by don campbell
Krista Thie’s eyes light up when she talks about wild oats. Thie, an ethnobotanist who lives just outside of White Salmon, explains that if you take its seed and add a drop of water, it will open up and begin a slow and magical spiral of its own accord. Were it on a patch of dirt it would begin to work itself in, destined to find purchase in the vital earth.
It is but one of Thie’s many overwhelming botany lessons during a tour of her solar-powered home and the surrounding grounds. Every floor of the house she shares with husband, Daryl Hoyt, is filled with textbooks, notebooks, pamphlets and guides to the incredibly abundant flora of the Columbia Gorge. Soft-spoken by nature, she comes to conversation slowly, but once a topic takes root, she will discourse until spent.
Thie talks eloquently about the wonders of the area’s plant life. She explains that Skamania and Klickitat counties alone contain well over 100 kinds of rare and unique plants. This singular ground is brought to life as a result of the ancient Missoula Flood, the continuously enormous east-west flow of the Columbia River, overlapping micro-climes, varying elevations and rainfall, and good dirt…
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Tags: botany, daryl hoyt, gorge, krista thie, plants, Tours
