Paul: How do you call among you the little mouse, the mouse that jumps?
Stilgar: We call that one muad’dib.
Paul: I am Atreides. It is not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad’Dib?
Stilgar: You are Paul-Muad’Dib.
“Muad’Dib is wise in the ways of the desert. Muad’Dib creates his own water. Muad’Dib hides from the sun and travels in the cool night. Muad’Dib is fruitful and multiplies over the land. Muad’Dib we call “instructor-of-boys.” That is a powerful base on which to build your life, Paul Muad’Dib, who is Usul among us.”
-Frank Herbert “Dune”
This tiny little micro is much like the little mouse from the deserts of Arrakis. It is small, resilient, hidden from the sun, and one of many other micro’s in the world that continue to multiply over the land.
The recently opened Dune Peninsula and Frank Herbert trail pay tribute to this Tacoma native who wrote the ecological masterpiece, Dune. The Dune Peninsula was built on remediated slag piles from the Asarco copper smelter that used to be located here and which contaminated much of Western Washington with heavy metals and other contaminants. Much like what the Fremen did in Frank Herberts books, the City of Tacoma has taken a world destroyed by industry and turned it into a beautiful and thriving space for both people and animals alike. There was once a time when pollution was considered a side-effect of prosperity and accepted as a fact of life. In the words of Bob Dylan, “The times they are-a changin’”.