Alaskan Way Walk

Beginning the walk around Pioneer Square, you can easily tell that this is the

oldest part of the city from the built environment. Not only is the architectural style

indicative of the time when the city was just being developed, but the buildings are only

made out of wood, brick, and stone, which must have been local. A very formal example

of city building styles developed elsewhere and transplanted here, but with a touch of

vernacularity out of necessity. When we get to Alaskan way, we find newer

streetscaping that seems to be trying a more vernacular approach, there are lots of

bioswales, drainage using native plants. There is high quality bike infrastructure, a more

sustainable way of getting around, and you can hair water, maybe from rain, rushing in

the drains.
 Around the edge of the water however, there’s a lot of unkempt areas, places where

overlying formal infrastructure, like the sea wall, has obviously not been maintained and

pockets of wild grasses, seaweed, or others have inserted themselves. Seattle feels like

it does show you the environment behind much of its formal landscape, at least more so

than other cities. We come upon a dead seal, lying on a pile of rocks beneath the piers,

next to a discarded traffic cone. Both are dead pieces of their own systems, the natural

world and our world, but one will be reused and feed new life, the other will only pollute.

We pass the ferry building, where the ferries carry people to all different parts of the

Salish sea. Seattle is shaped by the water that surrounds it, the ferries offer a

connection to this, riding the currents instead of building bridges and highways over and

around it. All of the construction along Alaskan feels like it is trying to represent itself as

a remaking of the formal into a more vernacular landscape, adding native plant troughs

for example, but they are still building a six lane expressway through the middle of it.
There is a seagull eating a sea-star, a more unusual example of the natural world

interacting with just itself here. Along one of the piers there is a boat and sign that says

“Salish Sea Tours” and it is draped in imagery of native Coast Salish art. This art was

once intimately attached to the land, carved into cedar trees and painted with local

pigments, representing the stories told by the natural world. This is a simulacrum of that

connection, painted to attract people looking for authenticity. On one of the piers, there

is a plant container made to look like a traditional canoe, filled with soil and exotic

plants. It lies on the border of formal and vernacular, as it is an imitation of a vernacular

tool, a canoe, but that is now used to bring plants from far away to grow here, imposed

by us.

The aquarium is difficult to tell if it is formal or vernacular as well, it tries to recreate

many natural processes and environments, illuminating them for people to learn from,

but none of it is real. The train tracks have weeds growing from them, it seems they
don’t bother tending to the tracks very much. Barnacles are growing along the piers, an

example of nature forcing our places to be vernacular. We finally get to Myrtle Beach

park, which feels like the only truly vernacular piece of the landscape along the entirety

of the waterfront. The beaches are left to be beaches, with sand and stones eroding

themselves in the waves. Trunks of big dead trees line the edge of the beach, creating a

natural protection from erosion. There are paths for humans that weave between the

trees, and leave space for nature to take over the areas that we do not need. It feels like

the entire waterfront could be like this, it doesn’t need to be an expressway, there’s

already a highway tunneled underneath it, and plenty of parallel thoroughfares.

 Arboretum walk

The arboretum is an interesting space, the first observation is that it is not that

easy to get there. It is not close to many densely populated neighborhoods except for

the U district, but even from there it is a long walk through areas that become quite

unfriendly to pedestrians. The public transportation to get there is limited to buses that

do not come that often and don’t drop you off inside of the park but a little ways from it.

The park itself is very interesting, and the whole thing blurs the ideas of vernacular and

formal, confusing you as to whether or not what you are seeing is the actual natural

processes of this land. The landscaping of the park is very well done, so that it looks

very natural, and likely much of it was natural. The plants inside the park are a harder

story, because the purpose of an arboretum is to display trees of many different species,

much of what seems to be growing naturally here is brought from very far away, and is

pruned and maintained by gardeners to be able to survive. It still feels very vernacular

though, especially in the southern portion of the park. Once we reach foster island

however this changes, and the landscape starts looking more like it has been sculpted
to appear as it did long before the city of Seattle was developed.

The trees are more obviously native, the environment feels less manicured. The

wetlands around the island seem to have lots of life in them, birds are everywhere and

especially here around where the water meets the land. The path has a lot fewer people

here than in other parts of the arboretum, which is nice. The park is opening us up to be

able to see the natural processes of Lake Washington, and it is beautiful to see.

However, something is off about the entire environment. It might have to do with the fact

that much of the nature is restored, it was destroyed and only then brought back when

humans allowed it, but that is not everything, as much of the nature feels plenty wild and

taken back by the environment. The problem is that there is a highway running straight

through the middle of it. The noise, the drum of the highway is audible in every part of

the island, there is no escape, and you cannot help but think this has some effect on the

wildlife. Once you get to the highway and need to pass under it to get to the far side of

the island it becomes really apparent that the priority of this space was to move car
traffic efficiently from Seattle to the east side, and that the restoration and park work

done on the island was an afterthought to make the impact of the highway less

apparent.

The path underneath the highway is quite awful for pedestrians, there is construction

going on and the path is low quality, the natural environment on either side of the

highway disappears while under it, it is only a loud, formal intrusion onto the landscape.

Once you get to the other side, it becomes nice again, the nature is back and the trees

open up to a view of union bay, lake washington, and the university on the other side.

While most of the island feels wild, there are a few areas sculpted out for humans, but

that feel vernacular and respectful of the environment, showing clearly that we are

guests here. The small pedestrian bridges that connect the main island to another small

island and then to the cut feel constructed to be as minimally intrusive to the

environment as possible, it is low and small, leaving you close to observe the natural

wetlands around the edge of the bay.

 Montlake Cut

While walking around the Montlake cut we happened upon an area that seemed

very interesting just a little further up portage bay, called Fritz Hedges waterway park. I

have been here before, and as it happens I know that this is the newest park in Seattle,

opening in 2020. This is very evident as we walk around. This landscape feels incredibly

formal, the bushes are still manicured, the grass has not outgrown the small patches it

was planted in yet, the benches look new, the concrete is bright, some of it looks like

landscaping people do in their suburban front lawns. Yet by the fact that they planted

native species along the water, fencing them in to protect them, and the small

beachfront created, it is evident that there was an attempt at vernacularity here, there
were some adaptations to the environment of this place.

However the environment that it was trying to adapt to wasn’t already there, it had been

destroyed long ago, they were trying to recreate it, that’s why it feels off. It sits on

portage bay, what would have been the unimportant far edge of lake Union had it not

been for the Montlake cut. An extremely formal example of humans putting their desires

onto the land, at first it must have been made for commerce, to facilitate ships

connecting to industry on other parts of lake Washington getting to lake Union and then

the sound. Nowadays however it mostly is used for the wealthy to bring their luxury

yachts to bigger houses on the east side, occasionally UW’s research vessels.

Changing the current of the water is a huge thing to do, uniting two systems that were

independent for so long. Nature adapts to our encroachment, the salmon did not used

to migrate through here, but now they do. The small beach at this park feels strange,
there are large concrete steps slowly coming down to a pebbly beach, which allow room

for sitting and are nice, but the beach itself is off.

Since the beach is man made, all of the rocks are the same size, gliding into the water

they do not change size, a sight so strange to our eyes that we are used to rocks

gradually turning into sand, and it feels tough to walk on. It will take a lot of years until

the beach feels right, for the plants too, they have not grown over the soil properly yet,

still needing to be protected by a fence. There’s a small pier which is very nice to sit on

with some chairs, but it feels new and formal because of how brightly colored it is, they

used metal and plastic and concrete to make it, it feels off and undoes the effect the

native plants have for me. The park is very close to the ship canal bridge, which carries

i-5 and is quite loud at pretty much all times of the day. Across the street is another

small park, and there’s a new crosswalk with bulb-outs in the middle of the street which

makes crossing easier and is nice. Over there is a preschool, and outside a small

garden with some educational plaques for children, telling them about pollinators and
giving them some philosophical quotes on the relationship between man and nature.

We can hear the children playing.