Author Description

"Unrestorable Habitat: Microsoft Is My Neighbor Now recounts how the Sammamish Valley was transformed over the course of Hudson's lifetime, roughly the sixty-five years from 1937 to 2003. The Sammamish River Valley was for her what Walden Pond was for Thoreau, what the Lake District was Wordsworth, what the farm at Port Royal, Kentucky, is for Wendell Berry. It was both her home land and it was the womb of her imagination. Day after day, year after year, she rode her bicycles, first along the county gravel roads of her youth, then along the asphalt pathways of the Kings County Park and Trail System. As she rode, she observed the natural order and its cycles; she observed the human habitation of this world and how it changed the natural order; she saw rivers where salmon had once been plentiful now dammed for power generation and straightened for flood control. Parking lots covered wetlands. Golf courses and soccer parks replaced farm fields. Suburban housing developments overran apple and cherry orchards. Hudson's rural habitat of small farms, salmon streams, forests, and the human community closely tied to the natural world were transformed into the suburban technological-capitol of the world, the headquarters of Microsoft, Hudson's new 'neighbor.' "