Rusty Ring

( Malus fusca . Native to the North Coast, in my home county it's a common understory tree, flourishing on the margins and in clear...

When I encountered this florist-worthy flower on a bike ride through local prairie country, I was certain it must be a garden ...

(This passage, drawn from my manuscript Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Through Washington's Borderlands , refers to the Sinlahekin ...

(Encountered this cedar while walking along the bay a few weeks ago. The distinctive scar is symptomatic of bark collecting by local ind...

(Found this all alone in the middle of the swamp that has figured in many recent posts. The white trunk that so gleams 'mid...

(Because the North Coast has only been densely populated for the past two centuries, we have nothing like the glorious mudlarking t...

(Found this giant old cedar stump on the beach some time ago. The hole has been a matter of conjecture ever since. It's clearly...

(Camas [Camassia quamash] is the clarion of spring where I grew up. Back in the day it covered hundreds of miles of open prairie, and...

(When settlers first came here, most of the Puget Sound Basin was prairie, in two configurations: grassland, with few trees, and parkl...

(On this site stood one of the first homesteads in the neck of Thurston County, Washington, where I grew up. During the Blockhouse War...

(A hemlock recently fell across the trail and was cleared by someone with a chainsaw. Seeing the sections on the shoulder I felt a dist...

(H.J. Cameron here served in Company C of the 2nd Washington Territory Volunteers, a settlers' militia of the 1850s Blockhouse War...

"Everybody grows up on their own reservation, and the quality of your life depends on how willing you are to get the hell away fro...

This week I'm seconding a motion by The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman to see Columbus Day repurposed as Bartolomé de las Casas Day. La...

(I recently found this well-used First Nations clam gun [right] in the surf. It's in fine shape; the tape is apparently just pad...

October is an odd time in North America: for these thirty-one days, you can buy a pumpkin here. Any other time, you get: "What, are yo...

"There are some children who aren't really children at all; they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they...

(Far left, holding his horse.)