Recent News
Museum Exhibit
David Douglas: A Naturalist at Work, an exhibit that explores Douglas’s adventures in the Northwest between 1825 and 1834 will open at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane on September 22, 2012.
Jack’s latest book, a collection of essays with the same title, will be in bookstores in early November, 2012.
See calendar for upcoming events related to both the book and the exhibit.
A Remarkable Garden
“A Remarkable Garden: David Douglas and the Shrub-Steppe of the Columbia Plateau”
The summer 2012 issue of Rock Garden Quarterly has an article about dryland plants collected by David Douglas on the Columbia Plateau and the tribal uses that he observed.
For an online view, visit www.nargs.org
David Douglas and Lewis & Clark
“David Douglas on the Heels of the Corps of Discovery”
The summer 2012 issue of We Proceeded On has an article touching on the connections between the floral collections of Meriwether Lewis west of the Rockies and those of David Douglas two decades later.
The Surveys of David Douglas
The May 2012 issue of American Surveyor includes an essay about David Douglas’s surveying and geomagnetic activities during his second visit to the Northwest in 1830 – 1833.
“Fearful Excitement: The Surveys of David Douglas”
For an online view, visit www.amerisurv.com
Columbia Magazine article
The spring edition of Columbia Magazine contains an article on David Douglas adapted from my 2011 Curtiss Hill lecture at the Washington State Historical Society.
Fire and Ice
This month’s North Columbia Monthly column is about ice, with beautiful photos by Charles Gurche.
Purple Flat Top
Check out the new edition of Purple Flat Top from the University of Washington Press. This story collection, originally published in 1994, comes with a fresh introduction and a cover that features an iconic raven by Seattle artist Tony Angell.
Visit the UW Press website for a short video about the book:
http://www.youtube.com/user/UWashingtonPress#p/u/1/3lwlNisTUyk
Michael M. Powell Fellowship award
Powell’s Books funds competitive research fellowship to CCRH
Powell’s Books has funded a $3,000 annual Michael M. Powell Fellowship, in honor of Michael Powell. Powell’s fellows receive $3000 to support original research projects on a Columbia Basin topic that falls within the Center’s initiative, “The Columbia River and the World.”
The first fellowship has been awarded to Spokane teacher, author, and naturalist, Jack Nisbet, who recently won the 2010 Pacific Northwest Book Award. His most recent book, The Collector, describes the journeys of Northwest explorer and Scots-born botanist David Douglas. Nisbet will use the Powell fellowship to expand the global component of his research on Douglas.
The Michael M. Powell Fellowship is named in honor of Michael M. Powell who began his professional life as a commercial fisherman on the Columbia River before he started a bookstore in Chicago, Illinois in 1970. In 1979, Mr. Powell moved to Portland, Oregon to help run his father’s bookstore, Powell’s Books. A single location grew into a number of Portland-area stores, the heart of which is Powell’s City of Books, the largest new and used independent bookstore in the world. It is fitting that a fellowship through which scholars are connected to the general public should be named after a man who once said, “It’s exciting to be a facilitator in the movement of intellectual property, to help deliver an author’s voice from one community to another.”
Interview with Pacific Northwest Booksellers
From the April edition of FOOTNOTES, the newsletter of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association:
Collecting Some Thoughts
Sitting Down with Jack Nisbet
Spokane teacher and naturalist, and winner of a 2010 Pacific Northwest Book Award, Jack Nisbet celebrated his honor with a visit to Leavenworth, Washington in February. He spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at an event hosted by A Book For All Seasons at the town’s library. While in Leavenworth, Nisbet found time to speak with Jacqueline Haskins, A Book For All Seasons staffer and a graduate student in the Whidbey Writers Workshop low-residency MFA.
JH: You’ve just won the PNBA Book Award, honoring your book The Collector as one of the top books of 2009 written by a Northwest author. Tell us what winning this award means to you.
Nisbet: I’m really appreciative of this award. Sometimes writing awards can be pretty random, but independent bookstores have always meant a lot to me. In the last 30 years, I’ve really worked with small bookstores all over the west and gotten to know a lot of the owners. As long as those bookstores keep going, I feel like I can too.
JH: The Collector describes the journeys of explorer and botanist David Douglas through the Pacific Northwest, just 20 years or so after Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific. How did you first become interested in David Douglas?
Nisbet: If you do natural history in the Northwest, you run into David Douglas immediately. There have been other books written about him, every couple of decades, but nobody had looked at Douglas from an inland Northwest perspective. I knew the country, I had worked extensively with the fur trade, and I had a lot of tribal contacts that I thought could inform Douglas’ story.
JH: Your admiration and respect for Douglas’ independence, enthusiasm and knowledge really come through in The Collector. Were there aspects of Douglas’ character that you did not admire?
Nisbet: Oh, yes, he’s famous for whining about his health. His energy drove a lot of people to distraction, and he could be a difficult personality to be around. After his first return trip to England in 1829, his great friend and mentor William Jackson Hooker wrote a line that goes something like: “Many of us, including Mr. Douglas, wish he were back in North America …” But at the same time, Douglas had a great capacity for close friendships. He became close friends with many of the fur traders, especially the Scots, and always seemed to get along well with kids.
JH: Is there anything you discovered after The Collector was published that you wish you could have included?
Nisbet: That’s always the case. Usually when a book comes out is when you really start learning about the subject. I recently saw a letter about Douglas’ death, from a friend of Douglas, that would have been wonderful to include in the book. But I don’t fixate on those things. Douglas is a huge subject, there will always more to find out about him and what he saw in the Northwest.
JH: Is there anything you discovered about Douglas that you deliberately chose to leave out of The Collector?
Nisbet: Any writer chooses what to put in a book. I made sure I included a lot of things that fit my particular slant. Of course I try to be balanced, but nobody’s really balanced, especially with a subject like Douglas who did so many contradictory things. For example, what others who have written about Douglas saw as troubled or manic, I often saw as humorous, because I think he had a great sense of humor.
JH: You say you had a particular slant; can you describe it?
Nisbet: Douglas was really excited by the natural and human communities that he saw here in the Northwest, and I am too. That’s what I try to emphasize and bring forward in my writing.
JH: Tell us a bit about your own travels to research The Collector. Any exciting adventures?
Nisbet: Many of Douglas’ routes are the same routes pioneered by David Thompson, the subject of my previous biography, so I’d been visiting these areas for years. The real adventure for me was going to these sites in the same week during the year that Douglas had visited them. I’d often be astonished by how much that he found was still there. It’s easy to find examples of where natural environments have been ruined, but as I re-visited these sites of Douglas’s, I found lots of places that looked really good, and that was a very positive experience.
JH: That’s wonderful to hear. I know that the natural world is very close to your heart. Which came first for you, being a naturalist or being a writer?
Nisbet: I was a naturalist from the time I was a kid. I’m still not much else. Going out and looking at things, at the natural and human world together, is what I do. Writing came later; much later.
JH: What is your favorite part, and what is your least favorite part, of writing a book?
Nisbet: Writing The Collector, the research was an exciting couple of years. And also, like most writers, I really enjoy the editing process, the shaping process. The first draft was really fun to write. But my first draft was 400 pages. I had to take it down to 300 pages. My wife Claire helped me with that, and she’s really good at what she does. I tend to be easily distracted by all these little stories about Douglas, but many of them had to come out. To make the story flow, to make it work, it’s all about what you leave out. That was hard for me. But my wife was wonderful at helping me with that. And the stories I had to cut–that’s what I share with people now when I give talks about the book.
JH: What would you say to a young person just starting out in writing?
Nisbet: Just starting out in writing? I’d say go figure out something else to do. Go do something else you’re really passionate about. If that leads back to writing, fine. The power of writing is using your brain as a filter for what you’re passionate about. So go live something, and live it hard. Then think about writing about it.
JH: What is next for you? Are you already at work on another book?
Nisbet: I do have a few ideas in mind, but I’m not sure which one I’m going to do next. I think it’s a common problem for writers, how to transition out of such an all-consuming project. It’s not necessarily a good idea to jump into the first thing that interests you. What might be next for me is a museum exhibit on Douglas. His story has so many visual aspects–the natural world, tribal artifacts, artwork of all kinds, plants and trees–it might be a great way to get people who aren’t readers excited about Douglas and about what he loved.I
Douglas presentation posted on KRFP (Radio Free Moscow) website
If you missed Jack Nisbet’s Moscow presentation on January 28 of “A Most Remarkable Spring: David Douglas in Idaho and Beyond” or would like to listen again, a recording of his entire 100-minute talk as well as an abbreviated, half-hour compilation of selected excerpts, will be posted on the audio page of KRFP, Radio Free Moscow’s website. For more information, please contact station manager Leigh Robartes at leigh@radiofreemoscow.com or 208-892-9300.
Co-sponsored by the White Pine Idaho Native Plant Society and others, Nisbet gave this lecture on January 28 at the 1912 Center in Moscow, in support of his latest book, The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest. In his talk, the Spokane-based teacher, naturalist, and acclaimed author of several books on Northwest history and nature described the adventures of intrepid, Scottish botanist Douglas as he explored the native landscapes and cultures of the Northwest. In 1826, this early naturalist traveled with a fur trading brigade to the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers and all over the Columbia River basin, collecting specimens for European horticulturists and scientists, seeking knowledge of native plants, and observing tribal plant use and landscape maintenance.