PORT TOWNSEND — Seattle writer David B. Williams will give a talk on Thursday about his book, “Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound.”
Writing the book left him with more hope for the future of the waters than he had when he started the project, he said.
The free talk will begin at 6 p.m. at the Port Townsend Library, 1220 Lawrence St.
“As a writer, what I’m always trying to do is connect people to the landscape around them,” Williams said.
Over the years leading up to the 2021-published “Homewaters,” Williams wrote a book on the engineered reshaping of Seattle’s landscape, the history of Seattle’s locks and ship canals and a walking guide to Seattle, focused on history and nature in the city.
“I hadn’t really stopped to consider the waterway that was here,” Williams said. “I had taken ferries across it and certainly knew of the landscape of the Sound, but hadn’t really taken the deep dive into it to try and understand the story.”
The decision to pursue a history of the Sound resulted in an ambitious project. The book covers topics from the historical and modern naming of the Sound, the oldest records of people on the land, which go back 12,500 years, battles and defense infrastructure used by Coast Salish tribes, plants and animals present in the waterway, the historical and present uses of the Sound as a maritime highway and kelp, among other topics.
The book’s opening chapter outlines how Puget Sound and other regional landmarks received their names from explorers.
Puget Sound received its name as “Puget’s Sound,” a possessive title indicating ownership, from British explorer George Vancouver, Williams wrote.
Vancouver named the Sound — which initially referred to a smaller area south of what is now the Tacoma Narrows — after his lieutenant, Peter Puget, with whom he explored the area.
Much of what is now Puget Sound was previously Admiralty Inlet, Williams said. It is 70 times larger than it originally was, he wrote in his book.
The Sound’s greatest official expansions took place in 1987, when the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority, established by state Legislature, enlarged the area. The agency’s first comprehensive management plan defined the Sound as not only encompassing the inland sea but also the watersheds which lead into it.
Williams notes that the top of the 14,411-foot summit of Mount Rainier, which drains into the Puyallup River and then Tacoma’s Commencement Bay, is considered part of the Sound.
The oldest known place name for the sound is x̌ʷəlč, which often is written in English as Whulge, Williams wrote. The Lushootseed word means stretch of saltwater and did not refer to an exact defined location. It was used as a way to mark the relationship to the waterway for the Coast Salish people.
“The place names that Indigenous people have given to the land over time are based on a long-term relationship,” Williams said. “The names that the explorers and settlers used were often chosen much more immediately.”
First charted by Europeans in 1792, history often has failed to acknowledge the long inhabitancy of the land, going back at least 12,500 years, Williams said.
“(Over the last 20-30 years) we’ve seen that so many books that deal with place, with history, with landscapes, are recognizing that these stories that for so long were told as short stories in terms of hundreds of years are stories that should go back thousands of years,” Williams said. “It’s, I think, a deeper awareness of the indigenous connection to landscape.”
Williams wanted to strike a balance between awakening readers to the present and what’s happening now in their surrounding region while illuminating the long history of people on the land and on the waters, he said.
Williams spent the first six months of his work on the book reaching out to historians, archeologists, biologists and people from Coast Salish tribes, conducting open-ended interviews and letting his subjects guide him to the stories and topics they saw as most important.
Williams said he acknowledges that Indigenous stories do not belong to him.
“I wanted to have it as rich as possible, while at the same time also being very respectful of the fact that these stories, when I was sharing Indigenous stories, these are not my stories and I make no claim to these stories,” he said. “I was merely trying to convey in a respectful manner what had been shared with me.”
Williams’ writing is often light and clever. He includes a scene of himself eating pizza with a Puget Sound kelp expert, Tom Mumford, wherein he becomes convinced of his need to write about kelp.
“I had no plan on writing about it, but I had this lunch with this guy who was the kelp guy,” Williams said. “His passion, his knowledge, just convinced me that I’d be an idiot to not write a chapter about kelp.”
Kelp forests are the underwater counterparts to the terrestrial rainforests, Williams said.
“In Puget Sound, single (Bull Kelp) stipes top out at about 80 feet and blades at about 30 feet,” Williams wrote.
A chapter titled “The Maritime Highway” starts with Williams recounting an undertaking to ride every ferry crossing in Washington state in 2017 and 2018. In addition to riding 10 routes included in the Washington State Ferries (WSF) system, ferries operated by the Port of Everett and King, Kitsap, Pierce, Skagit and Whatcom counties, Williams also rode several ferries owned and operated by homeowners associations.
The chapter also speaks to the history of the waterway being used as a connective body between the disparately located tribes and then settlers, before the takeover of automobiles.
Williams said that his talk, which should last about 40 minutes, will distill the book down significantly.
On Saturday, Williams will present for the Quimper Geological Society at First Baptist Church, 1202 Lawrence St., about two of his newer books, “Seattle Walks” and “Wild in Seattle.” Doors will open at 3:30 p.m. Attendees should enter at the back of the building. Donations will be accepted, according to a Quimper Geology event page.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
