Collect Nisbet’s new book

Most people in the Northwest know the Douglas fir, our biggest and most majestic tree.

But do you know Douglas?

You will, after reading Spokane author Jack Nisbet’s eloquently written new book, “The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest” (Sasquatch Books, $23.95).

You will also understand the invaluable contributions Douglas made to the study of botany in the Northwest. As Nisbet points out, the Latin name douglasii is now attached to 80 species of flora and fauna.

Nisbet gracefully and concisely traces Douglas’ journey from a gardener’s apprentice in Scotland to a young botanist-collector for the London Horticultural Society to a seasoned veteran of the wild Northwest.

The core of the book takes place from 1824 to 1834, as Douglas canoes up and down the Columbia, roams the Colville valley on horseback and wanders alongside the Spokane River examining ninebark and currant bushes.

Douglas ranged widely over this mostly unmapped country, from the Umpqua River in southern Oregon to the Arrow Lakes in British Columbia.

On one level, Douglas’ story is a buckskins-and-musket adventure. He has hair-raising escapades involving canoe-smashing rapids, unfriendly Indians and angry grizzlies.

Yet on another level, this is a story of the place where we live and what it looked like before white settlement. Douglas kept careful journals and much of the book is drawn from his own accounts, often written late at night by the light of what he called a “Columbian candle, namely an ignited piece of rosiny wood.”

In essence, Nisbet does for Douglas what he has already done for fur trader David Thompson in his earlier “Sources of the River” (an essential book for anyone interested in our local natural history): He brings a legendary character to life, and allows us to see our familiar world through another pair of eyes, from another century.

Nisbet’s style is understated throughout. For instance, when Douglas spies a towering conifer near present-day Astoria, he identifies it as a member of the pine family previously described by Alexander Menzies.

Nisbet mentions, almost casually, that it was later reclassified not as a pine, but as pseudotsuga menziesii. Only slowly does it dawn on us: This is Douglas’s first sighting of the fir that would later bear his name.

In “Sources of the River,” Nisbet interspersed his present-ay observations with those of Thompson. In this book, the story is told more strictly from Douglas’ viewpoint – with one welcome exception.

In the epilogue, titled “Nourishment Without Names,” Nisbet slips into the first-person to describe standing near The Dalles, where Douglas once stood. He is surrounded by plants that Douglas first shared with the wider world.

Yet Nisbet never forgets that the Northwest was already filled with thousands of practical botanists: the tribal people.

“He shared food and shelter with mixed-blood hunters and savored the dark, sweet taste of baked camas and black lichen cakes with tribal families,” writes Nisbet.

“He watched women and children apply their digging sticks to many of the plants he was collecting for show, listening to their stories as they worked their own exquisite gardens.”

Add “The Collector” to your collection of essential books about our region’s natural history.