Seattle to Portland: The Mima Mounds

Aside from the odd topography, the mima mounds preserve is really just a slice of rapidly disappearing Puget Sound prairie. But this too tells a historical tale: We quickly learn from a helpful Dept. of Natural Resources guide that we're standing on the front line of a forest cycle. Most people, of course, associate the Northwest with conifers like the Douglas fir. It's what kept the logging industry going for generations. But before the 19th century, large areas of the Puget Sound were covered in oak forests. The Oregon white oak, unlike Douglas firs, can survive a forest fire. It's comparably quite hardy, living up to 500 years, and on the edge of the forest, looking out over the mounds, we're already surrounded by deciduous trees. The odd sapling even grows out of the top of mound.

"As soon as you clear the Douglas firs," the guide tells us helpfully, "the oaks start
sprouting up. I want to take them all out!" he says, waving his open hand at the rows of fir trees behind him. The oaks need lots of sunlight, and Douglas firs, which grow much taller, easily strangle them out over time. But fire activity on the prairies helped keep the firs at bay.

The story of Puget Sound's oak forests is a tale about man's fragile relationship with his environment. Native American tribes, which harvested edible plants from the prairies, played a major role in the fire activity, even setting prairie fires on purpose, in order to protect food sources. Without this activity, the oak forests would have been overrun with firs long ago.

Yet the fate of the Puget Sound's oak woodlands is tied to the arrival of the pioneers, who used oak as firewood and for building, and replaced it with more profitable Douglas firs for the timber industry. By the end of the 19th century, most of it had been wiped out. Just one more sign of man's destructive and transformative power over the world around him, but one which points out how little we notice, how blind we really are to our impact on the environment: How many anti-environmental activists point to the fir forests around the Northwest to demonstrate that there's more than enough trees, we can surely cut some more down, without ever asking whether the trees he sees are the ones that are supposed to be there?

As a cruel reminder of just how much we've encroached on nature, and a possible explanation for the Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve's relative obscurity, a gun club is located a short distance away with a busy firing range. The rapport of gunfire echoes across the mounds with such a frequency it sounds like you're in a war zone. A sign in the parking lot helpfully explains their proximity, and assures visitors they're firing away from where you're standing.

Monday: Wagons East from Tenino.