Chattermarks

I knew that when I moved to North Cascades Institute’s Environmental Learning Center to begin the residency portion of my Masters in Environmental Education degree, it was going to be an amazing year. I have always wanted to live on a lake in the mountains, so this part of the program was a big draw for me. Unsurprisingly, the year flew by and, before I knew it, summer was drawing to a close and it was time to return to Bellingham for the last two quarters at Western Washington University. But before returning to that more “civilized” and academic sphere, I decided to both symbolically and physically transition away from my amazing year living in the midst of the North Cascades by backpacking from Ross Lake to Bellingham with another grad student and several North Cascades Institute staff.

Map of our route, heading west from Ross Lake to Hannegan Pass Trailhead

We only had four and a half days to make this trek, so we had to cut a few corners:  we took a boat from Ross Lake dam up to Little Beaver Creek, and were then picked up from the Hannegan Pass Trailhead.  If we had been purists, we would have hiked the entire route. However, that would have taken a bit more time than we had. Our roughly forty-five mile, 7500′ gain route, camping at Perry Creek, Tapto Lakes, Copper Creek, and Egg Lake, still gave us long, but breathtakingly beautiful days.

» Continue reading From the Learning Center to Bellingham: A Grad’s Transition Back to the ‘Real World’

Sixteen high school students hailing from Oregon and Washington arrived in the North Cascades on June 26th to begin an unforgettable adventure. These young leaders came to participate in the third year of Cascades Climate Challenge, one of North Cascades Institute’s youth programs. The youth started off by splitting into two groups to go on 12-day backpacking and canoeing trips on and around Ross Lake. For many, this was the longest time away from home, the first time paddling a canoe, and the most physically challenging experience they have had.

CCC2 stands on a bridge over rushing Lightning Creek

CCC1 canoers “raft up” in the mouth of Devil’s Creek

Students learned many new skills each day, in addition to lessons about climate change, invasive species, presenting and naturalizing. Everyone took turns cooking meals, cleaning up following Leave No Trace guidelines, building fires, and leading the group. Spending so much time in North Cascades National Park (NCNP) provided a great opportunity for hands-on service work, and a chance for the students to give back to the park they were learning and living in. Mike Brondi, volunteer coordinator for NCNP, met up with both groups to teach them about invasive reed canary grass, which the students pulled in order to promote native grass growth. They also planted native seeds to restore the banks of Dry Creek and cleared the trail between Hozomeen and Willow Lakes.

Members of CCC1 manage to fit six people in a bear box

Students took turns cleaning up after each meal

Each group’s 12-day trip included waking up at 5am one morning to climb up Desolation Peak, gaining breathtaking views of snow and glacier-capped mountains, at the expense of one thousand vertical feet per mile. Youth who had been strangers on the first day supported each other like family, encouraging one another to the top of the mountain. This was just one of innumerable moments of awe and inspiration on the trips: listening to eerie loon calls at Hozomeen Lake, paddling silently to the mouth of Devil’s Creek, or holding 20,000 year old pieces of wood flattened by glaciers, preserved in clay next to the Skagit River.

Canoes float below Desolation Peak, about to paddle their hikers to the Desolation trailhead

CCC2 poses in triumph, with Jack Mountain and Ross Lake as a backdrop

After the two smaller groups completed their “backcountry” trips, they reunited at the Learning Center for the luxuries of “front country” camping, and ten days of focusing more intently on the science of climate change and its impacts on the North Cascades. Students met with specialists like NCNP geologist, Jon Riedel, to learn how climate change is affecting the park’s glaciers, Gina DiCiccio, NCNP climate change intern, and Katie Fleming from the Cool School Challenge. Their lessons allowed students to explore a variety of ecosystems, including Baker Lake, Baker River, Thunder Knob, Rainy Lake and Diablo Dam powerhouse.

By the end of the trip, students were experts at tent construction

Students hiked the still-snowy trail to breathtaking Rainy Lake for lessons about glacial landforms

After some rainy nights camping at Newhalem campground, resulting in the overnight formation of tent lakes, the group returned to the Learning Center for their culminating project: putting together an hour-long presentation and lessons on their experience, what they learned and how the students will be applying their new knowledge when they return home. The students shared this with the Kinship Conservation Fellows, a group of eighteen international leaders who are actively working to integrate a practice of conservation and environmental awareness into business. The students in turn got to learn about some of the kinds of jobs they could pursue to help preserve the environment they are so passionate about.

A student snorkels in Ross Lake, looking for small red-sided shiner fish

Twenty-two days after these sixteen students first came to the Cascades, they had to find a way to say goodbye to both a place and a community that had become a home and a family. As instructors, we hope that the students left with as much inspiration and confidence as they gave us. Getting to teach, lead, and mentor such exceptional young adults is a privilege. Spending three full weeks 24/7 watching these youth grow individually and as a group is a process that, while exhausting, is simultaneously one of the most rewarding experiences an educator can have. These bright-eyed and enthusiastic youth remind me of myself at a younger age, which gives me hope that they will continue becoming leaders that will not settle for “business as usual” and a planet that cannot support the systems and amazing organisms we cherish. NCNP maintenance foreman Gerry Cook shared the following words with the members of Cascades Climate Challenge, which they have all taken to heart: “I cannot change the world, but I can change the world around me. And if we change the world around us, we will change the world.”

Two weeks ago I headed down valley on my spring break. Somewhere around Everett, it suddenly hit me that the world was GREEN. I realized that the ‘green’ had probably started happening before I got to Everett, but I was so accustomed to a landscape dominated by the darker shades of evergreens that suddenly noticing the pale greens of new growth was a shock to me. Although we had started noticing signs of spring over the last month, we were also still getting some snow, and spring was moving rather slowly.

I got a nice preview of what was to come while down in Oregon and the Seattle area. But I was glad to see that even when I returned to the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center on May first, leaf buds were still just beginning to open. In the last week-and-a-half, we have had enough sunshine and warmer temperatures that we can finally say that spring is here. In addition to a plethora of new vegetation, the Learning Center has been swarmed by an increasing number of birds. The robins, dark-eyed juncos, warblers, thrushes and wrens have been joined by rufous hummingbirds. And they are not messing around. Staff and Mountain School students who are wearing brightly colored clothing must be wary of these tiny avian fighter pilots dive-bombing them in search of nectar.

Red-flowering currant, a favorite target for the hummingbirds

Yellow wood violets add some color to the forest

Swordfern fiddleheads poke up like upside-down seahorses

Salal is one of the slowest budding plants, with only tiny new growth visible

Colts foot, one of the earliest new plants to emerge, is now more than a foot tall

The new growth on Devil’s club looks like an alien weapon

Kinnikinick has tiny pink and white flowers that will become red berries in summer

What will become Oregon grape berries are just beginning to emerge

Red huckleberry leaves are popping out from pale pink buds

Tiny leaves are emerging from one of the few beaked hazelnuts on campus

An unusual black lichen sprout amongst some moss

Before we know it all of the trees will be fully leafed out and three feet of snow will be a distant memory. In the meantime, we will continue to delight in the surprises of walking down a trail with a group of Mountain School students and seeing what new sign of spring has popped up.

Why is it that kids, and adults, truth be told, love throwing rocks? Nearly every Mountain School student spends some time learning and exploring along the shores of Diablo Lake. And without fail (for my trail groups at least) the first question we hear as soon as we get to the shore is, “Can we throw rocks?”  Although our packed schedule usually only allows for 5-10 minutes of rock throwing, I’m fairly certain my students would happily spend the entire afternoon engaged in this timeless pursuit. Thrown, plopped or skipped, every student becomes engrossed in this activity.

One lovely, sunny afternoon, as I sat below Sourdough Creek Falls and watched my students gradually start tossing rocks across the creek after lunch, I couldn’t help but wonder, what is it about throwing rocks that is so captivating? Is it the sound? The splash? The hunt of finding the perfect skipping rock? Or the challenge of successfully hitting a target?

Mountain School students see how far they can skip rocks across the lake. Photo courtesy of Glenda Runge

» Continue reading Rockity Rock Rock

I recently had the opportunity to join Megan McGinty, North Cascades Institutes’ Climate Challenge Program Coordinator, in Great Smoky Mountains National Park for a meeting with representatives from several other environmental learning centers that will all be offering trainings this summer on how to teach climate change in the classroom. The meeting was hosted by Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, which is located near Cades Cove in the national park. The meeting included representatives from NatureBridge’s Headlands Institute (Golden Gate Natural Recreation Area) and Santa Monica Mountains Institute (Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area), as well as from Will Steger Foundation/Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, all of which will be leading teacher trainings over the summer.

The trainings are being sponsored and supported by the National Park Foundation’s Parks Climate Challenge program. In addition to the meeting being a great opportunity for me to learn more about the trainings that will assist roughly 120 teachers in effectively teaching their students about climate change in the context of our national parks, I was also able to learn more about the different national park-based environmental education organizations and how they share their natural resources with students.   While at Tremont, we had the opportunity to observe students participating in their school program, as well as participate in a citizen-science phenology plot activity, studying where different plants are in their seasonal life-cycle.

» Continue reading Spring in the Smokies

At the beginning of the M.Ed. residency, every graduate student writes down several goals. These personal goals are for both our teaching practicum as well as for what we hope to accomplish during our residency experience. One of my residency goals was to go on a full moon canoe every month. So far, I have only been on a few due to weather and being offsite. But every time I have been able to, it fully reinforces what motivated me to write down that goal.

There is something magical about gliding across the still, silent, black surface of a lake, moving solely by your own exertion. I always feel connected with the water when I go canoeing. But something about being on the water at night heightens this sense of oneness. It almost seems as if your paddle is an extension of the water, linked by an arc of tiny droplets.

» Continue reading Full Moon Rising

Despite the fact  it seems like we just said goodbye to the final fall Mountain School group only a few weeks ago, the spring season is fast approaching. Staff and graduate students at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center  began spring Mountain School training on February 28th to share new ideas for programming, reacquaint ourselves with fun logistical details, and immerse some new team members in the curriculum.

The snow we have been blessed with over the last few weeks—though unfortunately intermixed with rain most days—has added an interesting element to the training.  Our first group of students will arrive in a week, and there is a possibility that snow could be on the ground–which could take some of our Mountain School lessons to a whole new level.

» Continue reading Finding Our Inner Child

Last summer, during the first quarter of our graduate program, our professor John Miles had us read several excerpts by author Kathleen Dean Moore, a philosophy professor at Oregon State University. One of the first articles was “The Truth of the Barnacles: Rachel Carson and the Moral Significance of Wonder” from the journal Ethics & the Environment. The article was the perfect start to North Cascades Insitute’s M.Ed. in Environmental Education, as it gave us a perspective to view the art of naturalizing that we worked to perfect throughout the summer. One of my favorite quotes from the article was:

“Meanwhile, Earth turns, birds fly north or south, fish rise or sink in the currents, the moon spills light on snow or sand. And we, do we think we turn the crank that spins the Earth? A good dose of wonder, a night of roaring waves, a faceful of stars, the kick in the pants of an infinite universe, the huge unknowing these remind us that there is beauty that we didn’t create.”

» Continue reading Poking Around in Wonder

During my winter break back in the Midwest, I decided to visit a family place near a lake in northern Michigan for a few days for some “nature time.”  As much as I love seeing family and friends in the Chicago area, after a few days I start craving the abundant nature I have been spoiled by in the NorthCascades.  Fortunately, there is such a place that I grew up visiting every year, and only six hours away.

I arrived in northern Michigan late afternoon to a world coated by an inch of fluffy snow, which created a lovely winter wonderland.  My first step upon arrival is to always visit the lake to say hello and pay my respects.  The lake was not yet frozen, though there was a slushy ice ring around the shoreline, tinkling like little bells.  I took a short walk down the path along the lake and came across some tracks in the snow.  It was still lightly snowing, yet the tracks were distinct, so I knew they had to be relatively fresh.  As I bent down to examine them, I could not believe it—they were clearly bobcat tracks.  I had never seen bobcat tracks (or the real thing) here before, though perhaps I had not known what to look for in the past.

Back home at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, I had gone on a few tracking hikes in early December and had been ecstatic to find bobcat tracks several times.  However, even though this house in Michigan is in a semi-rural area, I did not expect to find tracks here.  There are certainly plenty of deer, some turkeys, a very occasional bald eagle, and a few beaver that make their home in these woods. But I had never thought of the fauna to include bobcats, which I have always wanted to see.

» Continue reading Tracking Bob

Has it really been two months since the start of our fall Mountain School season? It seems like just yesterday I was welcoming my very first group of fifth graders from Carl Cozier Elementary. I’m certain that I was much more nervous than they were. The four years that have elapsed since I was a summer camp counselor had distorted my memory of what it is like to hang out with eight or nine ten-year-olds all day. As it turned out (contrary to my fears), fifth graders are the perfect age. They are old enough to understand concepts like photosynthesis, the rain shadow effect and watersheds. Yet still young enough to enthusiastically immerse themselves in a funky orange fungus, a mountain-building contest or a game of camouflage. Which worked out well for me as my inner child is around ten years old, too.

One of the primary goals of Mountain School is to spend as much time as possible in the natural world, which usually means some rainy days in the North Cascades during the fall season. However, we lucked out this year, as most Mountain School groups got to wallow in some fall sun while learning about glaciation, predator-prey interactions and ecosystems. Many of my favorite moments from Mountain School were times when my students were grouped around the base of Sourdough Falls or the shore of Diablo Lake, quietly sketching their surroundings.

» Continue reading Mountain Schooling