Chattermarks

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

An alder leaf on a trail. A chance encounter between a weasel and a hawk. The mad rush of a waterfall.

These images – and more – were captured in words by the participants in the North Cascades workshop Sit, Walk, Write: Nature and the Practice of Presence, held at the Environmental Learning Center on October 23 – 25, 2009.  For the past two seasons, Kurt Hoelting and I, Holly Hughes, have had the pleasure of leading this workshop the last weekend in October. At this workshop, we literally sit, walk and write as a way to more deeply engage with the natural world. Kurt- a writer and teacher of meditation – and I -poet, essayist and teacher of writing – both believe strongly in the value of combining meditation with writing as a way to deepen and reflect on our experience of the natural world.

Our time together goes like this – We begin the day with sitting meditation, followed by a brief period of walking meditation or Qi Gong, eat breakfast together in silence, then gather to read poems and prose that illustrate the practice of paying attention that meditation encourages. In the afternoon, we hike with an North Cascades Institute naturalist, learning more about the woods around us, and spend the rest of the day writing and reflecting on what we are observing. In the evening, we gather to share our writings then end the day by sitting together in meditation. Throughout, we are practicing attention – attention to our breath as we meditate, attention to the shimmering gold of the aspen leaves as we hike up a trail. Our hope is that by paying attention, we will become more present to ourselves and our world, and in doing so, we might feel called to bear witness.

» Continue reading Watching the waterfall, bearing witness

I am very fortunate in that part of my professional duties here at North Cascades Institute include visiting our programs out in the field to photograph them. Every summer since I was hired as the communication coordinator, I’ve been able to get up on Ross Lake via Gerry Cook’s infamous Ross Mule, and this past summer I also got to explore the Methow Valley with the Naturalist’s Retreat, hang out at the Learning Center for our Thunder Arm Writing Retreat and “Will Write for Change” gatherings and listen to Jon Reidel teach about climate change while perched on the edge of Mount Baker’s Easton Glacier.

Here are a few of my favorite moments of being out in the field experiencing the amazing work of Institute staff and instructors; I don’t claim to be a great photographer, but sure get to experience many great times exploring this amazing Cascadian landscape!

Robert Michael Pyle, looking cool while teaching about butterflies at Early Winters Campground in the Methow Valley.

Dennis Paulson teaching dragonflies near Pipestone Canyon in the Methow Valley.

Bob’s beloved and trusty butterfly net Martha took a beating on this day, but she has been broken and fixed and broken again and fixed again several times, so I expect she’ll live on.

A highlight of the day was when Dennis discovered, and then netted, a rattlesnake near the mouth of Pipestone — a very versatile naturalist, that Paulson! (The snake was released unharmed moments later.)

Dennis Paulson.

Katie Roloson paints the scenery on the shores of Diablo Lake, with Colonial and Pyramid Peaks in the distance, during a class with Molly Hashimoto in the summer art retreat.

The days are getting longer, but slowly, and there are still plenty of dark, rainy evenings this winter for reading.

If, as a member of the Institute community, you wish to broaden and deepen your knowledge of conservation history – We are into “conserving and restoring northwest environments through education” are we not? – then I have the perfect read for you. As a bonus, this one book will take you through to spring. It is Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper, 2009, 940 pages).

While there are multitudes of books about Theodore Roosevelt, no one has explained and dissected how natural history and conservation were central to his life and work with the thoroughness and insight Brinkley brings to the task. He describes the young Roosevelt’s fascination with the natural world, the influences on his interests of his eccentric Uncle Rob, the centrality of Darwin’s theorizing upon his thinking, and how his fascination with the American West formed many of his ideas about land in general and public land in particular.

» Continue reading The Wilderness Warrior

There is no denying it; wolves are returning to the Evergreen State.  Once again home to gray wolves, Washington state now has two confirmed wolf packs: the Lookout Pack in western Okanogan County and the Diamond Pack in Pend Oreille County.  That number is expected to increase as a result of the dispersal of wolves from recovering populations in Idaho and Montana, and dispersers from British Columbia.

» Continue reading The future of gray wolves in Washington

“Eyes on the side like to hide. Eyes on the front like to hunt.” With rhymes like these, we begin to introduce students to the energy relationships between prey and predator here in the North Cascades.  For this fall season’s Mountain School Ranger Program, fifth grade students examine a variety of mammal skulls.  There is a Cougar (sp. Felus concolor), a Black bear (Ursus Americanus), a Gray wolf (Canus lupus) and a Wolverine (Gulo gulo). The position of their eyes face forward, all of them serving as hunters in these mountains.

Among the group of hunters also exists skulls of a Mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) and Black-tailed, or mule, deer (Odocoileus hemionus), the side position of their eyes indicative of their status as the hunted, the prey. The sense of wonder in these students’ faces as they examine eye position, teeth shape and cranial size in their attempts to, as young scientists, figure out which skull fits which mammal, is clear and inspiring to me as an educator.

Observing from the sidelines, I have, at times, seen students compare their own teeth, their own eye positions and jaw bones with those of the mammal skulls they have yet to determine on the tables. Watching them, I wonder — how do they view themselves in relation to these animals?  We are mammals, too. Are we, as humans, the hunter or the hunted?  Or, in a child’s mind, are we humans seen as separate from this ecosystem, outside of the realm of observation and inquiry these students so strongly exercise during Mountain School?

» Continue reading Gone huntin’

When we arranged to have novelist Jim Lynch appear at the Learning Center to be a Sourdough Speaker a year ago, our timing couldn’t have been better — Jim’s then-forthcoming novel Border Songs is set in Whatcom County near the foothills of the North Cascades and is populated with an astonishing amount of natural history of birds of our region. Border Songs was released last summer to great critical acclaim, including a review in Crosscut.com that claimed Jim “could be the best new novelist in the region since David Guterson rolled out Snow Falling on Cedars in 1995″ and a similar rave from author Howard Frank Mosher: “Border Songs is a masterwork, and Jim Lynch, for my money, is our best new storyteller since Larry McMurtry: deeply in touch with the natural world, the absurdities of our era, and the hearts and minds of his unforgettable and endlessly surprising characters.” (Amazon.com has a compilation of praise for the new novel too.)

We’ve got a copy of Border Songs to give away to one of our readers– to enter the running, leave a comment at the end of this blog mentioning a book you’ve read recently, fiction or nonfiction, that included a healthy amount of nature in it. We’ll randomly chose a winner from everyone who leaves a comment at the end of next week.

Jim will be at the Learning Center Oct. 10-11, reading from his novels and discussing what it is like writing fiction set in Washington State, as part of our intimate Sourdough Speaker Series. For only $95, participants get to experience Jim’s presentation as well as enjoy a sit-down dinner and overnight accommodations in our lodges; breakfast and a naturalist-led activity the next morning is included too. We know of at least one book club that has been reading Jim’s books and will be joining us — what a great idea!

We want to extend a special thanks to Jim, and all our Sourdough Speakers, for coming up to the North Cascades to talk about their work — they all appear at the Learning Center on their own dime, helping us to raise money to support our various Youth Programs designed to connect the next generation with the natural world.

Here’s a book review I wrote on Border Songs earlier this summer for the Cascadia Weekly:

» Continue reading Jim Lynch at Learning Center, Oct. 10-11; win a copy of his new novel “Border Songs”

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

I met Jim Harris 30 years ago on one of my first hikes up Thunder Creek into the North Cascades when I was a young, brand-new backcountry ranger. Who was this guy who seemed to have been around forever, since “before the park,” and had all these stories about logging and mining and cougars? At first I found Jim intimidating. He wasn’t cut from the same “the most important thing is wilderness” cloth as most of my friends. And he wasn’t shy about sharing his opinion about those of us who didn’t have much use for the old days when the story of the North Cascades was written by explorers and loggers. But we shared a deep love of these mountains, and over the years, Jim, along with Bill Lester, backcountry area ranger, became one of my most important mentors. He helped shape my understanding of the North Cascades as a place where people lived and raised families, as much as a place of wild summits and raging river valleys. He was a great friend and supporter of North Cascades Institute – one of our most popular instructors, contributor to many of our curricula and always good for a story and a laugh. I miss him.

– Saul Weisberg

ps. A tribute to Jim Harris is planned for Sunday, August 16, at 2 pm at Howard Miller Steelhead Park in Rockport. More information at orcasfireval@live.com. If you have a special Jim Harris memory or remebrance to share, feel free to leave a comment at this end of this post.

They Claimed these Mountains : An Interview with Jim Harris

Bacon and Nip and Tuck Claims were the ones that started all of the excitement up here, around 1878. Most people didn’t stay long. For so many it was the lust for gold and the adventure. When they saw that it wasn’t easy, they left. The few that stayed, like George Holmes, John and Emma McMillen, Lucinda Davis and Lillian Bulldog Brown, really left their stories. When I was a kid, we had neighbors that had claims up here, were trappers and so on, who’d come by and often spend the evening at our place in front of the fireplace telling those stories.

In ‘68 the Park bill was signed and I quit teaching school and went to work with the Park. Today is my birthday; it’s also the birthday of the Park. It was created in 1968 and I’m 68 years old. Just days before the Park bill was signed, Rocky Wilson and his wife Lenore were up on the high hunt in Fisher Basin. Rocky was, at that time, in his mid to late seventies. They had spent years mining, prospecting, hunting and fishing in the backcountry. In the evening they set up camp and a big bear came down off the hillside to the creek. Rocky was able to get off a good shot and it dropped. It wasn’t only a big one, it had grizzly grey all up over the front with a big hump! A neighboring camper came by and took pictures. They skinned it out and stopped by school to show us teachers and the kids. It was part of the story of their life. I wondered how they felt about it. Years later, I asked Rocky, “What if this was the last grizzly bear in the whole country?” I remember him sitting there quite a while before he responded. The Park was created by that time, and that eliminated hunting, eliminated their lifestyle. He said, “Well, my life will never be the same. These are all things of the past.”

» Continue reading Jim Harris Remembered

A fine video from KCTS Channel 9 in Seattle featuring our Executive Director Saul Weisberg and some of our friends in the National Park Service. It is part of PBS’ campaign to highlight America’s National Parks in anticipation of the forthcoming Ken Burns series, “National Parks: America’s Best Ideas.”

What do you think of their representation of the North Cascades? What draws you back to these mountains?