成人X站

When traveling to far-away places, there鈥檚 often no better way to get acquainted with the history of a city than by taking long walks.

成人X站 Newsradio caught up with a Seattle resident known for taking very long walks right here at home, seeing the city and the region from a unique perspective 鈥� and then sharing it with others through photos and tours.

 

Austin Watson retired after a long career at Boeing, and he now lives with his wife in Downtown Seattle. He wears comfortable clothes and serious walking shoes because on a good day 鈥� which means pretty much every day 鈥� he鈥檒l easily cover 10 miles on foot. He also owns decent rain gear, because he鈥檒l often take his long walks rain or shine 鈥� which is something of a given in the Pacific Northwest.

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And, no matter the weather, Austin Watson knows how to fill a backpack with essential snacks.

“Today, I have two oranges,” Watson told 成人X站 Newsradio on a recent morning. “I have half an apple, sliced. I have a banana. I have peanut M&M’s. I have cookies and I have a homemade bread sandwich with peanut butter and Nutella.”

“So, pretty high energy,” Watson added, also mentioning the one or two water bottles he always carries, depending on the time of year and the forecast high temperature.

This methodical approach to snacking and hydrating is not unlike how Austin Watson chooses the places he walks. Simply put, Watson doesn鈥檛 just randomly step outside and start walking down the street.

Sometimes, he takes a bus to NE 145th Street and Aurora Avenue and then walks back home, meaning all the way back to downtown Seattle along Aurora or other nearby parallel streets.

“It’s pretty much downhill to downtown,” Watson explained. “I mean, it’s downhill all the way to Green Lake, and then it鈥檚 uphill over by the zoo, then it’s all back downhill again.”

Other times, Watson devises a mission to see and explore all of one particular kind of place or thing. He鈥檚 walked to all 30 or so libraries in Seattle. He鈥檚 walked to all 89 P-Patch Community Gardens. He鈥檚 also walked the entire length of every main arterial street — east to west, north to south — in the city limits.

His most recent mission 鈥� which he also calls a “trek” 鈥� was inspired by some critical assistance he鈥檚 received a few times over the years from Seattle鈥檚 first responders.

Watson makes the trek to 55 fire stations

成人X站 Newsradio caught up with Austin Watson a few days ago as he made a return visit to Fire Station 16 near Green Lake in North Seattle and chatted with one of the firefighters there.

“Hey, my name’s Austin,” Watson told the firefighter. “I visited every fire station in Seattle in August, so this guy wants to write a story about me,” he continued, motioning to the reporter standing alongside and holding a microphone.

As Watson and the firefighter stood outside the station, they discussed the building鈥檚 history, both now animated as the firefighter filling in details not obvious from merely observing the exterior.

“I appreciate you guys,” Watson told the firefighter. “You scraped me up off the pavement once or twice.”

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“I’m glad to see you up and about,” the firefighter said with a broad and genuine smile.

Watson described how, a few years ago, he passed out from dehydration while exercising in the gym of the building where he lives downtown. The Seattle Fire Department (SFD) responded so quickly that they were there before his wife made it down from their apartment.

On his firehouse trek, Watson didn鈥檛 just stop in front of each station and snap a photo. He often rang the doorbell and, if the firefighters weren鈥檛 busy, he鈥檇 speak with them about the station and its history, and to thank them for the work they do.

成人X站 Newsradio connected with Austin Watson because of the photos of fire stations he was posting on Facebook back in August. From all appearances, it looked as if this was some monthslong project that Watson was casually undertaking when it was convenient.

It turns out we got that last part all wrong.

“I started Aug. 1, and I knocked them all off by Aug. 10,” Watson explained, visiting a total of 55 current and former fire stations in Seattle and walking more than 100 miles in just 10 days.

“I just got sort of crazy about this,” Watson continued. “I found I could do about seven in a batch. There was northeast Seattle, northwest, there was southeast, southwest, central, and I made a Google Map, and you could see logical clusters.”

Watson鈥檚 treks aren鈥檛 always entirely on foot. He鈥檚 a big fan of public transportation to cover ground.

“There was one day in northeast Seattle when I took the 65 bus three times that day,” Watson said. “I just kept going back and forth and back and forth — good bus!”

‘Hidden Spaces, Public Places’

Along with his solo treks, Austin also leads tours for the non-profit Seattle Architecture Foundation. He鈥檒l lead one this Friday, Sept. 27 at 10 a.m. in Downtown Seattle called “.”

The public tours he leads are not as physically demanding as an all-city fire station trek or walking home from 145th and Aurora; however, pre-registration is required and tickets must be purchased in advance.

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The big picture message of the tours that Watson leads is the same reason that he makes his own treks.

“I tell people, ‘I want to get you to look not down here at the sidewalk, but up here at the stuff,'” Watson explained, describing his tour guide style and credo. “Look at the sidewalk, stay safe, but there’s interesting stuff, so stop and look, pick a topic,” like windows, libraries, P-Patches, smokestacks or fire stations.

Watson鈥檚 advice seems to also make metaphorical sense, encouraging people who live in this community to truly see things and then engage more actively with the landscape 鈥� and the people who inhabit this landscape.

This approach is all about a sense of place and belonging 鈥� which is something that never gets old and never goes out of style. In the long run, it can help strengthen neighborhoods, communities and entire regions. And if a little local history appreciation happens along the way, that鈥檚 not a bad thing either.

As far as the engineering-esque, methodical approach Austin Watson takes to making lists and creating routes to make his treks more efficient, it鈥檚 pretty clear how that part might be related to his decades in aerospace.

As for the desire to want to see and to ask, and to learn and to know, that probably goes back a little further 鈥� long before his years at Boeing 鈥撀� to his childhood.

Watson’s upbringing

“I’ve always been curious,” Watson said. “I was a military kid, so we moved all the time. And every time we moved, mom would get the history books. I came home from school, and my mom made tea. We had tea time. You know, I was the youngest so everybody was gone, and she would read the history of the local place.”

“Whenever we went somewhere, we went to all the battlefields, we went to all the art galleries,” Watson continued. “So she just built this interest in things.”

Along with slaking intellectual thirst and satisfying cultural and geographic curiosity, Watson points out that walking is cheap physical exercise, and the thinking and learning that comes alongside the trek is a great way to ward off potential cognitive decline, too.

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As for his next trek, Watson hasn鈥檛 decided on a topic yet, but he鈥檚 thinking about the little outdoor cupboards full of books that have sprouted up in parking strips over the past decade or so.

“Free little libraries are interesting,” Watson said, obviously having given the matter some serious thought. “They tell a story about the person” who stocks it with books, Watson continued.

“Some of them are so sad, it’s like, ‘oh, you know, grandpa died,’ then there are a couple of weight loss books, a couple of self-help books, and then some children’s books,” Watson continued. “And it’s like, oh, man, they’re going through that hard part of life, aren’t they?”

For Austin Watson, it all just comes down to finding more unexpected reasons to look up from the sidewalk, metaphorically and otherwise.

Austin Watson is open to suggestions about other treks he should make. Please reach out via my contact information below and I will forward any and all suggestions received.

You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on “Seattle鈥檚 Morning News” with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here聽and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast聽here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please聽email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks聽.