A River Runs Through Us

On a languid spring evening in South Seattle, the wind ruffled through a web of fabric strung across the courtyard of Mini Mart City Park. Long, ripped strips of red, black, marigold, and white twisted, braided, and tangled overhead. They were anchored at points along the building’s roof and converged around a pole that rose, treelike, from the center of a 12-foot-diameter base of charred plywood. Around the perimeter of the base, large chunks of diatomite—a chalky rock composed of