It's a chilly Saturday morning in Discovery Park. A thick, soupy fog hangs low in the winter sky, obscuring the surrounding treetops.
Not the ideal conditions for bird-watching.
But the group of about 20 people and a smattering of dogs that has gathered in front of the Visitor Center is undeterred. Those in attendance are representatives, volunteers and friends of various local environmental and neigh-borhood nonprofits, and everyone is excited to begin this morning's walk along the Salmon Bay Wildlife Corridor.
The route - which begins at the Discovery Park Visitor Center, wends down the north side of Magnolia and across the Ballard Locks to end at Golden Gardens - has recently been published as a walking map and educational guide by the Salmon Bay Volunteer Network.
The consortium of local nonprofit volunteer organizations includes Groundswell NW, People for Puget Sound and Heron Habitat Helpers.
As people zip up their jackets, greet acquaintances and gripe goodnaturedly about the weather, I'm able to chat with Mary Beth Dols, the driving force behind publication of the map.
Dols cuts an energetically maternal figure. With a whistle around her neck for crowd control and her short, silver hair ruffled by a soft breeze, she is filled with the heady excitement of seeing her plans come to fruition.
"I volunteer for Heron Habitat Helpers, I work for People for Puget Sound, I'm a docent here at [Discovery] Park and I'm on the steering committee at Groundswell," she says. "I realized that I was just paddling around in this one pool of volunteers and donors, and I thought we should all get together, because Ballard, Queen Anne and Magnolia - it's all the same neighborhood.
"I thought that the map would be a really cool idea to tie it all together," Dols adds.
The funding for the project came as the result of grant writing that Dols coordinated with various members of the groups with which she works. "Groundswell gave us some money," she says, "and the Discovery Park Advisory Council gave us some money, and SPU and Heron Habitat Helpers chipped in and, bam, it was done. We hired the artist, and now here we are. We've got it."
The map not only displays the walking route along the Salmon Bay Wildlife Corridor, it also provides information on the various animals, habitats and landmarks that a walker will encounter along the way. The back page displays contact and volunteer information.
Before we depart on the walk, Dols, along with other key players in the map project, gives a brief talk about the importance of environmental awareness and involvement in the Seattle community.
"How many of you have heard the phrase 'Puget Sound literacy'?" she asks the group. Many hands go up. "Well, for those of you who haven't, Puget Sound literacy is the most basic level of understanding of our immediate environment.
"In order for people to care about Puget Sound on a personal level, we need a fundamental knowledge of local watersheds, of salmon spawning routes, of native plants and animals," Dols goes on. "This kind of literacy is what allows us to feel a real connection to the world around us."
Theresa McEwen, a representative of Seattle Parks and Recreation, seconds the need for people within the community to feel a real, immediate and emotional connection with their environment.
"It's difficult to get your head around the entire ecosystem of Puget Sound," McEwen says, "but it's not hard to get your heart around it and get involved."
As the walk begins and we proceed from Discovery Park to Wolf Creek and the Kiwanis Ravine, the nesting place of Seattle's largest great blue heron colony, the emotional aspect of environmental awareness takes flight. Literally.
I've always thought of herons as solitary creatures. In the past I've never seen more than one heron in any given place at the same time. The sight of a single, lonely heron fishing along the shore of Lake Washington has always filled me with a sensation of transcendent melancholy, an appreciation for the stoic grace of the lone hunter, the individual seeker, the beautiful outcast.
Getting close to the nesting colony in the Kiwanis Ravine shot down my romantic image of the heron, but replaced it with a reality that is, in its own way, even more breathtaking.
For the sake of safety, herons nest in large numbers. Individual birds fly far afield each day to forage and hunt, but return to the safety of the colony to raise their young.
From a bridge above the railroad tracks just south of the Ballard Locks, we had what would have been a clear view of the colony had the nesting trees not been shrouded in the slowly lifting fog. From our position about a half-mile away, it looked as if a single, gigantic tree housed 30 or 40 huge heron nests. (I was later told that the nests occupy several trees in close proximity.)
Through the fog, we could see the silhouettes of herons perched in the trees, their long, graceful necks craning out of their nests. As the members of the walking group took out binoculars and cameras, something spooked the colony and the air was suddenly full of herons. It was an incredible sight.
For someone like me, who had never seen more than one heron on a single perch, to see dozens of herons simultaneously take flight was nothing short of miraculous.
These are very large birds; adults range from 38 to 45 inches in height with a wingspan of 66 to 79 inches, so it almost seemed as if the liftoff of the colony would blot out the sky. As the perceived danger passed, one by one they returned to their nests and perches, and I was struck by the visual dichotomy presented by these creatures.
Their appeal lies not within their overwhelming majesty, but in their complexity. They embody both gawky awkwardness and fluid grace, and in this marriage of aesthetic opposites they become, visually, something far greater than the sum of their lanky parts. They speak to the idealized images of our own human selves that we keep locked away; like all of us, these birds are beautiful both because and in spite of their perfectly imperfect bodies.
As we conclude the walk, passing over the Locks and stopping briefly at a Groundswell NW work party along Salmon Bay before continuing on to Golden Gardens, I ask Donna Kostka of Heron Habitat Helpers what she sees as her personal connection to the birds to which she's dedicated herself.
"I'm a tall, skinny bird," she replies, laughing. "When I see the heron..." She pauses. "Well, I see me."
Sean Molnar is a freelance writer living in Seattle. Write him c/o rtjameson@nwlink.com.
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