I’ve lived in several very different environments in my life. I grew up in the dunes, forests and fields of northwest Indiana, walking some of the same paths as Edwin Way Teale and Henry Cowles. When I got married, I moved to southern California and lived in the chaparral and oak savanna with an occasional visit to the Pacific. Then came 12 years in the Mojave Desert, where it’s said there are nearly 300 days of blue skies. Finally, a move to western Washington, and a house under massive western redcedar and Douglas-fir. And because I love to learn about all the living things around me, I sought out teachers and new friends who could share what they knew about my new homes. Although it was 35 years ago, I’ll always remember a class I took with Milt McCauley. He taught me the wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains and introduced me to my local hiking trails. I volunteered with what was then called Nursery Nature Walks and learned how to engage small children in nature. In Nevada, I found the Nevada Naturalist program and the Public Lands Institute and met lifelong friends who explored the desert with me. But in Washington, I haven’t yet found the right mix of education and good company. There are plenty of classes and workshops on the Salish Sea and I found one intensive course put on by the Washington Native Plant Society, but I want to learn about everything! From eelgrass beds to banana slugs to the lichen that live on the Western redcedar in my backyard. Hence, this blog. While I am Finding My Place, I want to share what I am learning. Maybe others will want to join me and we will create a community of nature literate folk in the Pacific Northwest.
A few books and resources:
Cowles, Henry Chandler.The Ecological Relations of the Vegetation on the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan. Part I.-Geographical Relations of the Dune Floras. Botanical Gazette, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Feb., 1899), pp. 95-117
Docents of Nursey Nature Walks. Trails, Tails and Tidepools in Pails. 1992. (Nursery Nature Walks became the Children’s Nature Institute, a wonderful organization that is no longer operating).
McCauley, Milt. Wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains.1982
Teale, Edwin Way. Dune Boy: The Early Years of a Naturalist. 1943.
Nevada Naturalist https://www.unce.unr.edu/programs/sites/nevadanaturalist/
Salish Sea Stewards http://www.skagitmrc.org/projects/education-outreach/salish-sea-stewards/
Washington Native Plant Society https://wnps2.org/new-site
Finding My Place 