Chapter 3 in Tahoma: The Place and Its People uses a watershed approach to tell the 
natural history of the Nisqually River from its glacier on the mountain’s south side to Puget Sound.
Not long ago, park geologist Scott Beason and National Park Service regional geomorphologist Paul Kennard led a group of Evergreen students and me on a hike to a viewpoint overlooking the Nisqually Glacier. Those interested in venturing onto it went ahead with our guides while the others opted to glissade down the hill back to Paradise. When the glacier group rejoined us, I asked one of the students how he had enjoyed his first adventure onto a glacier. Holding up his water bottle, his face radiating pure joy, he said, “I’m drinking it!”
Rolling seventy-eight miles from the glacier to the Salish Sea, the Nisqually is one of the few (the only?) river systems in North America that begin in a national park and run out in a national wildlife refuge. Honoring the famed Nisqually 
tribal leader and inveterate Indian Treaty rights and environmental advocate, it’s the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. A major stopover on the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds and home for a host of both summer and year-round residents, Valerie and I began birding there in the early 1980s. My first notebook entry of birds seen there is from 1983. And since retiring in 2015, I try to stop in at least once on each trip between Enumclaw and points south.
Eight years ago, another of 
my Evergreen students interned at the refuge as an environmental educator. To hear him tell it, Davy Clark loved the refuge and his work with elementary and junior high school students so much that when his internship ended, he simply refused to leave. Refuge staff were so impressed by Davy’s commitment, easy rapport and effective teaching style that they “found money” to create a job for him. Today, he’s the refuge Education Program Manager, helping to provide workshops, nature walks and other activities for nearly 10,000 students, teachers and parents each year. Last week, the circle completed itself one more time as I joined Davy to facilitate a training session of volunteers who will lead student groups this spring. His tenure and success at Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge shows one more time that you can never tell which spark will catch a fire to light the world.
