Rooted in Place: Alum Explores Seattle’s Street Trees in Illustrated Walking Guide

Taha Ebrahimi ’01 has always been fascinated by people who knew about trees. “It feels like they know more about a place or like they belong to a place,” she says. 

As a first-generation Seattleite and an experienced world traveler, having a sense of place is important to Ebrahimi. It’s how she found her footing at Whitman College as a transfer student. It shaped her Watson Fellowship travels after Whitman. And it’s one of the motivating forces behind her Pacific Northwest bestseller, “Street Trees of Seattle: An Illustrated Walking Guide” (Sasquatch Books, 2024).

In many ways, the story of Seattle’s street trees is the story of the city itself. “Seattle has one of the most diverse street tree collections in the entire United States”—the majority of which are not native species, Ebrahimi says. “I used to take that for granted growing up. I didn’t know it was weird to have a palm tree, a Douglas fir, a maple and an elm as street trees all on the same block.”

That diversity makes the city one of the best places to learn about trees, she says, “because there are so many that you can see in person.” And that’s exactly what she hopes readers of her book will do. The robust walking guide combines history, illustrations, maps and identification tips for notable trees in over 30 of Seattle’s neighborhoods. 

“There’s something magical about knowing the name of something that forms this relationship that grounds you and transforms your sense of place,” she says.

Walking in Wonder

Ebrahimi’s fascination with Seattle’s street trees began when daily life was uprooted across the globe—with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Like many people during lockdown, she worked from home. Being on screens all day, “you forget about your body,” she says. “At the end of the day, the thing that I wanted to do the very most was just to get outside and be present and have some kind of physical relationship with where I was.” 

To make her walks in the city more interesting, she decided to teach herself about the trees she saw around her. She began with two books: “Sibley’s Guide to Trees” by David Allen Sibley and “Trees of Seattle” by Arthur Lee Jacobsen. Sibley’s book showed her how to identify a tree’s species and Jacobsen’s gave her the addresses of specific Seattle trees she could seek out in person. But there was still a piece missing. 

That’s when she happened on a public data set of street trees maintained by the city. It was a serendipitous discovery for Ebrahimi, who, while writing the book, worked as Director of Tableau Public, a free online data visualization tool. 

The data set gave a focus to her walks—finding and identifying specific street trees—as well as a challenge: how to combine the information from all three tools into something portable.

Instead of toting an armload of reference books on her walks, she began to draw simple maps she could carry with her. At first, “I was drawing the least amount with the right detail that I needed in order to be able to just glance at it and find what I was looking for,” she says. “Is it an oval leaf? A lobed leaf? A leaf with many little leaflets on it?”

Over time, she began sketching the trees and their surroundings as well. As her stockpile of street tree maps grew, she shared them on social media, which drew the attention of a publisher and started her on the path to writing “Street Trees of Seattle.”

Looking back, she says the project saved her during the pandemic. “There’s something about looking for these specific details and being in the present, in that moment, that just makes you feel better.”

Fueled by Curiosity

The curiosity that powered Ebrahimi’s book project has been a hallmark of her life. It was what drew her to Whitman as a transfer student from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. 

“It just felt like there was a real community at Whitman, and there were people who were interested in all different kinds of topics. It had the most diversity in thinking,” she says. “At Whitman, I learned how to think for myself and be curious.”

Changing schools in her sophomore year came with challenges, but getting involved on campus helped her find her footing. 

“I joined the newspaper as an editor. I got involved with the literary magazine,” she says. And she lived in the Writing House with other budding wordsmiths. “Once you find your people, it works.”

After graduating from Whitman in 2001 with her Bachelor of Arts in English, she traveled around the world—thanks to earning a prestigious postgraduate fellowship. As a Watson Fellow, Ebrahimi interviewed women in Sufi spiritual communities in Cote d’Ivoire, England, the Netherlands, Turkey and Australia. 

Later she went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Pittsburgh and had a successful career in finance marketing in New York City. But in 2018, she felt her hometown calling again.  

Wanting to be closer to family, she moved back to Washington state, where she found a role at the software company Tableau, leading their free data visualization platform, Tableau Public. As a Tableau user in her previous job, she knew the value of being able to visually present complex data stories and insights. 

“I’m passionate about democratizing access to data skills,” she says. 

As Director of Tableau Public, she guided strategy and marketing for the platform and helped build its community of users from 800,000 to over 5 million.

The free tool also jump-started her book project, providing an easy way to spacially visualize the city’s publicly available street tree data.

Feet on the Ground

In her book, Ebrahimi notes that “street trees live shorter, tougher lives than their wild counterparts.” It’s a key part of her fascination with them.

“I think they’re great metaphors for humans,” she says. “People who live in urban areas are survivors. Street trees are definitely living despite the odds.”

Like the people around them, their individual stories are complex—and provide a tangible link to the history of the places where they grow. “They’re like physical calendars of time past,” Ebrahimi says.

“I hope people actually go out visit the trees from my book,” she adds. “Making contact with the urban forest opens portals that one can only understand in person.”