Chittenden Locks and the Rambunctious Garden

Today we went to Chittenden Locks (aka the Ballard Locks). I’ve been in Seattle for nearly three years and somehow I’d never been. But I really liked it. After reading The Rambunctious Garden, the integrated space of human uses — tourism, recreation and a working lock system — with gardens, parks and most importantly the fish ladder made me think of what our future should hold. Our cities should be a place where all that goes together. And more of us should be in cities and our agriculture have less impact so that we can let the rest of the world be rambunctious. That’s a short summary of the book and probably one that doesn’t do it justice, so go read it. So instead of going on with my ill-formed thoughts, I’ll just leave you with some photos.

I unfortunately didn’t take any pictures of the fish ladder itself. It’s really cool — there’s a viewing chamber where you can see salmon swimming by! But it was too dark in there for good cell phone photos. In any case, I was too entranced by how simple but complicated a thing a fish ladder is that I forgot! The rest of the photos are in my flickr stream. Enjoy!