Chattermarks

Spring into Summer with the Institute’s Early Bird Discount! From now through March 31st, when you sign up for one of our 2010 programs — Diablo Downtimes, art or writing retreats, natural history excursions, Ross Lake journeys or any program with tuition over $100 — you will receive $50.00 off each class registration. It’s a great opportunity to sign up for as many as you like and save!

We’ve just completed uploading dozens of new educational adventures for people of all ages to our website and we’re open for registration. Please visit www.ncascades.org/get_outside to view the Institute’s many unique spring and summer offerings. This year, we’re teaching birding, Pacific Northwest weather with Cliff Mass, basket-making with natural materials, digital photography, papercutting art with Nikki McClure, wilderness orienteering, wildflowers and pollinators, watercoloring and journal-making, wildlife tracking and more, including the 2010 Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival.

To register with the Early Bird $50 discount, call us at our NEW number, (360) 854-2599 (This discount is not valid for Family Getaways or Base Camp and cannot be combined with scholarships).

As anyone in the Skagit Valley may recall, this past Saturday wasn’t as bright and dry as some of the days previous. However, as stories like these usually begin, the weather was unsuccessful in deterring a group of enthusiastic kids from the Kulshan Creek Neighborhood Project and some equally enthusiastic adults from the US Forest Service and North Cascades Institute from partaking in a day outside learning about and observing the birds of the Samish Flats.

Our adventure began on Saturday, February 27th in the morning at the Kulshan Creek Community Center in Mount Vernon. As the students trickled in, they were met with hot chocolate—provided by a generous parent—and snacks. Lee Whitford, outreach naturalist for the Forest Service, and Orlando Garcia, of the US Forest Service, and I helped get the students situated and the day rolling.

Before we headed out onto our field trip, Don Gay, a wildlife biologist with the US Forest Service, gave a great presentation about the life history and migrational patterns of the Trumpeter Swans that temporarily inhabit the coastal farmlands of the Skagit River Valley. “Ooohs and ahhhs” were murmured throughout the room when Don explained that if a Trumpeter Swan was turned on its side with its wings out, it would have a wingspan that could reach from the floor past the ceiling of the room we were sitting in.

» Continue reading Winter’s swan song

The celebration of my 28^th year happened over the second half of the Instructor Exchange last weekend. For those unfamiliar, Instructor Exchange is a fun-filled, long weekend with our fellow environmental education instructors from Wilderness Awareness School (WAS) and Islandwood. We hosted the first half of the Exchange in January and now it was our turn to visit them.

The Exchange stated with a sunny and beautiful early morning drive. When we arrived at WAS we were greeted by a gang of smiling instructors who seemed happy for the company. Wilderness Awareness School is a woodland community of environmental instructors who focus on community building, survival skills, awareness, education, appreciation of nature and are, by far, the most skilled naturalists of us all.

To start things off, we commenced in Malalo Yu Chui – The Lair of the Leopard – for a ceremonial fire and story telling. After hearing the yarn of the school’s founders, we were given our nature names.  I am now known as Destroying Angel in some circles of friends. We departed Malalo to a trickster transformer series of lessons demonstrating diverse teaching styles on fire making, bird talk, tracking, and animal signs.  The highlight of the first evening was a wild and locally-inspired pasta dinner, which included salmon and a pasta sauce made of dandelions and stinging nettles.

(Title) All instructors participate in a bow drill exercise, Photo by Martine Mariott  (Above) Introductions were held at Malalo Yu Chui at Wilderness Awareness School, Photo by Erin Fowler

» Continue reading Our visit to Wilderness Awareness School and Islandwood

It is nearing the end of February, and yet, while spring is shouting out with buds blossoming and fair weather, I find myself craving the cold of snow, yearning for the sting of winter.

With a snow-free Environmental Learning Center on the western slopes of the Cascades, the eastern flanks seemed the most likely venture in search of more local wintry conditions. The Icicle River Valley in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest called me. This valley, located near the Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth, is one I am all too familiar with visiting in other seasons for rock climbing and backpacking. This trip, instead, was different, a hopeful plea to winter to let me experience a season that is all too quickly melting away.

Even to the east the snow was minimal, but just enough was present so that, for the first time this year, I could slip on my cross country skis and head up the Icicle Creek Road in search of other signs of winter.

» Continue reading Crossing a bobcat’s path

It is the radio call we’ve been waiting for all season.

Adam and I linger beside the truck, waiting to unload a couple of snowmobiles and get on with our assignment for the day—setting up our first camera station. But our attention is focused on the Forest Service radio. Waiting. Sherrie and John are up Twisp River checking on two wolverine traps that emit a “closed” signal from their radio transmitters. They have checked the first, and found it occupied by a marten. They should be at the second trap at any moment.

After fifteen minutes of fidgeting, kicking at snow and checking our watches, the radio comes to life. We eavesdrop on static and garbled voices, and finally make out words that change our day. There’s a wolverine in the trap. Our afternoon becomes more interesting. And longer. We pile back into the truck and drag our snowmobiles toward Twisp River.

This winter, ten or more Forest Service employees and volunteers tend ten wolverine traps on the outskirts of the North Cascades. We’ve been at it for two weeks already—replacing bait, checking the function of the traps, dealing with radio transmitter malfunctions and shoveling snow off of the traps. The status of the traps is checked each morning with radio receivers. We physically inspect and test the traps every three days or so. It is a fair amount of work, and the crew comes home each afternoon a bit weary and smelling of snowmobile exhaust. So far we have caught nothing but martens.

» Continue reading Encounters of a wolverine kind

A flit of gold. A flicker of green. Soft song notes from within a tangle of blackberry vines. A surprising whoosh of hovering wing-sweeps, mere inches above ground.

Birds. They are some of the Skagit Valley’s most compelling and charismatic creatures. In winter, the Skagit farmlands teem with all kinds – song birds, raptors, shorebirds, local and migratory waterfowl. You need not have fancy equipment nor years of experience to be a birder here. What it takes is the curiosity to know more and the patience to practice deep observation.

(Title) Graduate students of Cohort 9 extend their birding eye on the Skagit flats (Above) The Hayton Reserve is one Skagit Valley location to go bird watching

» Continue reading Becoming bird observers

North Cascades National Park archaeologist, and long-time Institute field instructor and former board member, Bob Mierendorf is prominently featured in an excellent new article just published in Washington State Magazine, published by Washington State University. In “Of Time and Wildness in the North Cascades,” Mierendorf interprets his important work in documenting native presence in the higher elevations of the North Cascades:

Mierendorf has spent the last couple of decades trying to convince the archaeological establishment that pre-contact Northwest Indians did not confine themselves to the lowlands, but lived in the North Cascades and frequented the high country. When Mierendorf first started working at the park, Cascade Pass was one of 17 archaeological sites identified within it. Since then, he has identified nearly 300 more. Forty-five of those sites are located between 4,000 and 7,000 feet.

Obviously, population densities in the mountains were nowhere near what they were along the more hospitable coastal lowlands. Mierendorf argues simply that lower density does not mean absence. An earlier assumption by archaeologists was that Indians actually avoided the mountains, and any contact between coastal and interior tribes was accomplished by traveling along the Columbia Gorge. Mountains were a barrier, not a destination. The idea that prehistoric people crossed the Cascades on foot was simply incomprehensible.

Such an assumption is certainly understandable. The North Cascades is tough country. Even though only two volcanic peaks are higher than 10,000 feet, the deep glacier-carved valleys create dramatic local relief, often as much as 6,000 feet between valley floor and peak.

Alexander Ross, a fur trader with the North West Company, made the first non-Indian crossing of the North Cascades in 1814, from east to west, guided by an Indian. “A more difficult route to travel never fell to man’s lot,” wrote Ross.

So why was the question of the Indians’ presence in the mountains such a mystery? Why didn’t archaeologists just ask the Indians?

This article is a significant contribution to the public’s understanding of the cultural history of the North Cascades, and the Institute is understandably very excited to share it widely. You can read the rest of the article here.

In the next week or so, we’ll be opening registration for our spring and summer programs in the North Cascades, including Mierendorf’s long-running, popular field excursion on Ross Lake that explores the region’s cultural history, from native uses through to miners, fire lookouts and the park service (see photo at top of post). “Ross Lake by Boat and Boot: People and Places of the Upper Skagit” takes place July 22-25, with Captain Gerry Cook piloting the Ross Mule, your floating classroom for this exciting learning adventure. (While we can’t offer registration quite yet, you can send an email to nci@ncascades.org and we’ll let you know as soon as it is open for sign-ups!)

» Continue reading Bob Mierendorf and the pre-history of Cascade Pass

For those of you who have worked in environmental education, at a summer camp, or with kids you may have played the game, “Bob the Weasel.”

You stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, with one person in the middle. The outside circle passes an object – the weasel – around behind their backs while chanting, “Bob the weasel keep it going, keep it going” and the person in the middle tries to guess where the weasel is. At any point in the passing you can taunt the person in the middle by raising the weasel over your head – if you can get away with it – and everyone who sees the weasel says, “I saw the weasel.” The kids love this game and you can use it to teach them about weasels and their behavior. Weasels try to stay hidden from view, especially from overhead predators like Eagles by traveling illusively under downed wood, brush and vegetation. This helps them surprise their next meal and protects them. Every once in while you will see a weasel pop out of nowhere and then quickly disappear under cover.

“I saw a weasel!”

» Continue reading “I saw the weasel”

My dreams within Environmental Education are like that of the Skagit River’s watercourse.

From its headwaters, my dream begins in the tiniest of raindrops, collecting in glaciers perhaps and trickling down to alpine streams. The dream builds to a river, solidifying as do the sturdier banks supporting the way of the water. Weaving out and around, the dream’s course is composed, at times, of rapids raging, then pooling in softer shallows. It exits the mountain peak domain to enter a gentler, more gradual flow—that of farmland and forest—though still bringing with it reminders of the lessons learned in higher places. The channel widens, as does my dream’s scope, the hint of salt in freshwaters. As river converges with ocean, a chorus commences. Ideas, like nutrients, swell. Life is rich, vibrant. Just as the Skagit River feeds the Salish Sea, so the sea replenishes the river.

» Continue reading From headwaters to sound

What do Bald Eagles mean to you?

This was a question a group of 10 high school students from the International District Housing Alliance’s (IDHA) Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development program (WILD), and 30 students of almost all grades from Kulshan Creek Neighborhood Program, discovered over the weekend. The North Cascades Institute, in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, assisted the groups to help find some answers. The day of discovery began with a discussion of Bald Eagle biology ranging in topics from migration and diet, to anatomy and reproduction. The wonderful examples of Bald Eagle skulls, talons and eggs added to the excitement.

(Title) IDHA group discussing salmon (Above) A Bald Eagle roosting

» Continue reading Kulshan kids wing it