Local PathwaysBuy on Amazon Adventure Is Closer Than You Think.
Local Pathways is your guide to discovering the parks, neighborhoods, history, and hidden places that make our communities unique. Here you'll find guided walks, self-guided routes, local stories, community events, and inspiration to help you discover what's waiting just outside your door.
Featured book
An Easy & Interesting Walk
Local Pathways Trail Guide 001: North SeaTac Park takes you on two easy and interesting walks through a park filled with far more than you might expect. Wander through the beautifully preserved Highline SeaTac Botanical Garden, explore wooded trails, uncover traces of a vanished neighborhood, watch airplanes soar overhead, discover an active disc golf course, and encounter everything from BMX and RC racing to baseball, cricket, and soccer.
Choose a pathway
Every route is a conversation with a place. Come as you are, wear comfortable shoes, and leave with a new mental map.
More walks ahead
SeaTac, WA
North SeaTac Park is one of the Highline area's most diverse parks. There are two recommended walks. The Botanical Garden Loop is a short, accessible stroll through beautifully maintained gardens, while the Spoke Trail Loop explores the larger park using a network of interconnected trails that branch from the main loop—like spokes on a wheel.
SeaTac, WA
A Neighborhood Hidden in Plain Sight Just south of North SeaTac Park lies a landscape that at first glance appears to be woods, trails and open space. Look more closely and something unusual begins to emerge. Streets. Old pavement disappears beneath trees. Sidewalks lead nowhere. Foundations, retaining walls, ornamental trees and other remnants appear among the vegetation. These are traces of Sunset, a once-active residential neighborhood that grew here during the middle decades of the twentieth century
TBD
Fall color, holiday lights, destination walks, and limited outings inspired by the turning year.
Watch a fall walkFuture walks are not being scheduled right now, but neighborhood route ideas are always welcome.
Pathway finder
Choose one of Michael’s current route ideas, then open a note if you want his perspective before you go.
Get walk updatesChoose a route idea to see its details and ask Michael a question.
These are ideas to explore, not scheduled or bookable walks. New dates will be posted on the walk schedule when they are ready.
Your guide
“A street you’ve known forever can still reveal a new story.”
Before I became an educator, I wrote about music. It taught me to listen for the rhythm of a place—the people, stories, and small details most folks pass by. After my military service, I made a life in Seattle and put down real roots here.
For 26 years, I brought that attention to Highline School District students as a teacher, school-builder, and principal. I’ve always believed every young person who walked through the door deserved to be known. In retirement, Local Pathways lets me carry that same practice into the streets of South Seattle and Burien.
A life of showing up
Michael Sita’s career has always been about making room for a community to take pride in its own story. Local Pathways is the next chapter of that work.
Good to know
Most walks are designed for a broad range of ages and abilities. Route and access details will return when new dates are announced.
We stop often to notice, talk, and take photographs.
Space to hear the story, ask questions, and meet your neighbors.
History, architecture, color, and community—without the lecture.
Field notes
Follow Mike’s short walking films—from White Center color studies and seasonal Northwest paths to his most ambitious Grand Canyon crossing.
Follow @LocalPathwaysStay on the path
Book news, field notes, and new walk dates—occasionally, from Michael.