Nature in the City: Seattle

My husband and I have been visiting our children in Seattle for 12 years. How delighted we were to receive a copy of Nature in the City:Seattle, and to discover that nature is literally bursting out of every corner of the city. I can't wait to take our grandchildren to Discovery Park this November to listen for winter owls. Then maybe we'll have time to stroll around Dead Horse Canyon to look for medicinal plants while imagining smoky longhouses formerly along Lake Washington's shore. With this wonderfully composed and arranged book, Maria and Kathryn have given Seattle a new look.

This book has lots of great ideas on how to spend an hour or four in and around the city. It's easy to read and has interesting info interspersed in with the specifics of each adventure. I now have new fun facts and things to look for on a walk I've taken many mornings on Queen Anne Hill, I learned about the Peregrin's that I've seen perch on my downtown office windowsill, and the bike ride along the Duamish was a nice alternative to some more common routes. I look forward to trying them all.

Enjoyed this approach to seeing the city. Finally something to do with my children that is an inexpensive and educational pursuit. I'm giving these as gifts for Christmas to all my friends. Super!

This book was an easy yet informative read and provides a unique resource for experiencing the nature and ecology within our Seattle urban surroundings. Typically a day's outing requires a guide book to choose where to go, how to get there, and what you'll find. Then you go and carry other field guides with you to help you learn about the trees, plants, birds, animals and history of your destination or end up waiting until your back home to find out more details of what you found along the way. This book brings both together, a nature guide and a field guide. The pay off for me is that I could learn a lot without having to learn too much and learn it through the eyes of nature lovers who see the world around us with a positive perspective.

We love this town, and this book has given us even more reasons to do so. I've lived in Seattle for 20 years, and my wife was born here. The authors' descriptions of the places we know are dead-on accurate, so I'm confident that the places we don't know about are described equally well. And so many! Who'd have thought that we have so much exploring to do? 'Nature in the City: Seattle' is a fun and unique collection of human & natural history, all in the context of a guide to every place in town that you can visit for a dose of nature. It's also a great sourcebook of things to do and places to go with your kids.There are directions on how to get everywhere - including detailed directions for taking city buses, and most of their walks are close in.We're going to buy multiple copies, and give them to all of our family members who live here, along with sending some copies to friends who are thinking of moving here.I recently read that 75% of Seattle residents cite the natural surroundings as the reason they live here. (It's true for me!) So if you're planning on visiting: The way to see the REAL Seattle is to buy this book.