David Douglas: A Naturalist at Work

Spokane-based author, naturalist and teacher Jack Nisbet is fascinated with the natural and cultural history of the Pacific Northwest. He is one the most gifted interpreters of the wild bounty that our corner of the country possesses, and also has gone to great lengths to tell the stories of the first European explorers to encounter this native endowment.

His books include Source of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America, The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest and The Mapmaker’s Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau. Each volume retraces the steps of passionate, hardy individuals who made the first strides in understanding the landscape, native people, wildlife and botany of Washington State.

Douglas, the subject of his latest book David Douglas: A Naturalist at Work, landed at the mouth of the Columbia River in the in the spring of 1825, charged by the London Horticultural Society, with blessings from the Hudson’s Bay Company, to learn all he could about the Pacific Northwest ‘s botanical treasures. He had previously pored over the accounts of Lewis and Clark, Vancouver, Mackenzie, Thompson and other explorers and was uniquely adept at scientifically surveying this “New World.” Douglas was passionate about botany and gardening, fastidious about specimen collecting and note taking, young enough to be resilient and adventurous and also wise enough to befriend the native people and others who lived close to the land. This combination of skills, pluck and strategic relationships combined to produce one of the great explorers of America.

His legacy is writ large on the landscape today by way of nomenclature: the Douglas fir, Snow Douglasia, Douglas squirrel, Douglas Brodiaea and over 80 plant and animal species with douglasii in their scientific names.

As exemplified in David Douglas: A Naturalist at Work, Nisbet’s method of interpreting regional history isn’t the usual staid recitation of dates and facts. In pursuit of bringing stories nearly 200 years old to life, he walks trails, visits reservations and tribal elders, charters pilot boats, climbs trees and wildharvests food. His studies may begin by perusing old maps or historical journals in dusty archives, but his curiosity soon has him bounding out the door and in to the same landscapes that his subjects once roamed.

His new book demonstrates, surprisingly, that the contemporary landscape he reconnoiters is in many ways not so different than what the early explorers saw.

“Although the natural and human landscapes that Douglas described have endured a turbulent two centuries since his departure, a surprising number of the species he collected can still be found near the sites where he originally saw them,” Nisbet writes, which leads him to realize that “many details of both Douglas’s and the Northwest’s larger stories remain incomplete, waiting to be teased out of clues that have been left scattered behind.” Thus begins the author’s quest.

What is noteworthy about his approach—by first reporting, then inhabiting and finally extending these early explorations—is that he actually places himself in direct lineage with the great literary naturalists of America. Nibset is a modern day John Muir, climbing to the tops of precarious fir trees to collect cones, and a contemporary of Henry David Thoreau, digging up native camas bulbs in order to taste the earthy fruits of the land.

Green Bookshelf

Summer books that explore the natural wonders of the planet

The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States

Mark Fiege (University of Washington Press)

Mark Fiege’s book presents a concept that is as revolutionary as it is obvious – writing history as if the natural world mattered. Much in the same way that Howard Zinn infamously recast the American story in A People’s History of the United States of America by telling it from the perspective of the underdog, Fiege takes a look at historical events so well-worn they’ve become platitudes and makes them fresh again. The Professor of History at Colorado State University does so by revisiting milestones in our nation’s history – including the Salem witch trials, cotton production and slavery in the South, the Battle of Gettysburg, the building of transcontinental railroads, the invention of the atomic bomb, the oil crisis of 1973-74 – and examining them through an environmental lens: how did the natural world shape these events? How did these events impact the natural world? What was the dialectical conversation between humankind, culture and nature that has produced the country we live in today? From sea to shining sea, America has been built upon a vast landscape bearing an abundance of natural resources and burnished with sublime beauty, but our shared chronicles often overlook these natural graces. Fiege aims to widen the scope of our storytelling for, as William Cronon explains in the Foreword, “There is nothing in the world – nothing in place or time or history – that is ever outside of nature or the environment.”

Food Grown Right, In Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide to Growing Crops at Home

Colin McCrate & Brad Halm (Sasquatch)

The co-founders of Seattle Urban Farm Co -- a nationally-recognized outfit that has helped hundreds of families, schools and restaurants design and implement urban gardens – share the wisdom they have accumulated over the years in this overstuffed, lively and personable tome. From vegetable profiles (when to plant, how much, container suitability, fertilizing, pests, when and how to harvest, storage and preservation) to instructions for building a wide variety of beds for all kinds of unusual urban/suburban spaces, the authors cover all the basics. There are also sections on making great compost, transplanting, mulching, dealing with disease and pests and “The Only 11 Tools You’ll Ever Need.” Illustrated with great photographs on nearly every page, it concludes with an index of useful charts, lists, calendars and other resources.

Washington’s Channeled Scablands Guide

John Soennichsen (The Mountaineers Books)

Most people heading eastward across our state – towards a concert at the Gorge, family in Spokane or the Big Sky spaces of Montana – cruise at high speeds through what seem like void of central Washington. Guidebook author and historian John Soennichsen invites us to slow down and take a closer look at these big empty spaces. The Channeled Scablands – shrub-steppe plateau terrain that has been carved out by cataclysmic floods during the Pleistocene epoch – contain coulees, potholes, slot canyons, deep lakes, erratic boulders, waterfalls, basalt buttes and other natural oddities. With the recent establishment of the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail and plans for visitor centers and roadside displays, John’s book is a great companion for anyone wanting to explore this overlooked but fascinating region.