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Fourth Annual Migratory Bird Festival at Whidbey Island

May 11th, 2013 | Posted by in Field Excursions

Saturday, April 27th 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.

bird fest 2Youth 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.

bird fest 3The group circles up to learn about migratory birds in the Pacific Northwest

» Continue reading Fourth Annual Migratory Bird Festival at Whidbey Island

Poetic Reflections on the Nature of Meditation

December 22nd, 2012 | Posted by in Field Excursions

Over a crisp October weekend, the Learning Center was host to a class called Sit, Walk, Write: Nature and the Practice of Presence. Taught by Zen teacher and author, Kurt Hoelting, and writing teacher and poet, Holly Hughes, participants began their days with a sitting meditation, followed by writing and sharing poetry and short nature essays, walking meditation, and exploring the woods around the Learning Center with Institute naturalists and graduate students.

 

 Above two photos: Participants getting comfortable for a writing session in the classroom. Photo by Holly Hughes
Cohort 11 graduate student, Erin Soper, leading a naturalist walk through the woods. Photo by Holly Hughes

Following, are some pieces that came out of the class:

Clang
Bob Hicks

The bell’s clang
births a precise circle,
multiplying instantly into brassy rings
that spread out,
imitating the round wake
of a drop plunged through pond surface.

The bell washes
around tree trunks, birdbaths and homes,
over yards, asphalt, hills and water.
Then at some unknown point
the metallic circles retreat,
receding incrementally,
faltering,
shrinking,
and collapsing
to that infinitesimal single speck
at which all things disappear.

 

» Continue reading Poetic Reflections on the Nature of Meditation

Journey through the Arctic with Debbie Miller

October 16th, 2012 | Posted by in Field Excursions

North Cascades Institute presents “Journey through the Arctic with Debbie Miller:” A multimedia presentation and book release party
Wed, October 17: Walton Theatre at the Mount Baker Theatre, Bellingham, 7pm
Thurs, October 18: Skagit Transit Hub, Mount Vernon, 7 pm
No advanced tickets required; donations accepted at door. Details at http://ncascades.org/signup/programs/special-events#debbie-miller

Debbie Miller is on a mission.

Having spent considerable time in the far reaches of Arctic Alaska, she’s found a wilderness wonderland that most of us have never heard of. It is a landscape of superlative natural riches — the largest herd of caribou in America, the highest concentration of grizzly bears in the Arctic, millions of nesting migratory birds, beluga whales, polar bears, walruses, salmon, spotted seals, the list goes on and on. It is, like most untouched places, under threat of resource extraction and industrialization, and that is where Miller’s mission comes in to focus: spreading the gospel about this unspoiled terrain that belongs to each and every American.

So, why haven’t most of us heard about this special place? Call it bad branding.

“The National Petroleum Reserve” is not a name that inspires wonder and awe. It sounds like the place you’d stop to fill up the gas tank on your way to the much more famous Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which lies to the east.

And yet, this reserve — larger than the state of Maine, ten times as big as Yellowstone National Park — is the largest unit of public lands in the US. Its 23 million acres are home to the largest river (Colville) and lake (Teshekpuk) in Arctic Alaska, the aforementioned riches of wildlife and migratory bird habitat, the most prolific site of dinosaur fossils of any polar region on earth and more than 10,000 years of native inhabitation and history.

It also, not surprisingly, holds oil and natural gas resources, and neighbors the 1000-square-mile industrial oil-field development of Prudhoe Bay and other North Slope complexes.

While there are designated “special areas” within the Reserve  — denoting exceptional wildlife, recreational, subsistence, historical and scenic values — not a single acre has permanent protection.

Miller’s new book On Arctic Ground: Tracking Time Through Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve aims to change that. She is traveling around the country giving multimedia presentations that combine photography, soundscapes, scientific findings and storytelling, bringing her journeys through the Reserve to life.

She hopes to win over the hearts and minds of Americans, introduce them to this hidden gem and inspire actions towards protecting the best, most profound places within the Reserve.

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Butterflies and Bee Bowls – Citizen Science in the North Cascades

October 4th, 2012 | Posted by in Field Excursions

Now that it is autumn, I find myself reflecting on all of the incredible Citizen Science opportunities of this past summer season. I remember that with summer came the presence of some of the most beautiful creatures – butterflies! The Cascades Butterfly Project is just one of North Cascades Institute’s numerous Citizen Science projects that are presented in conjunction with North Cascades National Park Complex (NOCA) for individuals interested in assisting in valuable scientific research and giving back to their public lands through volunteer work.

During the height of this past summer, Cascades Butterfly Project volunteers participated in a free training that focused on identification and introduced them to the most common species of butterflies found in the North Cascades. After the initial training, everyone went outside to test some of the field research techniques in order to get comfortable with the process. Then, throughout the summer, happy volunteers were out walking transect lines to collect data at various locations throughout NOCA and Mount Rainier National Park (MORA).

In early August, I had the chance to participate in one of these butterfly field days at Cascade Pass. It just happened to be one of those days in the North Cascades that turns out to be absolutely perfect! Great weather, sunshine, low wind, and, to top it all off, really awesome people. The process of identifying butterflies while they are “on the wing” is actually quite fun, and the butterfly researchers from the Park were able to do it with no problem. There were two groups of us walking a transect line that follows the Sahale Arm Trail, butterfly nets in hand, making an entertaining spectacle of ourselves for fellow hikers! The first group saw 18 butterflies and the second group found 23! Most of them were only identified to species, but that alone can tell us so much.

» Continue reading Butterflies and Bee Bowls – Citizen Science in the North Cascades

Bird Migrations at Ebey’s Landing

April 29th, 2012 | Posted by in Field Excursions

This past Earth Day Weekend, the North Cascades Institute hosted the 3rd Anuual Migratory Bird Festival! The event was sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service and brought people together from across western Washington for a day to explore the natural history of migratory birds and the cultural heritage of Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve.

Students and elders from Seattle’s International District, Mt. Vernon’s Kulshan Creek Neighborhood, and North Cascade Institute’s NC Wild 2012 program joined together to celebrate and learn about birds by migrating through four different educational stations.

Participants dined on a multicultural feast featuring Chinese food from Seattle’s International District and homemade Mexican tamales and sopes from Yolanda Zamora of Mt. Vernon. Delicious!

The first station was the Sea Lab, where students and elders could see, touch, and learn about some of the marine invertebrates that help fuel the birds’ migratory journeys along the Pacific flyway. This hands-on lesson covered the basics of the ecology and dynamic interplay between Puget Sound’s marine life and the migratory birds that utilize northwest marine ecosystems in order to complete part of their journey.

Graduate student Jacob Belsher teaches students all about the joys of being a moonsnail.

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Following the Snowy Owls

March 19th, 2012 | Posted by in Field Excursions

Since first moving to the Environmental Learning Center last August, many people have told me, “You must go see the snowy owls!” This advice has been on my radar since migratory birds began returning to their winter feeding grounds in the Skagit Valley. Who are these snowy owls that everybody speaks of? After doing some research, I learned that not only were these birds magnificent and beautiful creatures, but that this was an unusual year for the North American Snowy Owl. This year is known as an “irruption” year. An irruption is caused by a shortage in the Artic lemming population in the Arctic Tundra of Canada. As a result, snowy owls, whose primary food source are lemmings, must travel in search of additional food and can be found as far south as the United States. This event occurs every four to seven years as predator-prey dynamics change, and in those years snowy owls can be found in hospitable places like Boundary Bay Park in southern British Columbia and occasionally along the Skagit Flats in Washington. The owls are expected to return north sometime this month.

In anticipation of their departure, I knew a trip over the border to Boundary Bay had to be made. The snowy owls were also spotted just north of Bellingham at Sandy Point, but the word on the birder streets was that it was possible to see 20 to 30 of them at once in British Columbia. So we chose to cross over, and the adventure was well worth it.

Here are some pictures from our wondrous day with the snowy owls.

Just off of 72nd Street in Delta, BC, we were lucky enough to witness about 25 snowy owls hanging out along the dyke path in Boundary Bay Park.
These large owls breed in the Artic Tundra, and as you can tell by their unmistakable white plumage they probably blend in very well up there. Females and juveniles are more heavily marked than males. Adult males can be almost pure white.

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Latitudinal and Longitudinal Explorations of Natural History

January 25th, 2012 | Posted by in Field Excursions

As much as we love North Cascadian landscapes, we here at the Institute are still called to visit and experience other amazing places on our planet. We publish accounts of the places Institute staff and graduate students visit in our Road Trip series.

As graduate students immersed in developing a sense of place within the rich, rugged landscapes of the North Cascades, we spend a lot of time attending to, and exploring, the natural world outside our doorsteps. At the Environmental Learning Center, our academic studies of the history, culture, ecology, art, and conservation of this place are integrated with actual feet-on-the-ground learning. This type of naturalizing is a practice that takes patience, and a willingness to move through our surroundings with careful observation as we slowly make sense of its many patterns and intricacies. The deeper we go in this process, the more the meaning and being of the North Cascades opens up to us. We begin to understand the stories written on and of this landscape, and our place in it.

For many of us, this practice of Natural History in all its interdisciplinary forms roots us intimately and specifically to the high mountains and steep river canyons of this region. The nature of this type of learning means that, for many graduate students, we will leave this program knowing the North Cascades better than we know our own, native homelands. How then, do we translate the tools we are learning here to other river drainages, mountains, high deserts, or valley bottoms?

In an effort to explore this question during our month-long respites from the North Cascades, Kiira and I reflected on how the practice of natural history can be used to cultivate awareness and develop a deeper sense of connection to any landscape that we move through. While Kiira’s travels took her home to the rolling hills of southern Vermont, mine took me south into the austral summer of the Patagonian Andes.

» Continue reading Latitudinal and Longitudinal Explorations of Natural History

Reflections on the Upper Skagit: Ross Lake by Boat and Boot

December 18th, 2011 | Posted by in Field Excursions

Written by Special Guest Blogger Elisabeth Keating.

On a cool Thursday evening in late July, a group of adventurers gather at the Environmental Learning Center for the 24th (and possibly final) year of one of North Cascades Institute’s most popular courses: Ross Lake By Boat and Boot a three-day exploratory workshop on the people and places of the Skagit River Valley, led by Gerry Cook and Bob Mierendorf. Both Bob and Gerry have had celebrated careers with the National Park Service – Bob is in his 25th year as the North Cascades National Park Archaeologist, and Gerry, recently retired from 44 years as a Park employee, has been a North Cascades fire lookout (1967 and 1971), a Park designer and architect, and an instructor and captain of the Ross Lake Mule. Bob and Gerry have led this class since 1997, labeled fondly by those who know them as The Bob and Gerry show.

At orientation, Bob welcomes us to what he and Gerry call Up River University: Nature’s classroom in general, and the floating classroom on board the Ross Lake Mule in particular. In our handout is an essay about the history of the area’s indigenous people, a map of today’s current Ross Lake, the class field itinerary, and a timeline of key events in the Upper Skagit reaching back 24,000 years to the present day. Before the creation of the dams along the Skagit River in the first half of the 20th century, the heart of the North Cascades was so rugged and inaccessible that few outsiders ventured in.

Looking out across the great expanse of Ross Lake on board the NPS Mule.

Gerry gives us a brief orientation to our home for the next few days – The Ross Lake Mule built in 1968. The North Cascades National Park inherited the NPS Mule from Katmai National Park in Alaska in 1976. The Mule hauled tons and tons of sand, gravel, cement, and materials of all kinds until it met its most noble calling: a floating wilderness classroom for students and adults.

» Continue reading Reflections on the Upper Skagit: Ross Lake by Boat and Boot

Mountain School Stewardship

November 13th, 2011 | Posted by in Field Excursions

Hello friends of Mountain School! If you haven’t yet heard, we’ve started a new Mountain School Stewardship program in Bellingham. After a class has come to Mountain School, we meet them at a city park within walking distance of their school to do a service project. The students revisit what they learned at the Environmental Learning Center, explore the nature in their backyard, and learn about their role as stewards of the forest. So far, we’ve had trips with Whatcom Hills Waldorf and Lowell, both with great fall weather, a lot of hard work and lots of fun. Here is an update from our latest trip with Lowell.

First and foremost, I want to thank our grads, Kiira, Susan, Matt and Ashley for coming. They did an amazing job organizing the kids, keeping track of their groups, doling out little educational tidbits, and keeping the kids motivated while pulling blackberries and mulching. I think they deserve the “making blackberry removal fun” merit badge. Its a skill. Plus, they’re just plain cool. Thanks again you guys! We’ve also been working with Rae, the Volunteer Coordinator with Bellingham Parks and Recreation. She has invaluable tips of the trade, like how to doggy-dig mulch into a bucket and how to drive a pickup filled with blackberry vines with the equipment for 35 volunteers stacked on top. She’s amazing. Join us next time for when she saves the world!

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From Teacher to Student and Back Again

October 16th, 2011 | Posted by in Field Excursions

Last weekend Cohort 11 graduate students had the chance to step away from our roles as Mountain School Instructors and again return to being students of Natural History during our three day Fall Grad Retreat. After weeks of training and teaching 5th and 6th grade youth about the diverse ecosystems of the North Cascades, the respite from such high activity was much appreciated by all. Our explorations took us by hand and knee through douglas fir forests near home, and by car and foot through the ponderosa pine and fire-scarred forests in the Methow Valley.

Day one of the retreat was spent near the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center campus with M.Ed. graduate alumna and mycologist Lee Whitford discussing the amazing yet unfamiliar world of fungi and their fruiting mushroom bodies. After learning some basic facts and characteristics about our earthy friends, we set out to do some local harvesting of our own (on Forest Service land, of course!). It took some time to adjust our eyes and hone our observational skills to the often unnoticed specimens hidden between leaf, detritus, and tree trunk, but half an hour and handfuls of mushrooms later our forage had yielded an impressive and diverse variety of them.

» Continue reading From Teacher to Student and Back Again