Marcy Cottrell Houle, Forest Park: Exploring Portland’s Natural Sanctuary

We think Marcy Cottrell Houle is a wonder. With each of her books she brings such clarity and useful information to us all. So we are exceptionally happy to have her in the store to present her latest book: Forest Park: Exploring Portland’s Natural Sanctuary, a gorgeously illustrated book published by Oregon State University Press. Situated in the rugged hills west of downtown Portland, Forest Park is the nation’s premier urban natural sanctuary. It supports essential habitat for hundreds of native plants and animals, including species at risk, and is one of the largest city parks in the world, offering miles of outstanding hiking trails within minutes of downtown. Forest Park showcases this treasure in a new light, offering a compendium of the most up-to-date and comprehensive information available exploring the history, geology, wildlife, watershed, and more of this city treasure. The book also offers detailed guides to twenty-one hikes covering seventy-five miles that highlight the park’s attributes, with hikes grouped by theme to encourage people to explore the park’s watersheds, geology, lichens and mosses, vegetation, amphibians and reptiles, pollinators, native wildlife, and more, with great hikes for families and kids, for birdwatching, and more. The book provides excellent maps, updated by award-winning cartographer Eric Goetze, for each hike, as well as gorgeous photographs by John Thompson. Forest Park is a rare treasure, and no book does a better job of providing a guide to that treasure.

In her introduction, the author writes: “After studying Forest Park as an author and wildlife biologist for over four decades, my appreciation of its value only continues to grow…offering a place where our spirits can be touched by something greater than ourselves.” And author Kathleen Dean Moore writes in the foreward: “In my family’s experience, what makes a city great is its forests….During the terrible heat dome, people paid attention to the cooling effect of the forest. We have read with some interest about the healthy effect of walking in a forest’s quietude and piney scent, taking what the Japanese call ‘a forest bath.’ We know how ecologically essential it is to provide a habitat where wild creatures can thrive, and not only wild creatures, but hominids of the jogging, hiking, stroller-pushing, conversing, or contemplative kind.”

Marcy Cottrell Houle is a writer and wildlife biologist. Her books have been honored with the Christopher Award, the Oregon Book Award, the Oregonian‘s Best Books of the Northwest, and New York Times Best Books for Earth Day. Her books include A Generous Nature: Lives Transformed by Oregon, The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare, Wings for My Flight: The Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock, and The Prairie Keepers: Secrets of the Zumwalt. She has also written articles for the New York Times, Nature Conservancy Magazine, and  Cricket Magazine for Children. She lives with her family in Portland.