This quiet County Park rests in a lake bed of ancient silt and glacial till. The surrounding area of relatively flat wetlands and lowland coniferous second growth, holds a mix of soft woods, logged off at the turn of last century, over one hundred years ago. The slope to the northwest is deciduous maple dominant, with some hemlocks which were undesirable in timber sales. Because of the more intact forest surrounding a hard to access marsh pond, there are a lot of exciting plants and animal sign to reflect on, as well as bird song and mycological mysteries, along pleasant walking trails. The group was perfect size to gather, learn, and reflect in a way where all voices were heard. When leading these walks- and they are walk, though we do a lot of stopping, observing, and reflecting our surroundings together. The shared experience of nature brings out so much rich layers of each set of senses. Someone sees a fern, shares it with the group, another pulls Pojar/MacKinnon (Plants of The Pacific Northwest) out and looks up ferns, several standing with her to watch how she uses the field guide and quickly finds the fern section, looking first at silhouettes and then turned to a page- “Oak Fren” Gymnocarpium dryopteris. Noticing this smaller fern among sever others, noting the landscape, time of year, shapes and sizes of the other ferns. We all learn together.
I’m bringing some knowledge basics, a way to invite curiosity by sharing my own naturalist bug. I wanted to know why the lake was sometimes dramatically different levels within a single season, and found the beaver dam at the main outflow of the creek. I then observed human management of the outflow, and noted flood control for neighborhoods down stream, into Tolt River. The flow is carved out nicely in the geology, showing a slow melt over time, with fluctuations and flooding tens of thousands of years back, when the last ice age retreated, leaving a north-south scrape into bedrock. Tectonic uplift hides a lot of what the ice carved up, but closer to the sound, the Puget lowlands speak to a mile of ice which once carved out most of this upper region in The Pacific Northwest.
Geology of a place sets the tone, in this case, glacial till, uplift, and hydrological shaping. The returning forest slowly matures, with protection, as this wetland marsh and surrounding vegetation remains rich and diverse. Just outside the park, plantation fir plantings contain mono-crop stagnation for industrial harvest. Our group took a walk into this tree farm setting to compare ecologies. The difference was night and day. It takes time to train the eyes, especially in nature, where we spend less and less time. Seeing the landscape, what’s growing there, how the land is so changed by human carelessness, how it can restore in time. Moss Lake was a set of homesteads, with livestock, dreams of a better life, and seemingly endless wood to cut and sell, clearing the land for grazing and building. The land was too wet, so much bog and insect life, eventually, laws changed, protecting wetlands. King County saw an opportunity, or received a donation to start the process in turning agriculture back to nature again.
Our group was well established in the makings of this place, but the characters still thriving in the soil continued to surprise and inform. We walked a well packed gravel ADA path for the first quarter mile around the lake. Gravel trails usually carry many weeds, and we acknowledged a helpful one, dock Rumex obtusifolius. Some of the gardeners in the group moaned, it’s true, the tap root of this plant is very hard to pull out once established. I stepped up to the plant, smiled, then leaned forward and bite off the top seed head, green and lush in its first growth of late spring. The young seeds are edible raw, and high in nutrition for an active body in warmer months. Foods should reflect the land where it grows, being lush and fully alive at this few hundred feet of elevation in the peak sun days. It’s edible tap root dives deep to send water down through compacted soil- like the edge of the gravel walk, or livestock paddocks with too much use, therefore, detrimental compaction.
Temperate rainforests are amazing places, especially where there is intact canopy and legacy ground covers like salal Gaultheria shallon and red elder Sambucus racemosa. Someone else asked if the root was edible, I said yes, then there was confusion with another plant we had not seen called burdock. That is another edible root known as gobo. We focused on the dock, I talked more about its uses, cooking the leaves to eat, as well as harvesting dry seed to make a coarse but satisfying “bread”. I usually supplement this with plantain seeds, another compaction loving weed we encountered. The leaves, like those of dock, are good to wrap things in. Someone related a story about using plantain leaves as a bandage around her finger. The plant learning through medicines, materials, and food give more context and reliability to a place we might survive in. Really, we’re surviving everywhere we go.
The natural world is just one place, full of ecology that determines the constraints of our survival need. Here in a more nonbrittle landscape there is so much vegetation. Breaking “the green wall” can be challenging, and I know there are still many plants I don’t know, and even more that I confuse with names I’m familiar with. We had the talk about common names- it’s a problem when you’re merely talking about plants outside their physical context. Dock and burdock sound similar, but they are not the same. That’s why these walks and learning in person at the source are so crucial to being a well versed naturalist, which is part of your survival kit. Dirt time is never wasted, and consistent wanders help you bring the natural world closer, that shared experience builds even more trust and confidence, holding community in nature, women learning together, experiencing place with purpose. I cannot say enough how thankful I am to share these moments in appreciation of life all around us. This is the survival mindset, it keeps us alive and allows our senses to manifest all we need.
EEC Forest Stewardship 