Urban Thru-Hiking Trail Blazer
With the sun about to kiss the horizon, Liz Thomas (trail name: Snorkel) needs the last rays to illuminate her path. She is ascending and descending steps during an urban thru-hike in Seattle, one of the hilliest and most public-staircased cities in the country. This...
Audubon Helps Green a City Girl
I am by nature a city girl. I enjoy bright lights and long walks down populated concrete sidewalks while street musicians fill the air with tunes. I am from Chicago, land of blues and backyard barbecue smells, where as a child I played double-dutch near...
Nat’l Award for Environmental Reporting
For a yearlong look at workforce diversity in the National Park Service, an essay on identity, and profiles of rangers Charles Beall and Shelton Johnson, and José González and Latino Outdoors, Glenn Nelson has earned a national award from the Society of Environmental Journalists. The...
The Optics of Race
We have a monument to Confederate soldiers in my city, and our mayor wants it gone. I do, too. It sits in a cemetery where Bruce Lee and many of Seattle’s founding families are buried. Lakeview is even more meaningful to me because it’s where...
What If I’m Not White?
During my previous life as a sportswriter, an NBA player once made me wait for an arranged interview while he horsed around with ball boys in front of his locker. After a long spell of this, he grew bored and finally turned to me. “I...
Let’s Lay Some Words to Rest
During a recent Q&A session with a distinguished Black author and speaker, a woman from the South tripped so badly over race-based terms, she barely could spit out her danged question. “ … Black … ah … African-American … ,” she sputtered – and not...