Chattermarks

The Migratory Shorebird Festival at Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve was attended by a diverse audience including high school students who will be attending a North Cascades Wild (NC Wild) backpacking trip this upcoming summer, children from the Kulshan Creek neighborhood, and seniors from the International District Housing Alliance. The goal of the day was to help attendees gain a sense of place by focusing on migration, the roles of estuaries, and bird watching.

The morning began with a presentation by Libby Mills about the diversity, abundance, and behavior of birds. Libby’s share of beautiful photographs and fascinating anecdotes followed us throughout the day as we discussed and observed birds. Other activities that we participated in included making estuary soup, re-enacting migration scenarios, and birdwatching in a few locations around Padilla Bay.

» Continue reading Migratory Shorebird Festival at Padilla Bay

The Institute is venturing over to eastern Washington the weekend of May 15-16 for a very special field excursion with biologist and geologist Mark Darrach. “Bunchgrass Dreams: High Desert Ecology” explores the Arid Land Ecology Reserve, located within the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near the Tri-Cities in Eastern Washington, which is the largest remnant of native sagebrush-steppe habitat in the state. An unspoiled refuge for an indigenous landscape disappearing throughout the intermountain West, the ALE is home to an entire community of diverse and unique plants, reptiles, birds and mammals, including Rattlesnake Mountain milk-vetch, Rocky Mountain elk, Piper’s daisies, burrowing owls, sagebrush lizards, Swainson’s hawks and more than 45 species of butterflies.

This excursion is extra-special because the ALE is off-limits to the general public and there are very few guides that have permission to enter it. We’re very fortunate that Mark has access to this landscape and is willing to lead an Institute exploration for us. There are a handful of spots still open for registration — you can sign up via our website or by calling Kacey at (360) 854-2599.

And finally, here are an Institute staffer’s reflections from attending this field excursions a few years ago:

Our weekend on Rattlesnake Mountain is one I will never forget. I’d seen that mysterious hump across the shrub steppe ranchland of southeastern Washington as I criss-crossed the state by car, but never knew much about it.  It’s big! At more than 3,500 feet, it’s one of the tallest, treeless mountains in the world and you can see vast stretches of Washington from its crown. It’s also impossible for casual hikers to visit because access to it is very limited. The Institute’s entree under Mark Darrach’s guidance is something special. When Mark unlocked the access road gate at the foot of the mountain, and we quietly entered, I felt like we were being allowed “backstage” into one of the most mysterious and complex landscapes in the Northwest.

The mountain is a convergence of culture, natural history, politics and botany and I can’t imagine anyone knows more about it than Mark Darrach. We spent two days with him and the questions and conversations ranged widely; I don’t believe we ever asked him a question that he couldn’t answer. A luxury of intellect in a remarkable natural setting.

–Kris Molesworth (Photos by Carl Molesworth)

Sometimes we think in order to see new things that we need to travel to the furthest reaches of our earth.

I was reminded of how wrong this train of thought is last Saturday as I traveled 40 minutes downriver to Rockport State Park. Rockport is a small place, blink while driving across Highway 20 East to the Cascades and you might well miss it. However, being small and little known should not suggest that this State Park has nothing to offer. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a more easily accessible example of old growth forest anywhere in the Cascades.

That which we do not speak of makes its presence known

» Continue reading Rocking the old growth

Over the second weekend in September, 12 photographers joined me (Benj Drummond) at the Learning Center for a weekend seminar on digital photography. We enjoyed clear sunny days and took advantage of the beautiful fall light from dawn until dusk (and then kept shooting). After returning from the field, we edited and tweaked our images in the computer lab. On Sunday we wrapped up the weekend with a group critique of the weekend’s work. Below are a selection of favorites, though it was a hard edit to make!

Above © Jason Ruvelson

© Russ Dalton

© Seaton Gras

© Ed Gastellum

© Emily Weisberg

© Shelley Langton

© David Green

© Louise Kornreich

© Beth Wisotzkey

© Don Fisher

© Seaton Gras

Pioneer Building with 50-million-year old sandstone from Bellingham, specifically from the Chuckanut quarries.

Guest post by David Williams

(David Williams is leading “Seattle’s Wild Side: Natural History in the Streets” tour on Saturday, Sept. 26. Sorry, the tour is full!)

As a hard-core geogeek, I often need a fix of rock.  Since I cannot always get up into the mountains to check out our wonderful geology, I regularly head downtown in search of stone.  This may seem odd but in Seattle I can find rock ranging in age from 3.5-billion-years old to less than 80,000 years old.  I can touch rocks from places as diverse as South Africa, Germany, Italy, Brazil, and Finland, as well as Indiana, Minnesota, Washington, and California.  I can gaze at fossils as big as a cinnamon roll and ones that resemble an ice cream cone.  And if those fossils drive my hunger, I can even find those foods nearby, something I cannot do in the field.

I first became infatuated with building stone in the Metro bus tunnels.  Under Westlake Mall I found a spectacular rock that looks like a marble cake.  I later learned it was the oldest commonly used building stone in the world and that it was a popular building material during the period when Art Deco architecture was popular.  As I began to look at stone in other buildings, I continued to find interesting connections between rock and people.

For example, when Seattle burned to the ground during its Great Fire of 1889, stone replaced wood as the main building material.  You can see this in the older parts of the city around Pioneer Square where 50-million-year old sandstone quarried in Bellingham, Wilkeson, and Tenino and a 33-million-year old granite from Index make up many of the buildings.  The stones were popular because they could easily be transported to Seattle and withstood erosion.

Following the fire, as city residents became wealthier they sought out stone from further and further away.  Limestone from Indiana, serpentine from Vermont, and gneiss from Minnesota first appear in buildings in the late 1920s.  Now, as noted above, stone arrives in Seattle from all over the world, which makes geologists such as myself quite giddy.  These are some of the stories that I have written about over the years as an urban naturalist. I will tell a few more and lead us to some of my favorite stories in stone on my program.

May 30 was a great day for a paddle in Seattle, with full sun and a light breeze to take the edge off. With a myriad of wild lakes, rivers and open sound waters to choose from, the Duwamish Waterway hardly seems like a choice location for an excursion. An EPA Superfund site, the Duwamish River flows through the backsides of various industries – shipyards, cement factories, and scrap plants to name a few. It is a heavily traveled waterway, where industry supercedes habitat. But don’t tell that to the osprey, purple martins, killdeer, bald eagles, great blue herons and other birds we saw out on the water that day.

Cruising past a cement plant

» Continue reading Surfing a Superfund site

On Saturday, March 21st, thirteen NC Wild participants joined North Cascades National Park staff members, NCI staff and graduate students for a day of community service projects at the Marblemount Nursery. Our goal for the day was to clean up the nursery beds which were covered with pine needles, small twigs, branches and leaves from a long winter.

» Continue reading First ever North Cascades Wild day trip

Winter may be time for hibernation, but spring is fast approaching, ready or not! Our field excursions have been hitting the trails the past few weekends and watching the signs and cycles of of change. Last weekend the Nooksack Snowshoe excursion went to the riverbed again. No hoar crystals anymore, but there was plenty to see. We checked out elk tracks, followed a female coyote preparing for pups and traced a set a of striped skunk tracks directly to the source! (“Whoa, everybody take a step back, there she is!”)

» Continue reading Gettin’ out on the flats…