David Buerge

Looking For Signs Of Century-Old Clam Gardens

Boulders and cobbles were piled beside the ancient clam gardens. On the beach they mark gardens and also pens where fish were herded for capture. More than a century has passed since the gardens were kept and wave action has been constant. Would the patterns survive?

Unglamorous But Useful: Behold the Wild Choke Cherry

The choke cherry’s beautiful bark is its claim to fame. Native people used strips buffed to a gorgeous copper to imbricate designs on baskets.

As Pollution Abates, The Divine Armada Of The Himalaya Return

The reason people in India can see the Himalaya again is because of Covid 19. The whole country has shut down; pollution plummeted; skies have cleared. Before us rises a possible future.

A Plague Reader – From Florence to Seattle

The onset and turbulent passage of Seattle’ influenza epidemic matches our present experience, and its history may serve as a route-guide. The "Spanish" Flu orphaned Emmett Watson and Mary McCarthy who, arguably, became writers as a result.

What & How – The Twin Towers of History

History is an agonizingly difficult study. It is not a science, and as an art it is risky business.

March of the Mollusks: Tracking Snails, Clams, and Other Critters Across Seattle

The living world shifts beneath our feet. It took 10 years, but the snails followed us across the region...

Unrelenting Grays: Native Myths About Endless Rain

One might wonder why Native stories wished for more rain in damp, dark Seattle, but spring floods signal salmon to return to spawning rivers where people caught them.

The Northwest’s Ancient Cathedrals (And Our Obligation To Them)

Lumbermen in a few decades scythed away our forest cover that was a wonder of the world. Centuries must pass before any of that grandeur returns.

Puget Sound’s Indigenous Languages Are Dying

Puget Sound Salish hangs on by a thread, thanks to efforts to preserve it. Unfortunately, when a language dies the ways its speakers experienced the world vanish with it.

A Native American Movement for Reparations Starts to Find its Voice

A proposal in Vancouver, B.C. could be "the most dramatic statement of urban Indigenous presence in any Canadian city – a new district called Senakw, after the long-displaced village."

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