Stories of stranded and caved-in hikers have been dominating the local news in the past couple of weeks. Last week, two boys were rescued after an ice cave they were standing in collapsed. Both survived the cave-in but with serious injuries. Just this Tuesday, the sad news broke that an Oregon 15-year-old who was buried after a sand cave he was digging collapsed had succumbed to his injuries and died. Yesterday came the story of......

I Feel Pretty... by Synapped We feel pretty too, but not as pretty as the images in the Seattlest Flickr Pool.......

Snow Lake is a cakewalk by Alpine Lakes hiking standards. If you’ve done one hike in the Snoqualmie Pass area, chances are it’s this one. Easy to get to, easy to climb, and it packs a lot of scenery into eight miles of trail making it ideal for both first timers and returning locals looking for some easy beauty. The lingering winter snow pack this year has transformed the usually docile trek into a......

Into the Good Stuff by Synapped Now that it's officially summer, here's a little bit of nature from the Seattlest Flickr Pool. Thanks for sharing.......

Boom! Governor Gregoire comes right out of the gate at the new legislative session with a new bill laying "the groundwork for concrete limits on greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2012." And, in just four short (or long, depending on how you look at it) years, the bill "would give the state Department of Ecology the authority to regulate those emissions," reports the P-I. The main thing is that "big polluters" in Washington State would......

Nature vs. Man by smastrong, a trippy little image found in our groovy Seattlest Flickr Pool. You should totally join.......

People are strange. They say Ann Coulter is funny. They pay a $20 cover to have a conversation in a club. At the Showbox a few weeks ago, we saw Lavender Diamond, opening for the New Pornographers, cut their set short after telling the audience it was hard to play with all the talking going on. So we were worried heading back to the Showbox for the Jose Gonzalez/Tiny Vipers show because neither of......

Back in June we posted about the bee colony collapse thingamajig, the upshot of which was that no one knew what the hell was killing 23% of the commercial honey bee force dead. (50% to 90% of the U.S. commercial bee population was affected.) Today (via MSNBC) the journal Science is reporting (though it doesn't look like it's up on the site yet) that a major factor could be: Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, or IAPV......

Seattlest arrived on scene soon after the Capitol Hill Block Party had opened. We wandered, checked out the stage locations and thought about getting a beer, then spotted a booth touting free bottled water. It looked like the booth had something to do with praying to the Earth Spirits or some other new wave white hippy crap, but we decided to take our chances. We asked for a water and oddly enough their were no......

Reader, hesitate no further! At the close of last season, we penned a write up of western Washington's drive-ins, threatening to remind you again when the season re-opened. That time is now. This month, drive-in theaters opened. To celebrate, we paid a visit to Wenatchee's Vue Dale Drive-In since we were in the neighborhood and we had never been. It was a nice two-screen venue with a panoramic view of town behind one screen......

At the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit yesterday morning Bill Gates dropped some future knowledge on the assembled ad men and tech types. A few of those nuggets we found particularly interesting and insightful: Prediction #4: There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and......

Monday LESS IS MORE: In Trance of Scarcity: Stop Holding Your Breath and Start Living Your Life, Victoria Castle asks why we feel that nothing is ever enough. Castle's book shows us how to escape this malaise and become more relaxed and alive. Hopefully it doesn't involve crisscrossing the U.S. on a book tour. 7pm // Third Place Books // FREE NATURE WRITING: Robert Michael Pyle's Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps......

Two weeks ago we were watching American Experience: Influenza 1918 on PBS, because something else was a repeat. So we were reminded that between spring of 1918 and the end of that year, 675,000 Americans died of the flu -- 20 million worldwide-- and no one still knows why, precisely. (In fact, about 36,000 Americans die of the flu annually.) But then just last week, we saw this article in the Seattle Times, which......

Mother Nature is not Q. When your car has been coated with a couple of inches of snow, brush it off before you drive down the freeway. If you don't brush it off, it gradually blows off as you speed down I-5, making you look like James Bond in a rinky-dink car with an incompetent smokescreen. In other words, like Roger Moore circa View to a Kill. Yes, that bad. It also annoys the......

That was the clear message at Benaroya Hall last night, where New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert presented a sampling of the climate change research she covers in her much-lauded book (Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change), and then joined a few colleagues on-stage for a panel discussion. Touching on a few of the main locations and research findings from her book, the punchline is a real punch in the gut, or......

Wednesday, November 15 >>>UW iSchool at Kane Hall, 7:00-9:00pm. "Voices in an Empty Room: Five Apologies for the Narrative": Children's author Richard Peck discusses his writing and teaching careers, and his experiences with the kids today. He'll read from On The Wings Of Heroes, his new novel about a World War II childhood. Free with RSVP. Kane Hall, Rm. 220. >>>Third Place Books, 7:00pm. We saw this book talk about adoptive parents and thought......

We've always wanted to see Racine's Phaedra -- apparently only cheese-eating surrender monkeys the French really go for it, so it's not performed all that often in these parts. Yet what drives the story is as universal as the suspicion that something might be up between Carol and Greg on the Brady Bunch. When Phaedra marries the warrior-king Theseus, she develops "feelings" for her stepson Hippolytus -- but he's got eyes only for Aricia......

Seattlest went to one of those liberal-arts, don't-know-your-grades, frisbee-throwing, dialetical-discoursing, call-your-professor-by-their-first-name NW colleges. No, not that one, the other one. What do you think we are, some kind of shade-grown coffee-drinking hippie? Kee-rist. OK, so we may have joined some environmental organizations in high school and college, and we may be pretty much on the side of protecting natural resources and land before some people rape and pillage them permanently. But that doesn't mean we......

Eric Blehm’s third book, The Last Season, reconstructs the story of Randy Morgenson, a National Park Service backcountry ranger in California's rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains who heads out for a routine 3-day patrol in the summer of 1996, never to be seen again. Exploring numerous theories surrounding the circumstances of Morgenson's disappearance--suicide, accidental death, even starting over with a new anonymous life--Blehm retraces the ranger's steps, weaving together a story that celebrates the juxtaposition of......

It's Mother's Day weekend. Some people say we should remember our mothers all year-round, not just on a single day. But we do! With yo momma jokes! Seattlest contributors share their favorites, along with their plans for enforced family togetherness. Don always thinks of Norman Bates on Mother's Day. But that aside, when the mother in his home is not out siphoning the neighbor's gas tanks, she wants to bond with Mothers Earth and Nature.......

DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi’s tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city. LAist documented graf artist Banksy’s most recent visit to LA in one two three posts. They also found the best possible use......

Face it, you're getting old. Despite your best efforts, Father Time and Mother Nature are doing a number on your body, mind, and soul. You wake up to achey joints, you're worried about your 401k, and you spend your days working for "The Man" instead of following your dreams. So you go to the gym (or at least say you will) realizing it's a losing battle, read books to stay sharp, and try to......

Let's face it, some of you avoid the clubs because you dance like Elaine from Seinfield. Thumbs akimbo, legs kicking wildly without tangible grasp of rhythmic co-ordination, yours is a "full-bodied dry heave set to music" according to George Costanza. In the mating dance of life, Elaine gets stuck with the Puddy's of the world, and a few local computer scientists have an idea why that is. We'd like to continue by warning you that......

Collective highlights from Seattlest's year in reading: James: Legs McNeil's The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Industry demonstrated yet again that reading about porn is far more interesting than actually watching it. Cintra Wilson, in Colors Insulting to Nature, balances savage and hilarious mockery of her main character with deep sympathy, without forcing either element. Wilson saves her true venom for celebrity and its acolytes. I finished this early last January,......

Yesterday the Cascadia Scorecard blog commented on a P-I article from two days ago on the subject of Seattle's troubled urban forests. The article from the Post Intelligencer is quality stuff and you should copy the link for yourself for reading at another time. We know that stuff piles up and you eventually just end up deleting it all because who has time to read that many links, but at least you'll have made an......

When we lived elsewhere, we laughed at the joke that Seattle's summer starts on July 5. However, since moving back and suffering through a brisk May, Juneuary, and a gloomy post Fourth of July fortnight we were beginning to wonder why we ever thought that joke was funny. But lately it's been wonderful. If you don't know what we're talking about, then pull your pants up and look outside--it's gorgeous. And with a five-day......

There are plenty of options begging for your attention this coming weekend. It might rain, it might not, but honestly could you care less? Seattlest found these little lovelies tucked up in the cliffs on the Palisades/Ranger Creek trail near Mt. Rainier this past weekend. We couldn't appreciate the typical staggering view, hunkered up in the clouds as we were, but lo and behold spring had sprung right in between our toes! Take a......

After Mother Nature decided to make up for an unusually mild winter with a sudden few weeks of cold and rain, the sudden appearance of actual spring weather has had Seattlest keeping an eye out for every sign of spring we can find. Sometime this week, one of the surest signs of spring yet has arrived: the notorious Tent Caterpillar infestations are back! While these pests can do an incredible amount of damage to trees......

Your inner 13-year-old is going to have the time of its life on Thursday. Seattlest is offering to you a nerd license for March 3, 2005. Use it wisely. "The Persistence of Frankenstein: Art, Science and Creation" is going to take you all the way back to what most people consider the very beginnings of the science fiction genre, but will then proceed to explain why Mary Shelley's classic is more relevant today than......

Mother Nature is relentlessly dishing out day after glorious day of perfect sailing weather—leaving Seattlest in a westerly-facing, boating daydream. Fortunately, that steady northerly breeze is backed up by a healthy dose of opportunity, including the best boating bargain in town. Seattle Parks and Recreation offers exceptional classes at the Mt. Baker Rowing and Sailing Center. The adult sailing class begins Saturday aboard their fleet of Laser II's. For an unbeatable $108, you'll get......