Chattermarks

It’s hard to believe but almost one year has gone by since I started my residency as a graduate student at the North Cascades Institute. Through a partnership with Western Washington University, NCI affords students the opportunity to live, learn, teach, and work in the North Cascades while working towards a Master’s in Education. As part of our professional residency we are required to design an event at the institute to learn the programming side this line of work. Being an environmentalist and somewhat of a movie nut, I had just the idea, we would hold an environmental film festival.

Several years back I attended the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan. Having no idea of what to expect I went with the hope of seeing some great films. What I left with was a revamped sense of duty and motivation to explore, protect, and do whatever I could to help my community. I believe this is called a movie-high. Endorphins are released by the excitation of some body part and immediately react on the brain stimulating a sense of joy and wonder and oftentimes…invincibility.

Yes, I felt invincible. Watching environmental films made me feel like I could do anything. Laugh if you will, but is it really that hard to believe? Think about it, you’ve felt this too when rolling into camp after a long day of hiking, the high you feel after a long run, for some of you the smile plastered to your face after church can even be attributed to endorphins. And if you try really hard, I bet you can remember leaving a really great movie reciting funny scenes, or reenacting certain moments cloaked in a shroud of happiness. These are endorphins my friend.

Louie's Pond from my dock in Michigan.

Well, this is how I felt and driving home I couldn’t help to think of all the change, and good I was going to do. When I woke up the next morning I drank my coffee outside looking at the pond in the backyard and decided to pick up trash from the road. Later on in the day I even built a table from scrap wood that was laying around…I’m not sure what the table has to do with anything, but it felt good to work with my hands. I spent the next several days combing the internet, looking for local farmers and environmental organizations searching for ways I could help or volunteer. I was plugging myself into the community.

Artist rendition of the table I crafted from scrap wood.

The one nag I had with the festivals I have attended in the past was that I did not feel they did enough to plug me in with the environmental organizations and efforts in my area. Most of this work I did on my own when I got home. For this year’s Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival we have created an itinerary that is meant to enhance each of the evenings films and provide avenues for participants to direct their “movie-high” attention, should they feel so inclined. In addition to offering hikes, and farm tours, we have also invited several prominent organizations to present from the surrounding area. The Methow Conservancy, Friends of the Forest, The North Cascades Conservation Council, the Nature Conservancy and the North Cascades National Park will all be in attendance to clue us into what they are doing in our communities and what we can do to help.

In retrospect, I found that the best part of the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival wasn’t the films, or beer, or food, it was my response to the event that truly delighted me, the change I saw in myself. Which, I suppose was the idea all along.

Northwest Cheapsleeps, the popular blog about “favorite places for budget travelers,” recently visited the Learning Center for our Base Camp program. Here is a report on their family-friendly experiences:

The North Cascades Institute has long been the premiere environmental education outfit in the Pacific Northwest, but I’d never before taken a class with them. Earlier this summer, as I was scanning their beautiful catalog and lusting over courses on landscape watercolor and mountain photography, I stumbled upon a new offering called Base Camp. Billed as flexible, affordable, enriching and fun, this fledgling program appealed to me immediately as an accessible, low-stress way for families to experience the outdoors. We could stay a few nights at the gorgeous NCI Learning Center on Lake Diablo, all meals included, and dabble in guided learning adventures offered three times a day, from hiking to canoeing to arts and crafts.

By the time our two-night stay arrived, I was eager for space from the city and quality time in nature. I also couldn’t wait to take a break from planning and making meals for a family of three! We arrived at the NCI Learning Center with just enough time to stash our stuff in our room before the orientation tour. Katie, a recent college grad and Kentucky transplant to the Northwest, showed us around the center, on the shores of Diablo Lake and surrounded by the North Cascades National Park complex. I was amazed at the comfy-looking library stocked to the ceiling with field guides and nature poetry. Brian was impressed with the comprehensive compost system outside the dining hall. Isaac helpfully pointed out the fire pits and sword ferns. Katie gave us the rundown on meal times, showed us the trailheads to the four or five trails that depart from the center, and invited us to join other base campers around the campfire after dinner for local native storytelling. I suddenly felt like I was at camp, a really nice camp.

Read the entire story at http://nwcheapsleeps.org/2010/08/06/north-cascades-institutes-base-camp/

Watercolors and wildlife: North Cascades Institute courses offer arts and outdoors

By SHANNON DININNY

The Associated Press

DIABLO, Wash.

For their 10th wedding anniversary, Kori Crane’s husband handed her a check and told her she could only spend it on an art class.

Not just any art class.

Crane designed and painted silk scarves in the remote wilderness of North Cascades National Park, drawing on the majestic mountains and towering pines for inspiration.

Nestled at the foot of Sourdough Mountain and on the shore of Diablo Lake, the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center is home to fine arts, writing, cultural and natural history courses, as well as family weekends that include kayaking, hiking, boating and fun.

Front and center, though, is the wilderness. One of the most remote national parks in the U.S., North Cascades offers miles of hiking trails, abundant wildlife and panoramic views of rugged peaks and glacier-fed lakes far from an urban center.

Crane, 39, of Mount Vernon, Wash., had visited the lodge once before for a hiking day. Already an active quilter and fiber artist but recovering from a recent shoulder injury, she made the trip to the North Cascades last year aiming to try something new.

“I enjoy color a lot, so really being able to play with color on a grand scale is wonderful,” she said. “The atmosphere is inspiring for art.”

Seattle City Light built the five-acre facility as part of its Skagit River dam license for hydropower. The nonprofit North Cascades Institute manages the 16-building campus, which opened in 2005, and its adult course offerings help finance youth education programs.

Molly Hashimoto has traveled to the lodge for six years to teach watercolor classes, and the getaway hasn’t lost its magic.

“For me, it’s the ease of getting outdoors, and the beauty is unparalleled. The scale — it’s awesome,” she said. “You wouldn’t find that many places in the country where you can see from sea level to a mountain peak, almost a vertical mile. It’s awe-inspiring.”

The center’s wood floors and cedar walls are warm, earthy and inviting, with buildings named after trees found in the nearby woods: pine, maple, cedar, fir. The dining room overlooks the lake, where boat tours glide by. Meals are included and feature local, often organic, ingredients.

It’s already drawn visitors from across the country.

Donna Woodland, 49, of Montoursville, Pa., traveled with a friend from Oregon to work on watercolor landscapes, a progression from her nature journals and sketches at home.

“If I don’t draw for a few days or weeks, I find it affects my mood,” she said. “This forces me to draw around other people. Otherwise this is a solitary thing, and everyone sees things differently. You get feedback.”

Gazing across Diablo Lake at Colonial and Pyramid peaks, Hashimoto said she’d like to see more young people sign up for art courses. People with young families tend toward the family getaway weekends, she said, and people without families “are just working too hard.”

“Art is one of those things people should splurge on for themselves,” she said.

One of her regular students, Len Eisenhood of Seattle, also made the trip with his wife for their 40th wedding anniversary. She took a journaling course, while he focused on his watercolors.

“We love the Northwest, and to have this time dedicated to being in this gorgeous setting dawn to dusk was something to say yes to,” he said. “It’s a privilege to be here and have this time.”

Molly Hashimoto’s sketchbook

» Continue reading AP: Mountains Inspire in North Cascades Art Courses

When you plan your next trip into the North Cascades, be sure to visit the retail sales areas located in NPS visitors centers in and around North Cascades National Park. Thanks to a new agreement with the Park and Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, the Institute provides a broad selection of books, maps, trail guides and gifts sure to interest any outdoor enthusiast. You’ll find new North Cascadian t-shirts, water bottles, postcards and publications that we’ve created especially for the region too, tapping in to the wealth of photography and art produced by our local friends like John Scurlock, Becky Fletcher, Brett Baunton and John D’Onofrio.

“We’ve been teaching people about the North Cascades for more than 24 years,” said Saul Weisberg, executive director. “Providing visitors with the tools and information they need to explore our public lands is an exciting next step for us.”

» Continue reading Visit the Institute’s new retail sites

How big is your social network? Use your e-powers for good and help Cascades Climate Challenge win a grant! Go to the  Brighter Planet Project Fund and vote up to 3 times. If we get the most votes, we win $5000.

The money will be used to buy new tents (our current ones aren’t going to make it through the summer), school bus fees (many school districts don’t have field trips because they can’t afford to hire the buses) and supplies for the students (we supply everything the students need for the summer—socks, long underwear, boots, water bottles, raingear, warm fleece, hats—you name it.)

Voting closes June 15, so please spread the word to everyone you know!

Photo (Above) Two Climate Challenge students enjoy Baker Lake in July.

Published in the Courier-Times on March 23, 2010 by Ralph Schwartz

SEDRO-WOOLLEY — The Park and Forest Information Center sits on prime real estate, near the intersection of Highway 20 and Highway 9. It also happens to be a prime location for solar power.

“I have a building that is facing due south with no shade or anything,” building owner Keith Earnst said, recounting his decision late last year to go solar.

Earnst’s building — the visitor center for the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and North Cascades National Park [and the administrative headquarters of North Cascades Institute] — has a new and conspicuous feature. Local contractor Whidbey Sun & Wind installed 140 solar panels on the building’s roof earlier this month. They will generate enough electricity to power two and a half homes.
The U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service say solar energy aligns with their green agenda.

» Continue reading Going solar: panels on Institute building will cut energy costs

By Kurt Hoelting
May 3, 2010

My new book The Circumference of Home: One Man’s Yearlong Quest for a Radical Local Life grew quite seamlessly out of a yearlong experiment in car-free local living in 2008. I had been concerned about climate change since it first surfaced as an issue in the 1980’s. Yet my own carbon footprint had only grown larger in the ensuing years. The gap between what I knew to be true, and how I am actually living my life, had grown steadily larger. My wake up call came after I took my own carbon footprint online. I thought I’d do fairly well. After all, I was driving a hybrid car, actively recycling, keeping my thermostat low. But I was also flying a lot for work and pleasure, not noticing how thoroughly this jet travel was trumping all my other conservation efforts. I was shocked to see the size of the discrepancy between the two.

Yet fashioning an appropriate response proved elusive. I was too enmeshed in my high-carbon lifestyle to see any obvious way out of the conundrum. Feeling thoroughly stuck in the mire of this contradiction, I found myself sliding into a chronic depression. I had almost given up finding a way forward at all when the genesis of a creative response ambushed me one morning over breakfast with a friend. “What would it be like,” I found myself musing, “if I didn’t get into a car for a year? What would it be like if I spent an entire year living car-free within walking distance of home.”

Something in the audacity of this idea grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let me go. I started scheming about places close to home that I could explore under my own power, hidden gems I had neglected in my rush to more distant places. I drew a circle on the map sixty miles in radius with my home at the center – a circle that traced a nearly perfect circumference around the Puget Sound basin. I took a sabbatical from all work and travel that would take me outside this circle, and on the winter solstice in 2007 I parked my car in the garage for a full year. Armed with my boots, a bicycle and a kayak, and public transportation, I set off on the adventure of a lifetime.

» Continue reading Reflections on “The Circumference of Home”

Spring’s presence is not the only thing that North Cascades Institute is welcoming at the Environmental Learning Center this season.

As the season continues to reveal itself more each day, whether it be through the scent of black cottonwood blossoms dancing on a wind from Diablo Lake or the more frequent blue skies serving as a backdrop for the steep, snow-coated hillsides of Pyramid and Colonial Peaks, an even newer welcoming has taken place in the North Cascades.

On March 16th, for the spring staff retreat, a plethora of Institute staff from both up river and down valley gathered on the shores of Diablo Lake to welcome the Institute’s newest family member—the big, BIG canoe. This 36-foot canoe—made by Clipper Canoe in Abbotsford, British Columbia—holds up to 18 paddlers on any given excursion. Its black exterior, red interior and wolf-like decorative bow are indicative of the traditional design and coloration of canoes in the Coast Salish culture.

(Title) The graduate students travel in the new big canoe, Photo by Saul Weisberg (Above) The new canoe tests the waters of Diablo Lake, Photo by Christian Martin

» Continue reading Welcoming the new canoe

We’re getting ready for Barry Lopez’s visit to Seattle and couldn’t be more excited. We’re meeting him tonight at a private reception near Seward Park, and then co-hosting his presentation “Speak, Landscape” at Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle tomorrow night, April 7. Inbetween, Barry will be doing an interview on KUOW 90.3 FM with Steve Scheer at 9 am and visiting a creative writing class at Roosevelt High School with the Writers in the Schools program.

If you don’t already have your ticket, Seattle Arts & Lectures is offering a special deal on them to all “Fans” on North Cascades Institute’s Facebook page. Tickets are available online, by phone at (206) 621-2230 or at the Benaroya Hall box office beginning at 6pm. The Institute will be tabling our exhibit in the lobby, handing our information on 2010 Learning Center programs and selling the beautiful Barry Lopez poster we designed using Rebecca Allan’s fascinating tondo paintings — come by and say hello!

We’ll leave you with this introspective biographical essay Barry has posted to his website:

For most of my writing life I’ve been driven, like other writers and artists, to explore. The shape this took from the start was geographical, bibliographical, and conversational–I traveled widely, read voraciously, and sought out stimulating conversation. Central to the ideas I developed about what it means to be a writer was the need to remain conscious of the voices I encountered while traveling, reading, and conversing. The voices from two communities, in particular, held my attention: the circle of artists and writers with whom I felt the greatest creative camaraderie, and the group of people–family, friends, mentors, professional colleagues–to whom I felt most beholden. This latter group eventually came to include readers interested in the sorts of things I was trying to illuminate, people with whom I imagine I share a common fate.

A dangerous bit of American folklore is that our social, environmental, and political problems, which grow more ominous by the day, call for the healing touch of a genius. They do, but if we’re intent on waiting for some such remarkable individual to show up we can count on disappointment. The solution to what threatens us, however, is already here, in another form. It’s in our diverse communities. Most often we recognize the quality of genius in an individual man or woman; but the source of that genius lies with the complicated network of carefully tended relationships that sets a vibrant human community apart from a solely political community.

» Continue reading Barry Lopez in Seattle tomorrow, KUOW interview at 9 am

North Cascades Institute is delighted to be welcoming Barry Lopez to Seattle on Wednesday, April 7, and we hope you’ll join us for a one-of-a-kind presentation Barry is calling “Speak, Landscape.” Here’s the skinny on our annual literary event in Seattle next week:

Seattle Arts & Lectures and North Cascades Institute present An Evening with Barry Lopez
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Benaroya Hall, Seattle

Join Seattle Arts & Lectures and North Cascades Institute in welcoming Barry Lopez for a special engagement at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. Lopez, a long-time Pacific Northwesterner and recipient of numerous awards, prizes and fellowships for his fiction and nonfiction writing, will discuss his recent groundbreaking work, “Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape.”

Tickets ($10-50) are available at www.lectures.org or (206) 621-2230

In his nonfiction, Mr. Lopez writes often about the relationship between the physical landscape and human culture. In his fiction, he frequently addresses issues of intimacy, ethics, and identity. Lopez deftly integrates environmental and humanitarian concerns in both forms. Best known for Arctic Dreams, a National Book Award winner, Lopez’ books includes Of Wolves and Men, Winter Count, About This Life, Resistance, Crow and Weasel, Desert Notes, The Rediscovery of North America and Aplogia. His writing have appeared in Orion, Harper’s, Granta, Outside, National Geographic, The Georgia Review and The Sun. His work has been widely anthologized and translated into thirteen languages.

Most recently, Lopez has co-edited Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, a landmark work of language, geography, and folklore.

Lopez is a recipient of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the John Hay, John Burroughs and Christopher Medals, Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundation fellowships, Pushcart Prizes and other honors. Last year, he received the C.E.S. Wood Distinguished Writer Award, given to an “Oregon author in recognition of an enduring, substantial literary career,” joining the company of Ken Kesey and Ursula Le Guin. Lopez travels widely and has collaborated with a number of artists on a variety of projects in theater, music, and the fine arts.

Lopez lives on the McKenzie River in the Cascade range east of Eugene, Oregon.

Here is a pdf of an essay Barry published last year entitled “An Intimate Geography” to give you a taste of his thought and prose, and here is an essay he published in National Geographic on permafrost.

Photo by David Liittschwager