. Could we learn from our disaster and go all-native?

Luckily for us, the Native Plant Society was holding its annual sale just a block or so from our house, at the old State Capitol Museum. We had learned in previous scouting trips to come early and plunge in as the selection quickly thins as avid gardeners make their selections in a twinkling. Everyone is very friendly and knowledgeable; it’s well organized with plants grouped in helpful ways, printed information and tags, and volunteers to answer questions everywhere. But there is no mistaking the glint in fellow gardeners’ eyes as they roam the aisles and fill their boxes. Want a trillium? Don’t hesitate!

Here is our modest but lovely picks: a nine bark bush for a little height, Indian plum for its early blooming flowers and lovely green leaves, a Nootka rose, mostly for its name but it also grows fairly tall and has wonderful blooms and dramatic hips for winter, some Western bleeding heart and three Fringecup whose description won me over with “Basal rosettes of round to heart shaped, often scalloped or toothed leaves and tall late spring stems of one sided bell shaped flowers with back-swept lacy petals and evening scented flowers.” Sounds divine! Oh, and one trillium, to keep our other lone trillium company and hopefully encourage more.

It’s a start! A re-start.

Sometimes going for a walk in the woods is not about discovering interesting new plants or listening for birds. Sometimes the walk is about improving personal health and encouraging a state of well-being. It happens that being in trees—being in relationship with trees—can have measurable benefits on lowering blood pressure, improving heart rate, and boosting the immune system. A cluster of new publications* is helping many people build this intentional relationship with trees and encouraging them to regularly retreat to forests for a special kind of walking mediation-like experience. Practitioners emphasize that while some parallels exist between meditation and forest bathing, forest bathing is more relational, more about sharing and giving, of what you can gain from the forest but also what you bring to the forest. This is not an extractive service like what has come to be called eco-services but something special, like being a friend with trees, opening your heart to the possibility of communing with these elders of the living world.
 
I had read a little about what to expect before joining a small group on April 13, 2019 for a forest bathing walk in LBA Woods here in Olympia. Our leader Kathy Jacobson introduced the group to the main concepts of what forest bathing is—and is not—and gently led us down the path a ways in silence as we began to absorb the tree-laden atmosphere and slow ourselves to a pace for best taking in our surroundings and our own inner pulse. She drew our attention to special plants that were coming into bud and helped us experience them using all of our senses, including taste and smell. We could hear the calling of birds and the gentle sound of the wind moving through the trees, and it being April, the sound of rain plonking on leaves and steadily dripping and saturating the very air. We talked in hushed voices when we talked at all. We fell into the spell of the trees and rain and our own yearning.
 
For me, the most powerful moment came when Kathy asked us each to find a tree and spend some time with it, talking and relating to it, and giving it something of ourselves. Around us were towering Douglas firs and large, mossy Big-leaf maples, all beckoning and impressive specimens. But then, nearby, I saw a rather skinny and broken trunk of a fir tree, a snag with several woodpecker-sized holes and other signs of a life reaching its end. This tree had a quiet dignity. It didn’t need me but I felt that I needed it. I picked my way to it through the salal and accumulation of downed branches and vines and shyly touched its bark. I looked into the ragged holes punched by strong beaks; I noticed the broken trunk and few branches. I felt a wave of what I can only describe as generosity emanating from the tree. It was giving, freely, everything it had, not holding back but offering itself to whatever beings needed sustenance. Although ravaged, it was whole. I was overcome with tenderness and understood that I was also somehow thinking of my mother, now aged and stripped to her core by dementia but also whole and abiding with dignity. The tree released something in me; I felt a welling up of acceptance, of acknowledgment. I warmed a small patch of it with my hand and thanked it for this teaching. It was all I had to give. It was, perhaps, enough.

Some Forest Bathing resources:

Click here for a story on NPR about forest bathing.

Your Guide to Forest Bathing: Experience the Healing Power of Nature, by M. Amos Clifford

Shinrin-Yoku: The Art and Science of Forest Bathing, by Dr. Qing Li

 Forest Bathing Retreat: Find Wholeness in the Company of Trees, by Hannah Fries

And many more at your bookstore and library, more being published as this movement gains attention

When we were kids growing up in Alberta, we eagerly looked for the first robin. After the long snowy winter, that flash of red and cheery song signaled we had made it through that challenging season at last. Now here in Olympia I have flocks of robins in January—January!—and some years they never seem to migrate at all. Still, we have a winter of a sort so I still crave a genuine sign of Spring.

Reading Margaret’s Nature Notes, I now look for bright yellow instead of red: I look for Skunk Cabbage. It grows in wet swampy places; I usually find my specimens in Watershed Park where water collects along the bottomlands. The golden yellow upright stalk is like a flag. But I have learned from Margaret that colorful as it is, this is not the flower part of the plant. The piece that rises up and acts as a protective shield for the spiky part is really a leaf called a spathe. The flower, really multiple tiny flowers, cluster on a thick stem called the spadix. If you look closely you will likely see small beetles that are drawn to the pollen as food, but which help spread the pollen amongst the flowers as they clamber about. Later these flowers mature into green berries, which in turn fall into the soil and grow more plants. As you are bending near to examine all these working parts of the plant, take a breath and experience the tonic “scent.” And remember its name! Spring comes with a clap!

Margaret was born April 17, in 1885, one hundred and thirty-four years ago today. The launching of this blog is my way of celebrating her birthday. A special lunch featured one of her favorite foods–mushrooms!

2018 Margaret McKenny Birthday Walk

This post is the script used for a celebratory walk held in the LBA Woods in Olympia, Washington, April 17, 2018 in honor of Margaret’s birthday. You can use it as a guide for your own walk in the woods. See the LBA Woods map at the bottom of the post for directions.

Thank you for coming today, Margaret McKenny’s birthday. This walk in the woods will be done in her spirit, using some of her words and observations to guide and inspire us. As I’ve read her books and her papers, saved for us at the State Library, I have discovered gems of wisdom and whimsy that I’ll share with you today.

But first of all, who was Margaret McKenny? Maybe you saw the elementary school named for her on your way here, or know that a neighborhood park has been named for her, or heard her name evoked whenever a tree or city park needed protection. 

She was born here in Olympia in 1885, a few years before statehood, and grew up here, roamed the countryside learning all about Northwest flora and fauna. She became a teacher, a writer, a gardener of wild flowers and a prize-winning photographer. She was a noted expert on fungi.

In 1927 she moved to New York City where she worked for the Garden Club of America and then the NY City Garden Clubs and was associated with the American Museum of Natural History and the NY Botanical Gardens. She wrote nature-themed books and magazine articles about gardening and got know people like Roger Tory Peterson and other notables in natural history circles. But she grew homesick for her birthplace and returned to Olympia in 1942 where she hoped to teach everyone the natural glories of her home state.

Some of the readings we will use today come from her series of Nature Notes that were the basis of a radio program she hosted in the 1940s, and were later printed in newspapers and collected into a book.

Margaret continued to write and teach and garden when she came home. She founded the Olympia Audubon Society in 1953 and headed various citizen groups that saved Olympia’s watershed for a natural-area park, protested tree-cutting in Priest Point Park, and began the long-haul work of saving Nisqually Delta from industrial development. She died in 1969 but passed the baton to strong leaders who continued the work. Some of us took heart from those efforts and worked to save these “LBA” woods from destruction.

Today we can enjoy the intricate beauty of these woods and plan for even greater health for this forest as we learn about it. And to see and enjoy the woods is our primary purpose today. We will walk along one of the trails and stop every once in awhile and see what’s growing there, from the tiny emerging shoots, to lush understory, and the varied trees that make up the canopy. We’ll listen for birds and talk about some of the creatures who live here but who we might not see. I will read from a selection of Margaret’s writing to keep her “with us.” We will be talking at several spots, but will not provide a running commentary so that you can pay attention to what you see, think, and feel in the relative quiet of the woods. A note about the trail: some of it is bumpy with tree roots and whatnot; we’ll take our time but do look down as you walk and not always up at the trees.

Let’s begin with this piece from a diary she kept to set the mood:

Today we were both valiantly doing household duties, the sun began to break through the clouds, and simultaneously we decided we were not being true to our better selves if we stayed in the house to contend with dust which after all is only the moldering past while sunlight is the spirit of the future…Then as the gray veil of clouds cooled the air we strolled slowly home, luxuriating in the feel of the soft leaf mold beneath our feet and the sense that we has wasted time in the most worthwhile way. After a day like that, unhurried, unworried, I can always settle myself to write.

Now, let’s enter the woods and walk to first stopping place:

ONE

One of Margaret’s insights was the importance of direct experience of nature. So we will have a moment of quiet for you to just look around and breathe in the forest.

What did you notice?

We don’t know if Margaret ever visited this particular forest although she was familiar with many areas of wilderness surrounding Olympia, which was much smaller in her day. This area was logged more than once; we can see some evidence of pioneer era logging in the high stumps left by loggers who perched above the bulbous trunks and used the big cross-cut saws, and we can surmise by looking at later stands of trees that patches were clear-cut and then recovered all at once with same-aged growth. What we have now, and probably have always had, is a mixed forest of evergreen and deciduous trees with lots of undergrowth of bushes, ferns, vines, some wildflowers, mosses and lichens. That mix is one of the greatest assets on these woods. A great habitat for birds and other creatures!

Let’s listen to some excerpts from Margaret. You’ll notice that the language of the Nature Notes is fairly straightforward and didactic, as they were composed primarily for children, but did not exclude adult readers, especially those who remained open and curious…as children. As did Margaret.

Nature Notes: The Douglas Fir

Small bristly flowers borne at the ends of the twigs, soon become brown cones with seeds beneath their scales. The seeds are small, flat and winged so they can fly far and find new homes. You can always tell the cones from those of other evergreens because between the scales are three-pointed bracts like Neptune’s trident.

The Douglas Squirrel or Chickaree

Early explorers of the Northwest were puzzled by the sound of a strange trill; they thought it was the call of a shy woodland bird. When they discovered that it was a squirrel, they called it a chickaree, but now it has been named for David Douglas, the Scottish botanist. They live on the seeds of pines, firs, spruce and hemlocks, storing them in great middens for winter. They also enjoy berries, flowers and mushrooms and even eat carrion and gnaw shed antlers for minerals.

Now let’s walk on a ways.

TWO

Margaret was a bird expert; she conducted some of the earliest Christmas bird counts here in the 1920s, and later founded our local Audubon Society. In her writing and teaching, she emphasized birds in their habitat and taught people how to invite birds into their yards by including native plants for food and shelter. She always saw birds “in place.”  

Nature Note: The Pileated Woodpecker

The Pileated woodpecker likes to live in the deep untouched forest, but he is very fond of the fruit of the dogwood or madrona. With a great deal of clattering “cock, cock, cock,” the big, rather awkward birds eat greedily of the crimson fruit. Sometimes, big as they are, they hang upside down just like a chickadee.

THREE:

This is a good place to notice the age of this forest, its stands of trees all the same age, but with some surviving large older trees, the canopy openings, the fallen trees. The more you look, the more you can see the complexity of the forest, its layers of new growth, its remaining older “second” growth, the trees decaying back into soil to support future growth.

Near here I’ve heard a Winter—or now-called—Pacific Wren. Maybe we’ll be lucky and hear it today. The different ages and kinds of trees and understory growth create many kinds of habitat for birds and animals. This forest is a refuge, a sanctuary for wildlife. Here is Margaret discussing two others:

Nature Note:  Song Sparrow

The cheerful notes of the song sparrow are heard in both summer and winter. He even sings in the pouring rain. He chirps and chirps, flitting from bush to bush, always on the move and always pumping his tail up and down. He is one of the most fearless of our western birds.

And now an excerpt from a Nature Note on a creature not many of us have seen but which does live in these woods: Mountain Beaver:

It isn’t a squirrel (as Captain Lewis thought) and it isn’t a beaver. Zoologists say it belongs to a family all its own, the mountain beaver family. It is a rodent, one of the earliest forms known on earth; it hasn’t changed through thousands, perhaps millions of years. It is found only in western Washington, Oregon and California.

FOUR

Nature Note: Ocean Spray

The Ocean spray belongs to the rose family and is closely related to spiraea. When the leaf buds of ocean spray open in early spring the leaves are so tiny that they give the shrub a misty look. The flowers grow in long, drooping sprays. There are hundreds of flowers in each cluster. In July the shrub is draped with the long sprays which look like delicate lace against the blue sky.

As I mentioned, Margaret taught that birds and plants existed together, so this is a good place to hear another excerpt from a Nature Note about a bird we may see here: The Bush-tit:

The Bush-tit may be a wee bit of a bird, but he makes up for his lack of size by being as busy as he can be all day long. They are so fearless that they often choose a place to nest in plain sight; they like the ocean spray very much, perhaps because the seed clusters hang on the branches until late spring and help camouflage their nest.

FIVE

Margaret was a noted mushroom expert. She began studying mushrooms around 1913, published her first book on them in 1929 and in 1962 one of her most well known books, The Savory Wild Mushroom. She loved to advise amateur mushroom hunters who were free to knock on her door, basket of discoveries in hand, as well as working with university botany professors and even medical doctors who were treating poisoning cases. And she loved to cook up a dish and share mushroom delicacies with her friends!

In this Nature Note, Margaret forthrightly and humorously addresses the old question, Mushrooms or Toadstools?

There is no difference between a mushroom and a toadstool. It is correct to say a poisonous or an edible mushroom, or a poisonous or an edible toadstool. Mushrooms are often found in mossy places, and the word mushroom comes from a French word meaning mossy. Long ago people thought toads carried a poison, and because both toads and mushrooms were found in damp, mossy places, they thought toads sat on mushrooms. It is well known now that toads are not poisonous, and that they are good friends of the gardener, much too busy catching insects to take time to sit on a toadstool, or mushroom, whatever name is used.

SIX

When she came back to Washington after living in New York City, Margaret reveled in our mountain meadows, deep rainforests on the Olympic peninsula and nearby woods, like this one. All were rich with life full of interest for her. Some of her eastern friends were horrified that she would leave “the national stage” but she was keen to make them appreciate what we have “out here” and to make sure all the people newly arrived in the West in the post-war population surge would also learn to love the West as she did. Margaret likened herself to Thoreau, “studying her own wood lot.”

I believe she fought to protect nearby “wild” areas and natural parks like Priest Point Park because she was so interested in children—and adults—being able to find these places easily and go there frequently to be in nature and see the seasonal changes and other wonders. She understood the value of these nearby places and the need for accessibility. Had she still been alive, she would have led the effort to save these woods from the bulldozers.

The trees provide the structure of the woods and draw our eyes upward. We could say, the trees are the woods. But the understory is just as much a part of the forest as these vertical stars. Salal and Oregon grape are also quintessential Northwest plants.

Nature Note: The Oregon Grape

In early spring, soon after the first crocus fades, the golden flowers of the Oregon grape unfold. Soon the fragrant clusters stand high above the shining, prickly foliage. The tender new leaves are often reddish and add greatly to the charm of the plant. In summer the flowers are followed by blue berries, edible but very sour.

We haven’t seen many flowers but they too provide interest, food for insects and other vital roles. One of Margate’s favorites was the trillium—we’ve included her Note* on this native flower for you to keep—but she loved many wild flowers and much of her work focused on teaching others an appreciation for their beauty and variety. She saw in them a kind of salvation.

She tells this story to illustrate her own dawning awareness and her motivation to share the insight and sense of wonder that shaped her whole life. I’d like to close with this story, but we can, of course, keep talking about Margaret while we move into the birthday party in the picnic shelter in a few minutes:

“I learned what true conservation meant from the lesson given me by an old man when we were on a trip in the woods. I was only seven and he took me apart from the other children and showed me this fairy-slipper. I can still see the place, a mossy bower laced with moss-draped vine maples. I think I could go back to that very spot. This gentle old man told me this flower was very rare and fast disappearing and I must never pick it. That lesson lingered so well that I have hope for other children.”

Happy Birthday, Margaret! And Thank You!

*See the copy of this Nature Note here. All the Notes had a similar format.

LBA Woods Map guide for walk