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The Cascades’ Most Commanding View · Street Smart Naturalist

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Greetings,
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: this is David B.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Williams and the podcast of my newsletter,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: The Street Smart Naturalist, Explorations of the Urban Kind.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every week I share my observations and adventures with the human
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: and natural world around Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Pacific Northwest.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode heads to someone else's favorite spot in the Cascades.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: To learn more about my work,
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: including my new book,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: In the Range of Fire and Ice,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: A Human and Natural History of Washington's Cascades,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: please go to my website, geologywriter.com.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: You'll also find a link to my Substack newsletters and my previous five and
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: a half years of newsletters, as well as images tied to this week's episode.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for joining me on this adventure.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to podcast 98 of the Street Smart Naturalist, the most commanding view in the Cascades.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: October 29, 2026.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: The summit of Darlin Mountain is nothing special compared to other classic Cascades peaks.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: No crags, cliffs, or steep rocky parts.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's flat and open and hard to distinguish the actual high point.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can reach it by hiking or cross-country skiing,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: but when I visited it on a warm September day, I arrived in a truck.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Bouncing along a four-wheel drive road that crossed over Darlin.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: The road,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: at least,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: is unusual because it's the second highest in Washington State,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: reaching to 6,981 feet.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I first learned about Darlin from its biggest fan,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: he referred to it as Darling, though no one knows why the name changed to Darlind.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: As a young man in the 1910s,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Douglass hiked and camped throughout this part of the Cascades,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: east of Yakima, where he grew up.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: In his splendid memoir of Men and Mountains,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: he wrote of the Summit of Darlin,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is without doubt the most commanding view in the Cascades.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Heady words for such a low-key summit.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: But as Douglass pointed out,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: to the east lay the golden brown valleys around Yakima,
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: to the south, in Oregon, Mount Jefferson and Mount Hood.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: To the west rose Mount Adams and Mount St.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Helens in Douglass' day,
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  SPEAKER_00: still a perfectly conical peak,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: and north of Adams the jagged goat rocks and mighty rainier.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Growing on the slopes of Darlin,
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: wrote Douglass,
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Were rich gardens of plants, Lupin,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Penstemon,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Scarlet Gilea,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Saxifrage,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Gentian,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Larkspur,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Mission Bells,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Tiger Lily,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Monk's Hood, Arnica,
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob's Ladder, St.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: John's Wort,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wallflower, Mallow, Paintbrush, Valerian, Syncifoil, and a host of others.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: On the summit, he found his favorite, the splendid avalanche lily.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Its stimulus is the raw wind, cold thin earth, chill nights, and icy waters of the Cascades.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: After reading Douglass's book,
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I had long wanted to see the summit and had the opportunity when I tagged along
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: with two researchers from Central Washington University,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Ali Scovel and her student, Jenna Chapman.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: They were there to study Clark's Nutcrackers,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: a handsome grey bird with black wings and a prominent bill.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well known to many visitors to the Cascades as camp robbers,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: the birds are smart,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: resourceful,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: and inquisitive,
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: and central to one of the most enduring and important ecological relationships in
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: the Cascades.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: As Douglass noted from his time on Darlin,
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: nutcrackers relished the nuts of the summit's most distinctive tree, whitebark pine.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: The nutcrackers were feverishly tearing the cones apart from the seed,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: working the tops of the trees.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: The pines reminded him of the windblown trees that the Knights of the Round Table,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: according to Tennyson, looked for among the crags.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know not of what these fine medieval gentlemen sought,
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: but think that whitebarks are one of the loveliest trees in the Cascades.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: They are also one of the most overlooked,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: losing out to the big trees below which grab all the attention and far more of
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: the visitors.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: But those who venture higher are rewarded in seeing what ecologists such as Ali call
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: a keystone and a foundational species of the heights.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: By providing food,
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: The impact of whitebark pines is essential to the community health of the ecosystem.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because of them,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: numerous plants and animals have been able to colonize and thrive Often after
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: the ecosystem has been disturbed.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Without whitebark pines,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: the high elevations of the Cascades,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: particularly east of the Divide,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: as well as large swaths of the Rocky Mountains, would be far less diverse.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And because this ecosystem crowns the mountains,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: the effects spread down mountain multiplying the importance of the trees.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: We first encountered whitebarks about 2,000 feet below the summit as we ascended
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: the middle fork of Tonin Creek Valley.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was immediately taken with the architecture of multiple arms,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: skirting up to form a broad crown,
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  SPEAKER_00: so unlike the surrounding subalpine firs and their classic arrowhead shape.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: The arms mimicked the base of many whitebarks,
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  SPEAKER_00: which consisted of several trunks sprouting next to each other,
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  SPEAKER_00: like what happens in a garden when you sow too many seeds together.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is what occurs with whitebark pines.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not only do Clark's nutcrackers relish whitebark cones,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: but they are also the principal dispersers of the tree's nuts or seeds,
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: which is the key to the relationship between the species.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: After harvesting nuts,
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: which they store in a pouch under their tongue,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: the birds fly anywhere from hundreds of yards up to 18 miles from their source
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: and bury or plant the seeds.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: They do so by excavating a shallow trench with a side-to-side bill sweep,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: depositing the nuts,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: and then covering the trench with pebbles, twigs, and other debris.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: A typical cache consists of one to five seeds.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: When the seeds germinate,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: they often do so en masse and generate several close-growing fused
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: or contiguous trunks,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: again so different from the typical shape of most other cascade trees.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: At the summit,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: the whitebark pine further stood out primarily because of
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: a lightning strike-caused fire burned around 4,000 acres on top of Darwin
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: in August 2009.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: The tree's multiple stems and many branches, crisp, bleach,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: and stark,
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: created a forest of ghosts,
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: beautiful yet ominous against the crystalline blue sky and backdrop of Mount Adams.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Wholesale deaths such as this might be the future for whitebark pines,
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: in part because of fire,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: but also because of disease,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: the outbreak of mountain pine beetles, and climate change.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: If whitebark pine populations continue to suffer,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: the effects will also spread to Clark's nutcrackers,
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: resulting in the complete rejiggering of this high-altitude ecosystem.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: If we can understand why this change is occurring,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: then perhaps we can do something about it, Ali told me.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Her words exemplify one of the central themes of In the Range of Fire and Ice,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: the importance of research and better understanding the life histories of the plants
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: and animals of the Cascades, and how this can lead to better management.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: This stands out most clearly with Mount St. Helens,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: where the concepts of ecological recession,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: the process of plants and animals replacing another species over time,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: such as in a disturbed habitat, were completely rewritten.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: This, in turn,
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: has had significant implications for land management around the globe,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: all due to what scientists learned at the volcano.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Other areas in which more research is helping include management of fire
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: on both sides of the Cascades,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: carnivores such as wolverines and wolves and whitebark pines.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not only do many of these studies rely on new research,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: but also on what is known as TEK, or Traditional Ecological Knowledge.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is knowledge obtained through observation and experience gleaned from living on
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: and in place for generations.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Such knowledge,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: practices,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: and beliefs may be held in stories,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: legends, myths, and place names, as well as simply being passed down from elders.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Long disparaged by non-native scientists,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: TEK is becoming more and more widely accepted by researchers who have begun
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: to realize the limitation of what is often described as Western science,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: and to acknowledge that there is more than one way to learn about and from plants
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: and animals.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: None of the new and shared knowledge guarantees either good management
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or long-term stewardship,
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: but it does at least point in a better direction and way to a better future
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: for humans and more-than-human world.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I can only hope that such ideas continue to spread as more and more people continue
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: to take a saner,
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: long-term,
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: science-based approach to preserving,
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: conserving, and managing the precious ecosystems that we call HOME.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Once again,
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: this is David B.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Williams,
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: author and voice of the Street Smart Naturalist,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Explorations of the Urban Kind,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: a weekly newsletter and podcast focusing on the human
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: and natural world around Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Pacific Northwest.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like more details about my walks, talks,
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: and books,
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: including In the Range of Fire and Ice and Where I'll Be Speaking,
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: along with a link to sign up for my newsletter and podcast,
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: check out my website, geologywriter.com.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to slow down, pay attention, and enjoy the world around you.