holyoutlaw

Three Forks is one of my favorite places to work because it has a great view of the south side of Mt. Si, which is practically across the road. I worked there many times last summer, with groups large and small — just a few Parks staff, the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust and employees of the Norton Group (who gave us a BBQ lunch!), students from Ryther, and others I’m sure. What we had done is work on clearing blackberry from along the shoreline and in a small meadow.

Employees of The Norton Group and King County park staff work to clear blackberry at Three Forks Natural Area in July.

Working again in the fall to plant in the cleared areas gave me a good sense of the cycle of restoration work. I’ve been through that cycle several times with North Beach Park, of course, but I felt it strongly Saturday morning.

The weather was perfect: brilliantly sunny, with an overnight frost that made the morning beautiful.

Frost rimed grass.

Unfortunately, the overnight cold temperatures had turned the potted plants into potted popsicles. We spent the first hour digging holes to give the plants time to thaw.

A field of popsicles, staged for planting.

About eight members of the Northwest Fly Anglers joined us. Over the course of about four hours, collectively we planted nearly 300 plants. Trees and shrubs along the shoreline, and trees a little upland.

Northwest Fly Anglers Conservation.

The planting had been delayed by three weeks, two floods, and four cancelled events, as the Parks project manager put it. Flooding had moved lots of plants, so before the volunteers arrived Parks staff had to restage them. You could see the flooding in two ways. Many plants had a layer of river silt on top of the potting soil.

River silt on top of potting soil.

Another way you could see the effects of the flooding was that many of the pots had a layer of dirt on one side.

River silt on the pots.

When I had last been to this site in early August, there was a gravel bar large enough to comfortably hold 50 people for lunch. Here it is from last Saturday.

The lunchroom gravel bar completely covered.

Keep in mind that this is several feet below the height of the flood — where my coworker (she’s brandishing the shovel) and I are standing would have been a couple feet under water.

The sun was warm enough to keep us comfortable as we worked. We were even able to wrap up early enough for the Parks project manager to give the fly fishermen a brief tour of the site, including Morgan Creek and the conjunction of Morgan Creek and the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie.

If I work for King County Parks again next summer, I’m sure I’ll return to this site several times. The plants will need mulching and weeding, and maybe watering. There’s also more blackberry to remove.

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As I study North Beach Park, I learn more and more how dynamic it is, and how much of an effect water flow has on it.

We’ve noticed a rill forming on a steep hillside. I think it might have started when some mountain beaver tunnels collapsed, but my theories usually only have a passing relationship to reality.

Here is a picture of the rill. The area of concern starts in the center of the picture and slants down to the left.

This was taken Saturday (9th), after Drexie and I had installed a few nootka rose live stakes. Nootka rose is supposed to live stake pretty well, and this area is too dry overall for salmonberry.

This is Drexie, in the process of putting the nootka rose into the ground.

The area we were working in was very steep and soft, in that the ground moved under our feet.

On Monday (11th) Tad and I went back to the rill and did some more work. We added a fence or dike made of branches from a fallen alder (there are enough of those around).

We staked the dike on both sides, then wedged some rolled-up burlap sacks at the base.

The burlap provides a finer barricade to the dirt than just the stakes and branches would, yet will still allow water to flow through if necessary. The branches were pushed back over the burlap. Just for belts and braces’ sake, we added some regular stakes on the uphill side of the entire structure.

Last but not least, we added some wood chips to the whole thing.

We could have added another couple buckets of wood chips, but it was time to go.

Still to come: More wood chips and a tree below the structure to buttress the whole thing.

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This spring, the Parks Department gave North Beach Park 1/4 acre of invasive plant clearance on steep slopes, an area volunteers are not allowed to work. I’ve always assumed it was a liability issue, which I think now is only partly the case. I now see it as a skill set issue as well.

I forgot about it until I was asked to review the contract a couple weeks ago. In the meantime, I had allowed a group of volunteers… um… to work on some steep slopes in the very area the crew was being contracted to work. Which caused some confusion we’re still resolving.

In the last week, the crew has come in and done some erosion control and some new invasion removal.

Here’s a side view of some of the erosion control on the Headwaters Bowl slope.

The jute netting is rolled down the hill. Successive stretches of netting are stitched together. At the top of the slope, a narrow trench is dug, and the netting staked into it with 2×2 stakes. This is covered up when the trench is reburied.

There were some restoration plantings at the top of the slope that they worked around. They also preserved some restoration plantings at the bottom of the slope. (After taking this picture, we mulched around the plants.)

Here’s a side view of the HWB slope erosion control. It’s steeper than it looks from this angle. The wood and branches are laid on the jute to weight it down. Here is a view of the slope before removal, with some workers at the bottom to give a sense of scale.

The crew also did some work in another area of the park, even steeper, the North Slope.

You can see the stitching a little better in this picture. The coir log is laid across horizontally to absorb any street run off from 90th St/25th Ave.

Here’s a side view of the North Slope work.

It looks like this slope is even steeper than the Headwaters Bowl slope.

And here is the trash the crew got off the North Slope.

This seems about right, a few bags of cans’n'bottles, some fencing, a couple tires.

The full set of ten pictures is on Flickr.

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Last Saturday (7/13) was another EarthCorps event at North Beach Park. This one featured ivy removal on a slope at the Headwaters Bowl. The previous work party had about 50 people signed up, but the summer work parties have much smaller attendance. This time, we had about 16 people altogether. This was exactly enough people for the spaces we were working in and the work we had to do.

Tools ready for use

When EarthCorps arrives on site, they set up a couple shade structures and tables, and they set out the tools expected for the day. (They also provide a porta potty and bring a big bag of energy bars. All helpful!)

Now we have a few “before” pictures:

Holly Thicket

About five people (altogether) worked throughout the day on pulling up this holly thicket.

Ivy Platform

Friends of North Beach Park built this ivy platform in June; we thought that it would last a couple work parties. Not only did one EarthCorps work party completely fill it, but they had to build two more platforms, one for the holly and one for more ivy.

Headwaters Bowl Slope

This is a partial view of the ivy removal work area. The slope was pretty much an ivy monoculture.

Morning Plan

Ethan (from EarthCorps) explains the morning plan.

Platform filled in

After about an hour of work, the platform was almost filled. Masha (from EarthCorps) in foreground.

Gigantic Holly Root

Tad holds up a holly root. It’s that large brown mass in front of him.

Slope Crew

The morning slope crew poses for a quick snapshot. You can begin to see how much they’ve cleared already, about about 90 minutes of work.

Slope at Lunch Break

The bare slope in this picture was covered in ivy just a short while before. The ivy still visible is just scraps.

For the afternoon, we basically split into three crews. One worked on putting burlap down on the exposed slope, another worked on more ivy removal, and the third returned to the holly thicket.

Afternoon Removal

The afternoon removal crew worked in an area that had ivy and sword fern mixed.

Mulching the Slope

Even though it’s burlap, it’s still considered mulch. We used up the burlap that was on site, and for the next work party (in September) we will finish covering the slope with burlap and then add some wood chips on top. This will both suppress ivy resurgence and keep the soil moist.

And now a few “after” pictures, taken after the work party was over.

The slope with burlap

Since we only had a little burlap, we only did one layer. On other slopes, we’ve done two layers. Even so, there’s enough overlap that there are some areas with two or three layers of burlap. The stakes hold the burlap in place and provide footing as you work up the slope. Starting at the bottom allows you to overlay the burlap like roof shingles. Overall, this will slow down (if not stop) the water to allow it to soak in, rather than just run off.

Holly Thicket After

This is the holly thicket, much reduced. Although there is still a lot to do, and we’ll have to keep an eye on this site for a while. Holly can resprout from even tiny root fragments. But they’ll be easy to pull.

Afternoon Debriefing

Masha leads the afternoon debriefing, a quick survey and general feedback.

Trash Haul

And last but not least, the trash haul this time: Three tires, a couple coolers, torn-up mattress, and three contractor bags of bottles’n'cans. Not spectacular, but about average.

Also in the park that day was a film crew for the 48 Hour Film Project, Team Bad Elephant. I didn’t get to see what they were doing, but it was fun to have another group in the park doing something completely unrelated to what we were.

The remaining EarthCorps work parties are on these days. All events meet at the main entrance to the park, 90th St. and 24th Ave NW., and all events are from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Go here to sign up. As of this writing, they’re not posted yet.

Saturday, September 14 (more removal, mulching of cleared areas)
Wednesday, October 23 (planting!)
Saturday, November 9 (planting!)

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One of the attractions of urban restoration to me is the way it breaks down the false dichotomy separating nature and the city. It forces us to connect with nature where we are, immediately. Nature is not something we drive to visit, not something remote photographed for the BBC or PBS, it’s right here. Ungainly, degraded perhaps, but still cracking through the cement, still living.

Thierry Cohen photographs cities and their night sky in a very meticulous fashion. He photographs a city during the day; nine so far, all cities large enough that we can recognize them at a glance — Sao Paulo, Paris, New York, Hong Kong. He then eliminates all signs of human activity, as if we had vanished completely.

He records the exact latitude of his position, the angle and direction of the camera, and then travels to a flat place free of light pollution at the exact same latitude. In the case of Hong Kong, that’s the Western Sahara, a distance of 7,800 miles. For New York City, it was the Black Rock Desert. He photographs the exact same night sky that would be visible over the city, even to the camera angle and direction.

He then carefully superimposes that exact sky over the earlier photograph of the cityscape. I’d have no idea if he used the right sky or not, but his meticulousness pays off, particularly when looking at several images in a row or different shots of the same city. We know the variation in climate and location of the cities, these photographs show us the night sky varies over them as well. Sometimes drastically different skies in the same city, depending on where you’re looking. He even works in the shadows of the cityscape, a detail that if missing would hardly be noticed, but when added is stunning.

There are several lessons I get from these photos. One is the distortions of maps and the world: I would never have guessed that New York and the Black Rock Desert, or Hong Kong and the Western Sahara, were the same latitude.

Another is the awesome majesty of the night sky that we’re missing. I grew up in Chicago, and there was so much light pollution that at best you’d see a few stars; the moon itself, if old or new enough, disappeared in the haze. I was 18 before I saw my first deep sky unscreened by urban light. I thought, if we live on spaceship earth, let’s build a few space canoes. And, if we could see this where we lived, if everyone in the world could see the night sky, there would be no question of directing our energies to going there.

A third lesson is that if humans did vanish magically, the world would abide. It would continue getting warmer for a while, but probably sooner than we think it would start healing itself and cooling off. I find that last reassuring.

I also find the photographs very aesthetically appealing. The oily darkness of the cities, the only color coming from the sky itself. The detail in both sky and cityscape. I could become entranced by these photos, look at them for hours.

Cohen’s photographs show us what we’re missing with light pollution. They provide another way of breaking down the city/nature lie. They show us another connection to the universe.

Links

• Thierry Cohen Photography
• Danziger Gallery
• Smithsonianmag.com, “Collage of Arts and Sciences”: What Major Cities Would Look Like at Night, Minus the Light Pollution
• NYTimes.com, Starry Starry Night

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“Phenology” is the study of annual events in nature, such as plants budding or birds nesting. It also makes for a great excuse to walk through North Beach Park once a week or so. I’m not getting there as often these days, since my studies about how to restore the park are taking me away from the actual restoration, paradoxical as that might seem.

Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanum)

I did see some skunk cabbage. I remember in previous years there would be areas positively lush with it. I think it’s a very easily disturbed plant, though, and it seems to disappear from areas where we’ve done any work. It grow in places too wet to work in until after it’s died back, but that still seems to be enough of a disturbance. It’s one of my favorite plants, and seeing it in North Beach Park and finding out about it is one of the things that drew me to the park.

Pacific Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum tenuipes)

There was also Pacific Waterleaf coming up all over the place. Pacific Waterleaf grows from early spring until July or August and then dies back. While it’s around, it can form a very dense carpet. And when it blooms, it can hum with busy bees. This plant, too, appears to be disturbed by restoration work. It grows among ivy, and once it dies back the ivy gets to keep going. Pulling up the ivy and mulching can really cut back on the waterleaf return.

But it wasn’t all mixed news.

Nootka Rose (Rosa nootkensis)

This Nootka rose was planted in March 2012, which is late in the planting season. Despite the long, cool spring, the plants we put in that late didn’t have much time to establish their roots before the long drought of August-September hit. But this plant seems to have survived, and is putting out buds nicely. Nootka rose was brought into the park by restoration.

Indian Plum or Osoberry (Oemlaria cerasiformis)

This Osoberry looks in good shape, too. This is another very early plant, that blooms before almost anything else.

I didn’t do as good a job of recording what was planted where in 2012 as I might have. So one of my goals for 2013 is to better document the planting season (October — January).

In the meantime, there are plenty of invasives to remove.

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If you wonder what I mean when I say “we put a survival ring around a tree,” this might help explain the process.

First you need a tree with ivy on it. And here it is!

Tad and Chris stand in front of the tree we’re about to work on.

Before we pull the ivy off the tree, we build a platform to dry out the ivy and let it rot in place. In a few years, it becomes humus.

Here’s a blurry an action shot of Morry clearing the ground. It’s frequently the case that you have to pull up ivy to clear the spot for the platform.

First we put down a layer of burlap, to prevent shoots reaching up into the platform. Then long, thick logs (in this case, more than six feet long, and a couple inches in diameter) to form a square. More thick logs are laid out between the square, then a grid is formed by placing thinner logs across the bottom layer. The more separation between ground and platform the better. Then you can put the ivy on the platform.

Morrie and Ellie put ivy on the platform. You can see some burlap just above the date stamp, and a framing log towards the middle foreground.

The ivy is cut at shoulder height. The ivy above the cut is left in place to die, and the ivy below the cut is pulled away from the tree. This sometimes takes a great deal of effort. Ivy roots can reach several inches in diameter, and roots growing close together will fuse into a solid mat. A crowbar is one of the most useful tools for this kind of work.

Tad is holding a root that’s about 2″ in diameter. Also, you can see that we’re working on a slope with this tree.

Here’s the final ivy pile, with Tad standing behind it to give a sense of scale. He’s about 5’6″ tall.

Here’s the “after” picture.

It was taken from pretty much the same position as the “before” picture. The ivy above the cut will die, but it might take awhile. Even so, it will stop growing up the tree.

This tree was more than 35″ in diameter, and was about 100′ tall. The complete circumference was covered by ivy to about 70′.

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The best time to plant native plants in a park (where they won’t get much maintenance) is mid fall, so the roots have plenty of time to establish themselves during the winter rains. However, the best time to distribute thousands of plants to eager forest stewards is mid winter, when the plants are nice and dormant. For larger parks, with nurseries, this is no problem. For North Beach Park, that meant we put the plants in very late in the planting season (late March). I used to say I was the only person in Seattle who was enjoying the cool, wet spring.

We’re finally having a stretch of dry days — in fact, we’re approaching the record for days in a row without measurable precipitation, and just finished the driest August since weather records were kept. That means the watering cans will be accompanying me to North Beach Park a few more times.

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What first attracted me to North Beach Park was the trash in amongst the weeds. This bucket was uncovered during the June work party. That’s an ivy root rising out of the bucket.

The tree the ivy rose towards was so covered in ivy the little area looked like a jungle. Now it’s much more open and pretty.

This picture encapsulates the idea of “Nature Intrudes.” Nature will break through, not always in ways that humans like or judge as pretty. But it will break through.

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And now some of the tidepool life we saw at Salt Creek this year.

We (my wife and I) like tidepools because they’re so full of tiny creatures. Every square inch might be taken up with something: anemones, sponges, corals, seaweeds and grasses, sculpins, mussels, bivalves, crabs, shrimp, limpets, and on and on. The tidepools at Salt Creek, being on a very rocky shore, are fun to explore on their own. There are dozens and dozens of little enclaves of life, in many different nooks and crannies, some being washed by the waves no matter how low the tide, some covered in only the highest tides.

Tidepools make me think how profligate life is, how every nook and cranny will be filled with something, and how nothing is wasted. It’s also very colorful: either the exuberant coloration of a poisonous or unpalatable life form, or the dramatic mottling of something trying to camouflage itself against a chaotic background.

Goose neck barnacles (Pollicipes polymerus)

I remember thinking “sometimes, all you want is a straightforward, simple picture of goose-neck barnacles.” I should take this approach more often, as I want my photography to be more documentary or objective.

Ripples

But sometimes it’s hard to avoid the artistic.

Purple Shore Crab (Hemigrapsus nudus)

We watched this little guy eat for a while. It would reach into the mussel shell, struggle for a second or two, and then pull out a tiny little chunk of the mussel meat. A barely visible (to me) portion at any one time, but the crab didn’t have to go anywhere and the mussel certainly wasn’t going to run away. On the other side of the mussel (not photographable due to sun glare) was a much smaller shore crab, like a child or younger sibling.

This is a good example of the density of life in a tide pool, the area you’re looking at is only a couple square inches.

Pink-tipped Green Anemone (Anthopleura elegantissima)

Even though the pink-tipped anemone is the subject of this photo, there are hermit crabs, limpets, algae, encrusting corals or sponges, and other life forms in the field of view, if not necessarily visible in the photo.

Also, I like the word “elegantissima.” The “ti” should be heavily accented, and the “ss” very sibilant. Ell – ehh – gan – TI – ss – ih – mah.

Here is the complete set of photos from Salt Creek this year. Here is a collection of tidepool and tideland photographs from other trips.

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