Welcome to the Jungle (Western Washington Temperate)

the maritime pacific northwest, the land of giant-sized plants, everything flowering, 16 hours of sunlight, 2 hour sunsets, and all the beer and meat I can eat. Our explorations today included an investigation of the lowest tide (-3 feet) this month, and a trans-estuary hike to a small creek where the old brick factory used to be. Beautiful wetland!

Through the blackberries. A machete is helpful.

Wild plum. Invasive English Ivy sheathes most of the Big Leaf Maples, and 6-ft Urtica is common understory. Nutka Rose and Sitka Brome announce that this is Cascadia.

The jungle beckons. Roses and Blackberries and Fireweed occupy the drying gradient rim. The history, hydrology, and area are heavily impacted by humans.

This is a protected sanctuary, rimmed by 200 ft douglas fir and dominated by a grass-leaved Luzula (?), Salicornia, Distichlis spicata, and a fleshy leaved Asteraceae.

In the center of the stream's meander through the intertidal zone.

Entering the estuary, we decided to take a shortcut across the muck-filled intertidal zone.

Eggshell casting: these cast-off sand collars are rubbery and fun to tear. The snails leave them behind when they dive under the sand to evade the sun.

We saw red, white, and transparent worms, some with tubular casings, snails, geoducks, and many, many dead crabs. (not sure why).

Poking the seasnail.

Goat Springs: Dry

Browsed mormon tea (ephedra sp) and yucca... we followed cattle and game trails (deer, elk, cow, rabbit feces) through the sandy soils, along washes in the hills, clambered over the spine, up many false leads, looking for the springs.

Bug skewered on cholla. There is one species of cholla, one of prickly pear, and one Echinocereus present in the uplands.
The yucca in this area is heavily browsed. I initially suspected overgrazing pressure from cows or game, but later found yucca leaves in a packrat midden. As Alexandra says, "there are rodents, everywhere." Yucca grows thickly in other nearby pastures, possibly as a result of previous grazing management, because in still other pastures there is thick cholla, or thick juniper.


The grama grass grows in "islands" rather than "networks" over much of this range. There are deep furrows/headcuts leading up from the washes, indicating extensive erosion. While Goat Springs is in a natural hard-rock canyon, there are numerous abnormal, unnatural looking trench arroyos in the area. Rocky soils dominate in the uplands, while a large amount of eolian deposits have accumulated at the base of these hills.



As we approached the true springs we knew we were on the right track, first by the abundant PVC detritus, then by a few dying cottonwood, then a thicket, and, finally, a fenced-off area. The "springs" were marked by extensive rock work, both loose and concreted. The PVC piping led to a stock tank. The "springs" themselves were ineffectually fenced. The only interesting species was some Setaria, probably leucopila, growing in the rocks.

While exploring the headwaters above Goat Springs, we discovered an ancient, destroyed, forest. There is nothing like these trees, which may have been old-growth Pinon or Ponderosa, in the area. Above the springs the shrubs are Mountain Mahogony, whereas below the springs the shrubs are all Apache Plume.

Southwest Exploration: A Timeline and Bibliography

The more I study ecology, the more I need to study history. Everything from the extinction of the paleolithic megafauna through the grenshorizont of peatland bog studies (shift in peat formation two to three thousand years ago as the midwest became wetter and cooler) to the presence or absence of bufalo (Bison bison bison) in the Arid West....Ecology is paleoecology, which is forensic and contingent on largely unknowable past events. But without that past the changing movie of life is only a single strobe, an event, a stained glass window that we can look at but now through. This perspective is important for science, but equally important for public policy. We can't protect what we've already forgotten.

Below is a partial list of early explorers and colonists of the American Southwest, especially New Mexico, which has a 500+ year written history. We desperately need an ecological historian to compile these original observations, translate and condense, collate, draw conclusions, and eventually inbed it all in a google earth kml layer, like the Mannahata project.

This is a New Mexico centric list, prepared with much help from to William Goetzmann http://www.nps.gov/history/history/categrs/explr/biblio-g2.htm and Ruth Marie Colville, "La Vereda: A Trail through Time."

1537 Cabeza de Baca seven year trek from Texas to Sea of Cortez, fording the Rio Grande "breast high".
Journal: unreliable "recounting"
Book: Cyclone Covey, ed. And trans., Cabeza de Vaca's Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America, Univ. of NM Press, Albuquerque, NM, 1993.

1540 Francisco Coronado two years exploring Rio Grande Valley as far north as Taos, east to Kansas, west [in]to the Grand Canyon.
Journal: ?
Book: Coronado, Knight of Pueblo and Plains, Univ. NM Press, by Herbert E. Bolton, Albuquerque, NM, 1964
Book:[?]Pedro de Castañeda, The Journey of Coronado, repr., Dover, San Francisco, 1990,

1580 Rodrigues expedition: Fray Augustin Rodrigues and Captain Francisco Chamuscada. Rio Grande valley east to Pecos River
Journal: "Relaciones"

1582 Espejo party rescue mission: Antonio Espejo went east beyond the Manzano Mountains, west to ZUni and Hopi, as far as Flagstaff, then back home along the Pecos.
Journal: Diego Perez de Lujan

1590 Gaspar Castano de Sosa illegal colonization: went up the Pecos river to Pecos Pueblo
Journal: Castano de Sosa.
Book: "A Colony on the Move" by Albert Schroeder and Dan Matson.

1598 Don Juan de Onate colonization, settled at head of Espanola Valley.


1776 Escalante Expedition from Santa Fe, through SW Colorado, SE Utah, and NE Arizona.
Book: Bolton, Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of Escalante's Expedition to the Interior Basin, 1776, Univ. of Utah,Salt Lake City, Utah, 1950,


1806 Pike Expedition: Zebulon Pike
Journal: "The expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike to headwaters of the Mississippi River, through Louisiana Territory, and in New Spain, during the years 1805-6-7
Book: Donald Jackson, ed., The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike With Letters and Related Documents, U. of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1966.
Book:Elliott Coues, The Expeditions of Zebulon Montygomery Pike, 2 vols., Dover, NY, 1987.

1821 Fowler Adventure to eh Sources of the Rio Grande
Jounral: Cous, E. (editor) 1965 The Journal of Jacob Fowler: Narrating an Adventure From Arkansas Through the Indian Territory, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, to the Sources of the Rio Grande Del Norte, 1821-1822. Ross & Haines, Inc., Minneapolis, MN.

1846 Kearny-Emory expedition. US Mexico Boundary Survey. Lieutenant W.H. Emory. Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila rivers
Book: Ross Calvin, ed., Lieutenant Emory Reports: A Reprint of Lieutenant W.H. Emory's Notes of a Military Reconnaissance, U. of NM Press, Albuquerque, NM, 1951.
Book: William H. Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 3 vols., 34th Cong. 1st Sess. H. Exec. Doc. 135, Serial 861-63, Washington, D.C., 1857-59, and repr. William H. Goetzmann, ed, 3 vols., TSHA, Austin, TX, 1997.
Book: John Russell Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and Chihuahua, Connected With the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission During the Years 1850, '51, '52 and '53,, 2 vols., Appleton, NY, 1854, repr., 2 vols., Rio Grande Press, Chicago, IL, 1965.
Book: Dawn Hall, ed., Drawing the Borderline: Artist-Explorers and the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey, The Albuerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM, 1996, P.B.

1849 Washington Expedition to make peace or prosecute a war with the Navajo
Book: Navajo Expedition: Journal of a Military Reconnaissance from Santa Fe, New Mexico to the Navvaho Country Made in 1849 by James H. Simpson, Durwood Ball, Frank McNitt

1851 Sitgreaves
1853 Whipple
1854 Parke
1854 Pope
[misc ]
see Herbert E. Bolton, Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706, Scribner, NY, 1916, repr. Barnes & Noble, 1995, ...

David Weber, The Taos Trappers, the Fur Trade in the Far Southwest, 1540-1846, U. of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1982.

Ralph P. Bieber, ed., Exploring Southwestern Trails, 1846-1854, Clark, Glendale, CA, 1938, William H. Emory,

Catron County, NM