pages a hundred times over, studying subtleties of color, shape, and trajectory of flight. There is also a field guide to Rocky Mountain wildflowers in a matching sky blue cover, and a guide to trees papered in white. My mother packs these books and carries them with us on each family camping trip, each hike. In my memory she is always reading, whether in a chair at home, oblivious to the noise of four daughters capering around her, or sitting on a rock on a riverbank. Her pack must have been heavy with those three field guides and whatever novel or meditation she was reading at the time. Lolo Pass. Bitterroot Mountains. Red River. My mother stops along trail edges beneath ponderosa pine to point out flowers, Indian paintbrush, butter and eggs, bachelor’s button, elephant head, kitten toes, bear grass, penstemon. * She liked seeing, learning, and naming things. —A.S. Byatt, Ragnarok: The End of the Gods Salish Sea. Orcas Island. Whatcom County. Hardscrabble Falls. When I hike with my daughter, I point out and name for her every plant I know. When I don’t know names, I point out parts – look at the shape of this leaf, this petal, look how this stamen curves so delicately. See this maidenhair fern? See how the shape of its fronds is so different than the sword fern over there? Look, here, beneath the leaflets, do you see the spores? This plant must be in the rose family, see how the flower looks like a tiny wild rose, and also like blooming blackberries? We have our own field guide to birds, the Sibley, a gift from my mother. Mina reads it as intently as I read the old blue Peterson’s. She wants to know whether the birds that most capture her imagination can be found here, in our yard and garden on a corner lot in the city, or if we could find them nearby in the forests or on the beaches surrounding Bellingham. At home, black-capped
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