Around every turn, Discovery in Seattle’s largest park
August 11, 2002
…THE PARK IS QUIET around dinnertime, so Dr. Phil Vogelzang, a neuroradiologist, seems to have it to himself. He had spent his day studying radiology images for evidence of bad news. Now he is on his adopted patch of ground, performing the optimistic work of planting trees, pulling weeds, spreading wood chips.
A cool wind envelops him as he empties one last load of chips into a wheelbarrow. He takes a break, reclining against a supply mound. He’s 44, a lean 6 foot 6, and wears his sandy hair in a casual mop. His thick-framed glasses are the kind you often see in laboratories and libraries. He went to high school in Bellevue, medical school at the University of Washington and did his residency in Boston before winding up back in Seattle.
Before him lay a U-shaped trail that only last fall was cement road left from the days when hospital buildings were there. He has strewn saplings and starter fuel like decomposing Christmas trees and logs to turn it all back to forest.
“I love this park, and manual labor like this relaxes me,” he says. “What I love best is doing something that isn’t for profit or with some ulterior motive.” Still, he approaches the task with A-type behavior, enlisting the help of a Boy Scout troop, seeking advice from a hydrologist friend, Moss Stone, and approaching various sources for spare trees and plants. When someone in his neighborhood appears ready to cut a tree he asks, “Can I have that?”
Vogelzang may be the most driven, but he’s just one of an eclectic group of volunteer stewards who build trails, pull weeds, give nature talks. They include a baker, car salesman, orthopedic surgeon, jail pastor, executives and retirees, professors, bike messengers, bankers and a handyman, a bookstore owner, a nurse and a real-estate agent. Clubs, schools and companies volunteer, too.
Vogelzang started coming to the park to train for cycling races, but eventually started attending park advisory board meetings. Now he is a member of it and involved in all kinds of issues, including the reforesting project being done by landscape architect Charles Anderson on about eight acres of what until recently was packed with old Army Reserve buildings.
From the high ground of his worksite, he can look down over the Capehart housing complex, which consists of cheap, single-story duplexes built in the ’60s and home to about 65 enlisted men and women. Huge signs warn that it is off-limits to all but military. It swallows about 25 acres near the center of the park and seems out-of-context, even in such an eclectic park. The city has long wanted the military to cede the land, and Vogelzang has been leading a recent effort to gently nudge it. The Navy simply says it needs the housing.
• • •MANY OF THE TREES and plants on Dr. Vogelzang’s adopted patch were put there by an unassuming plant expert named Dee Perguson. He is 80 years old, speaks just above a whisper, and downplays his role to the point of being a shrinking violet. Others aren’t so shy about his work.
“Basically, he’s the Johnny Appleseed of Discovery Park,” says Penny Rose, a naturalist who coordinates volunteer stewards and environmental-education instructors there. “He has propagated and planted virtually every plant along the Wolf Tree Trail and other parts of the park. In addition to planting, he has cared for that area for over 20 years, maintaining the delicate balance and waging the continual war against invasive species such as ivy and blackberry.”
Giving a tour of the trail, Perguson makes no mention of his effort. As he walks, he looks up into the forest canopy and down into plant leaves more than on the path ahead. Occasionally he pulls a tiny magnifying glass from his pocket to examine a new bud or bloom. He not only knows the scientific names of all the plants, but also the practical names that give better clues to their uses or distinctions.
“I tell kids it’s important to know the names,” he says. “Think of all the people you see walking around each day. But when you see someone whose name you know, suddenly it means something. They’re special.”
The land where the Wolf Tree Trail sits is an example of how Discovery Park has evolved. Native Americans foraged here, using plants and trees for food, medicine and supplies, such as canoes. In the late 1880s it became a working farm, which, Perguson says, probably accounts for the spectacular red alder the trail is named for. Wolves hunt in wide territories, and the Wolf Tree has spread its branches so widely that it was probably once alone or nearly so, in an open field. It had no competition for sunlight, unlike the alders now, which need to reach high above the dense forest to get light.
Eventually the farm was replaced by Army barracks. When the buildings were removed, an army of invasive plants moved in. Perguson and others have toiled to maintain the trail as a classroom, an urban connection to the natural world.
No dogs, even on leashes, or joggers are allowed on the trail. Yet in the span of 10 minutes, down walked a guy and his dog. Then came a woman jogger. When Rose politely reminded each of the rules she was treated as if she had just cut them off in traffic…
Richard Seven is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff reporter.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020811&slug=pdisco11
Wolf Tree Nature Trail 