BY ANN HEDREEN
Two days before the winter solstice I drove from my home in Columbia City to Capitol Hill to meet Steve Durrant at the Tailwind Café, which is tucked inside the Good Weather Bicycle & Repair shop on Chophouse Row, a cozy alley of restaurants and shops just off Union Street in Seattle. I would have taken the light rail, but I was picking up prescriptions for my 90-year-old father right after our meeting, I had a Christmas-related errand to do in the University District, and a cold December rain was settling into a steady pour. I didn’t mention any of this to Durrant, who bicycled to the café from Fremont and arrived looking barely touched by the rain.
There are lots of people like me in the Northwest, who love to walk or ride a bike, but regularly lame out. Durrant has devoted much of his career to encouraging us to change our habits, not by scolding or lecturing but by designing good routes and trails for the likes of you and me.
In 2015, Durrant was named a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects—one of the organization’s highest honors—in recognition of his exceptional contributions to transit, park, greenway, and on-street bikeway design. He was just about ready to retire after “a first and second act doing stuff that I really loved,” when a third act project he couldn’t resist came along—the Puget Sound to Pacific (PS2P for short) Trail. When completed, the 200-mile trail will stretch from three different starting points—the Bainbridge Island, Kingston, and Port Townsend Ferry Docks to La Push on Washington’s Pacific Coast. The goal is to “build a full-service, multi-use trail, at least 10 feet wide, with grades accessible for ADA (American Disabilities Act),” says Durrant. In other words, to make every one of those 200 miles accessible to all. Many sections will have unpaved shoulders for people who prefer to walk or run off pavement, and some segments will include parallel equestrian trails. There are 100 miles of 34 yet-to-be-connected gaps needed to complete the full 200-mile trail.
The Puget Sound to Pacific Trail (PS2P) Coalition
The first 100 miles came about through decades of hard work by the Peninsula Trails Coalition, whose signature project is the Olympic Discovery Trail from Port Townsend to the Pacific Coast. The coalition’s work caught the eye of the national Rails to Trails Conservancy, whose mission is to create the coast-to-coast Great American Rail Trail, stretching some 3700 miles from Washington, D.C., to the western edge of Washington state. They encouraged the Coalition to apply for a $16 million federal grant to design the remaining 100 miles. Counties, tribes, cities, and towns across the Olympic Peninsula got on board. U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer and Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell endorsed the project. The grant was secured. And Durrant put off his retirement.
“It wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Steve,” says Barbara Trafton of the Bainbridge Island Conservancy, a partner in the PS2P project. “He brings his passion and expertise. He thinks so creatively about how to make things happen.” Durrant, she adds, is fearless about “totally changing the map permanently. I mean, once these trails are in place, they’re there forever.”
“This has been an opportunity to continue doing what I love to do,” says Durrant, modest to a fault, whose career includes developing a bicycle master plan for the entire city of Seattle. “There’s a big part of it that’s selfish because I’m a cyclist,” he says, “and part of it is altruistic—for people I know and future generations.” But what really drives Durrant are projects that encourage a healthier, active lifestyle and contribute to the societal greater good. He shares that “even as a kind of lifelong advocate and nerd in cycling when we started doing research into the health benefits of cycling, and the dollar value of those health benefits, the numbers are shocking—even for a believer.”
According to Lawrence D. Frank, professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California San Diego and president of Urban Design 4 Health, research shows that when people have access to active transportation such as safe trails and routes for walkers, runners, and cyclists, “the resulting increase in physical activity translates into a host of chronic disease reductions, ranging from cardiovascular disease and diabetes to depression and dementia.” What this can mean is better physical and cognitive health in later life.
To Frank and Durrant, the health benefits of trails are every bit as important, if not more important, than the access they give us to the beauty of the natural world. Though that’s certainly an undeniable benefit. When I asked Durrant about his favorite stretch of the PS2P, he described it this way: “One of my favorite spots is Lake Crescent, where the Olympic Discovery Trail passes through the forest parallel to the Sol Duc River. It zigzags back and forth, and there are places there, maybe 20 miles, where the trail is like a cathedral.”
Trafton also named the Sol Duc/Lake Crescent stretch as a particular favorite, although she loves the Bainbridge section, “because it’s home,” and because it will have a huge impact on Bainbridge life. Six of the island’s seven schools are close to the trail; pedestrians and bicycle commuters like her will be able to make use of it, too. “It’s really so gratifying,” she says, “to see this map changing and to know that this is a gift that will last long after I’m gone. Hopefully, other people will carry it on. I’m just so intensely grateful to Steve for coming out of his recent retirement and wanting to connect with people to make it happen.”
Professor Frank, who coined the term “walkability,” concurs. “Steve understands the politics and the dynamics of what it takes to get stuff like this built,” he says. “He has decades of experience overseeing the development of active transportation plans. He has both background and understanding of the research, but he’s also got that practical project-based experience.”
Durrant has all of those qualities. But he’s also been on this path, pardon the pun, all his life. He grew up in Minneapolis/St. Paul, where people bike year-round. In the snow. In sub-zero temperatures. He rode his bike to elementary and high school.
As I listened to his stories of winter biking in Minnesota (and in Oulu, Finland, known as the winter cycling capital of the world—not only a favorite place of his but also not far from where half my ancestors came from), I felt more and more sheepish about my compelling “reasons” for driving to the Tailwinds Café for our interview. But I also felt inspired. Durrant’s enthusiasm is infectious, in a low-key, Minneapolis-born, Finnish-friendly way. I’d like to be part of that statistical story of improved health via active transportation.
And I look forward to biking that section of the PS2P that goes through the cathedral forests surrounding the Sol Duc River. When I do, I’ll take a moment to think about what Trafton said—what a gift this remarkable trail is to the bikers and hikers of the future who will get to enjoy it too, whose health and well-being will benefit from the PS2P long after the people who worked so hard to make it happen are gone. Long after Durrant came out of retirement and changed the map.
Ann Hedreen is an author (Her Beautiful Brain), teacher of memoir writing, and filmmaker. Ann and her husband, Rustin Thompson, own White Noise Productions and have made more than 150 short films and several feature documentaries together, including Quick Brown Fox: An Alzheimer’s Story. Ann is currently working on a book of essays and is a regular contributor to 3rd Act Magazine, writing about topics including conscious aging, retirement, mindfulness, and health.
Photo: Steve Durrant high-fives Congressman Derek Kilmer on the trail after the grant was announced.
Photo courtesy Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails