In this week's paper, I write about Duwamish Hill Preserve, a bump in the earth in Tukwila that was about to be leveled and used for machine storage—until Cascade Land Conservancy got involved, raised a million bucks to buy it, and oversaw as scores of volunteers prepped it for you. Now it's open (and free, with a parking lot) all daylight hours, and it's a great moment in its life to see it—because the landscaping and furniture-setting is pretty much finished, but the placards that will tell the story aren't there yet to interrupt your views.

Here's the story, and I've got plenty more pictures on FB:

This story, "The Epic of the Winds," is the earliest recorded story of the weather in Seattle.

Two men fought over the same woman. They're still fighting; they continue their battle every winter. When the cold North Wind kills the warm South Wind and takes captive his pregnant beloved, that's when the cold prevails. But the South Wind's son grows up to discover the story of his real father, and to seek revenge. Despite the warnings of the North Wind never to venture there, the boy one day wanders out to distant Grandmother's Hill, where Grandmother (mother of the South Wind) immediately recognizes her son's son. He finds her in the state the cruel North Wind left her—frozen in a sheet of ice filthy with raven feces. When Grandson begins his onslaught of revenge, that's the freakish warm storm system we have every year—the one that breaks the back of winter. The two carry their battle out to a point off Bainbridge Island where it can still be seen raging in the whitecaps.

^{If you do go, stand on the lookout on the top of hill facing south, and you can make out Grandmother's Hill across the freeway. Looking west you will see a stand of poplars; that's where North Wind's fishing weir is.}