Chattermarks

Scott Kirkwood is editor in chief of National Parks Magazine, a quarterly publication produced by the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. This is his first post in a series about spending the summer in the North Cascades National Park.

Two perspectives of a snowless Pyramid Peak on summer-like spring days

When it came time to plan my sabbatical from the National Parks Conservation Association, where I edit National Parks magazine, I decided to spend a few of those precious 6 weeks at North Cascades Institute. A coworker of mine in Seattle had taken a few classes at the Institute and highly recommended it, so I reached out to the staff and asked if I could teach a few classes in photography and writing, and take a few classes as well. And when I wasn’t doing one or the other, I’d just hike, bike, read, write, take photos, and think really deep thoughts. The folks at North Cascades Institute were immediately on board. So I flew from DC to Seattle on June 8, and the adventure began.

» Continue reading A week in the woods

ROBBY ASTROVE graduated from North Cascades Institute and Western Washington University’s M.Ed program in 2005 as part of the third Cohort of students. He is currently the Park Ranger at the Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve located in the Arabia Mountain,  National Heritage Area, Lithonia, GA.

Wow, 10 years have passed already.  Even though time and geography have advanced and changed, there are a few things that really stuck from North Cascade Institute and Western Washington University’s M.Ed program.  Time and time again these nuggets have provided answers and advisement for over a decade while at the same time provided teachable moments and inspiration to keep doing and learning more. And I’ll admit, the Each-One-Teach-One activity I learned at Mountain School in 2003 still gets regular rotation in my programs.

The vision, philosophy and pedagogy of the grad program is so grand and relevant to the needs of our professional field, that the combination of what’s possible afterward is infinite. North Cascades Institute planted that seed and provided a road map for how to create and sustain a practice that engages people in planetary healing and transformational change.  That sounds pretty dreamy I know, but an important part of realizing that ambition, and perhaps challenging and less exciting, is finding the financial resources to do so.  It took some time for these skills and lessons to finally materialize into practice. My career continues to expand as I explore more at the intersection of environmental education, philanthropy, and urban agriculture:

» Continue reading Life after grad school for an environmental educator and naturalist…

“There’s a bird outside the window,” I said. “I think it’s a Spotted Towhee.” I turned to look at my dad who was cooking at the stove. “Is that the right name for them…? I can’t remember if that’s the new name or the old name…”

“A Spotted Towhee?!” My dad sounded excited. He dropped the wooden spoon onto the counter and quickly walked over to look out the window over the sink. “Wow,” he said, “and look! There’s a baby!”

There was indeed a baby—fluffy, slightly disheveled, and not as distinctly colored as its parent.

“Look—it can’t fly yet,” my dad went on. I looked. It was hopping around on the lattice archway. The parent bird flew back and forth between the lattice and a nearby tree, but the baby stayed put, hopping, a couple of times nearly falling through the square holes.

Try as I might, I couldn’t really capture the baby Towhee on film. Everywhere it hopped, there was always lattice or leaves in the way. Photo by Ryan Weisberg

This is what they look like without lattice and leaves in the way… (photo courtesy of Google images)

My confusion over old names and new names happens a lot with birds. The Spotted Towhee was formerly known as the Rufous-sided Towhee, before it was discovered to be a different species than the Eastern Towhee. Now both birds have different names. The same thing happened with one of my favorites, the Winter Wren, which now refers to the Eastern species, while Pacific Wren is our Western species of the little brown bird.

Though I do enjoy the company of small birds with beautiful songs, I can only identify six of the small-to-medium-sized variety of birds by sight, five of which I also know by ear. I would say that I’m working on this, but that would be only half true. I seem to enjoy learning about birds when I’m able to just pick up little bits of information. If I sit down and try to study it, I lose interest. Not so for plants, but for some reason this is how it is for me with birds. I guess the birder inside me is still a work in progress…

Ryan Weisberg is a graduate student in North Cascades Institute and Western Washington University’s M.Ed. program. Ryan grew up here in Washington, exploring the natural areas around Bellingham and in the Cascades. Ryan is the Chattermarks editor this year during their residency at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center.

We were thrilled to find this trip report from a traverse across the North Cascades’ remote Picket Range last summer, made by four local splitboarders: Scott Mcallister, Kyle Miller, Seth Holton and Frankie Choltco-Devlin. Awesome photos too!

The weather was good. It was nearly our Nation’s birthday. We Cascadian ski tourers like to do big things at the beginning of July. Sometimes, we are lucky, and our snowpack is still fat then, there is plenty of sun, and the snow is still smooth. It’s corn season, with long days thrown in, too. As usual, I wanted to celebrate our Nation’s independence by pushing my physical limits, and doing what some had said I couldn’t do, seemed perfect. Moreover, those Independence Days that I had spent in the states, I had chosen for traversing. Three July fourth’s ago, I had done the Dakobed Traverse, Two years ago, the Alpine Lakes Traverse. Last year, I had been in Matchu Pitchu (not a traverse, but cause for celebration nonetheless).

July 4 has been an auspicious time for me.

As the holiday approached and a high pressure window solidified, I reached out. Within a moment after a gmail-proposal to Frankie, he was in. Scott was a long-time touring partner. And I had skied once with Seth. In a few moments’ time, we had a party of 4 splitboarders. We were stoked!

Read about this thrilling mountaineering-splitboarding expedition on Kyle Miller’s blog post, A Splitboard Certified Traverse of the Pickets, at http://www.whereiskylemiller.com/?p=3649.

As most of you know, getting around in northwestern Washington got a little bit trickier last month when the Interstate 5 bridge collapsed in to the Skagit River. Luckily, nobody was seriously injured, and concerns have shifted to travel hassles. All of our programs at the Learning Center and in the field are running as scheduled, but we are advising visitors destined for the Learning Center from the Seattle area and other points to the south to give yourself approximately 30 minutes extra for navigating the detour, or better yet, consider taking the Highway 530 Arlington-to-Rockport route. Visitors destined for the Learning Center coming from Bellingham and other points north are advised to take the Cook Road exit to connect with Highway 20.

The Washington State DOT website has a detour map at http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Construction/PugetSound/detourmap.html.

Please feel free to call us at (360) 854-2599 if you have questions.

So, what are Group Rentals?

Great question! In a nutshell, it’s a unique program that gives you the opportunity to create your own custom event at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center.

If you’re in search of a venue to host your next business conference, board retreat, wedding or most any other kind of gathering, the Learning Center is the perfect location. Our sustainable, Silver-LEED certified Learning Center is more than simply a place. It’s a retreat inside a national park, surrounded by snowcapped peaks, old-growth forests, glacial lakes, and a stunning display of biodiversity

» Continue reading The inside scoop on group rentals

I’d like to share a poem with you, on this rainy day in Bellingham. It’s called The Message of the Rain:

when i was a child
i was a squirrel a bluejay a fox
and spoke with them in their tongues
climbed their trees dug their dens
and knew the taste
of every grass and stone
the meaning of the sun
the message of the night

now i am old and past
both work and battle
and know no shame
to go alone into the forest
to speak again to squirrel fox and bird
to taste the world
to find the meaning of the wind
the message of the rain

- Norman H Russell

At Mountain School, we try to teach our students how to be stewards of the earth. When we visit the students at their school a few weeks after they came to Mountain School, we try to get them to make connections between the environment out here in the mountains and the environments closer to their home and their school. At some of these post-trip visits the students participate in stewardship activities at parks near their school. We wrote about this back in 2011 when we first began facilitating these stewardship events.

Here are some shots from the Sunnyland Elementary stewardship event at Memorial park in Bellingham. The students, their teachers, and Institute staff removed blackberry, mulched and planted red-osier dogwood and Sitka spruce. They also got VERY muddy!

» Continue reading What does stewardship look like?

Saturday, April 27^th marked the fourth annual Migratory Bird Festival, a day that brought together 113 people of all ages at Fort Casey State Park on Whidbey Island. This celebration of spring and migrating birds was hosted by North Cascades Institute, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the International District Housing Alliance, and the Mount Vernon Police Department. Despite overcast weather, the day turned out to be a huge success filled with games, exploration, and learning about the cultural and natural history of the area.

Youth Leadership Adventure students joined the International District group for a fun game about migration

One group consisted of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Filipino elders from the International District in Seattle accompanied by youth who assisted by translating what was being said. The second group was Kulshan Creek, a group of enthusiastic kids from Mount Vernon who are primarily Hispanic and range from age 8-16 years old. The third group included high school students who will participate in North Cascades Institute’s Youth Leadership Adventures this summer.

The group circles up to learn about migratory birds in the Pacific Northwest

» Continue reading Fourth Annual Migratory Bird Festival at Whidbey Island

My touring partner, Ian, and I found ourselves looking out across Ptarmagin Ridge toward our distant objective, Coleman Pinnacle.  The only noise was that of the wind coursing through the wings of a passing raven.  The sun shone down on our faces, lighting up the snow and landscape beyond.  I turned to Ian and asked where we were going.  He simply replied “Narnia,” and we continued along the skin track toward the jagged peak in the distance.

» Continue reading Following Tracks