Chattermarks

By Hank Leftner — Join us at the Learning Center on October 22-23, 2011 for a Sourdough Speaker Series presentation by Hank as he introduces us to his acclaimed new memoir Faith of Cranes: Finding Hope and Family in Alaska. Details at www.ncascades.org/speakerseries of by calling (360) 854-2599.

Beneath moon or sun, storm or calm, in every moment of every day for over ten million years the voice of a sandhill crane has called out somewhere on the planet in a seamless lineage of sound.  There is cohesion in the chaotic calls of cranes; an invisible thread binding living beads, stitching the flocks, tying each generation to the next.

Cranes talk to their egg-bound chicks with murmurs and clicks.  The chicks imprint on the sound; they yearn to follow that voice even before breaking free of the shell.  The birds grow, add their high peeps to the throaty calls of the larger flock and are soon clucking to their own offspring. Our lives too are embedded in a rich sea of sounds.  While still in the womb a fetus listens and responds to the muted tones of the world it will soon enter.

The rich diversity of sound, music and wind, laughter and bird song, sobs and sea surf, poems and snow fall, stories and crane calls, – guides us through our lives and hold us in place as surely as gravity keeps our feet pinned to the spinning earth.  In the absence of sound and story prisoners, locked in solitary confinement, lose all orientation and quickly tumble toward insanity.  The lineage of voices that hold us in place come from near and far, the furred and feathered, the newly born and the long dead.

» Continue reading The call of the sandhill crane

When I signed up for North Cascades Institute’s M.Ed. Gradute Program, I knew it would be an incredible opportunity, but I did not fully anticipate the diversity of experiences I would have. Based at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, the winter quarter is a quieter time, primarily focused on group projects for our non-profit and curriculum classes.

These class projects, combined with research on a natural history topic which we are passionate about, comprise the bulk of our academic work. Luckily, our schedules also allow for outdoor learning adventures to explore other places and natural events in our region. Cohort 10 recently returned from our three-day winter naturalist retreat where we experienced some of the incredible assets that western Washington has to offer.

» Continue reading Grad Retreat: Exploring Heather Meadows to Samish Flats

By Molly Hashimoto

Teaching landscape watercolor in summer and autumn at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center on Diablo Lake encompasses everything I love best: peaks, forests, water, wildlife and enthusiastic fellow artists. When I am at home in Seattle, I seek out the quieter parks nearby, especially Union Bay Natural Area, also known as the Montlake Fill, which seems to have a little of all those things I treasure in the North Cascades.

It is surprising that a place so rich with wildlife is less than a mile from the University Village shopping center, right off Sandpoint Way east of the University of Washington, and adjacent to its enormous parking lots. You can be entirely unaware of all that bustle, although in winter you can see the buildings to the north through a grove of leafless cottonwoods. The Natural Area is on land owned by the University of Washington.

In 1895, Lake Washington was lowered and the University was moved from downtown to its present site, which included the marshy land exposed by the lowering of the lake. At that time no one could think of a way to use this area, so in 1926, when the City of Seattle asked the University if they could pay to use it as a dump and a landfill, the university agreed. In 1971, the Fill finally closed. In 1977, the University’s regents approved a plan that would create an arboretum and keep a natural area for the study of horticulture, as well as a wild area.

Top: First Light, North Cascades, watercolor on paper. Above: Swans, Union Bay, woodblock print. One of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen at the Natural Area were the trumpeter swans in Yesler Cove in late winter of 2009. They are rare visitors, and that year they graced us with their presence for several days—seeing them inspired the design for this woodblock print.

» Continue reading Union Bay Wild: An Artist’s View

There’s a sense of amazement that overcomes me each winter when I approach a muddy farm field turned white. It’s not from snow, per se, but snow geese, who travel hundreds of miles from their Siberian nesting grounds to winter and feed in the lower Skagit Valley. The fields this time of year, particularly near Fir Island, come alive with a buzz of honks and squawks as flocks numbering in the thousands cover the landscape and fill the sky as they come and go.

“Thousands of snow geese taking off from a field is one of the most spectacular sights one can imagine,” says Howard Armstrong, a Skagit Audubon member who has birded in the Skagit Valley for 40 years.

Top: An enormous flock of snow geese is a common sight during the winter months in the Skagit Valley. Photo by Christian Martin. Above: Snow geese return to the large farm fields in Skagit each year to feed on cover crops. Photo by Codi Hamblin.

Snow geese migrate to Skagit County each winter from their Arctic breeding grounds of summer. Photo by Codi Hamblin.

But snow geese are only one of several species who winter in Skagit County. Other birds include the thousands of trumpeter and tundra swans who leave their boreal and arctic pond breeding grounds in Alaska and Canada to feed on the open crop fields. The trumpeter swan, Howard says, was nearly extinct at the turn of the 21st Century, but this largest of north american waterfowl can now be seen in the Skagit Valley.

» Continue reading Winter Treasures of the Skagit Valley

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

Spring into Summer with the Institute’s Early Bird Discount! From now through March 31st, when you sign up for one of our 2010 programs — Diablo Downtimes, art or writing retreats, natural history excursions, Ross Lake journeys or any program with tuition over $100 — you will receive $50.00 off each class registration. It’s a great opportunity to sign up for as many as you like and save!

We’ve just completed uploading dozens of new educational adventures for people of all ages to our website and we’re open for registration. Please visit www.ncascades.org/get_outside to view the Institute’s many unique spring and summer offerings. This year, we’re teaching birding, Pacific Northwest weather with Cliff Mass, basket-making with natural materials, digital photography, papercutting art with Nikki McClure, wilderness orienteering, wildflowers and pollinators, watercoloring and journal-making, wildlife tracking and more, including the 2010 Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival.

To register with the Early Bird $50 discount, call us at our NEW number, (360) 854-2599 (This discount is not valid for Family Getaways or Base Camp and cannot be combined with scholarships).

As anyone in the Skagit Valley may recall, this past Saturday wasn’t as bright and dry as some of the days previous. However, as stories like these usually begin, the weather was unsuccessful in deterring a group of enthusiastic kids from the Kulshan Creek Neighborhood Project and some equally enthusiastic adults from the US Forest Service and North Cascades Institute from partaking in a day outside learning about and observing the birds of the Samish Flats.

Our adventure began on Saturday, February 27th in the morning at the Kulshan Creek Community Center in Mount Vernon. As the students trickled in, they were met with hot chocolate—provided by a generous parent—and snacks. Lee Whitford, outreach naturalist for the Forest Service, and Orlando Garcia, of the US Forest Service, and I helped get the students situated and the day rolling.

Before we headed out onto our field trip, Don Gay, a wildlife biologist with the US Forest Service, gave a great presentation about the life history and migrational patterns of the Trumpeter Swans that temporarily inhabit the coastal farmlands of the Skagit River Valley. “Ooohs and ahhhs” were murmured throughout the room when Don explained that if a Trumpeter Swan was turned on its side with its wings out, it would have a wingspan that could reach from the floor past the ceiling of the room we were sitting in.

» Continue reading Winter’s swan song

A flit of gold. A flicker of green. Soft song notes from within a tangle of blackberry vines. A surprising whoosh of hovering wing-sweeps, mere inches above ground.

Birds. They are some of the Skagit Valley’s most compelling and charismatic creatures. In winter, the Skagit farmlands teem with all kinds – song birds, raptors, shorebirds, local and migratory waterfowl. You need not have fancy equipment nor years of experience to be a birder here. What it takes is the curiosity to know more and the patience to practice deep observation.

(Title) Graduate students of Cohort 9 extend their birding eye on the Skagit flats (Above) The Hayton Reserve is one Skagit Valley location to go bird watching

» Continue reading Becoming bird observers

When the crops of the Skagit farmlands are put to rest for winter, they come.

With the sky’s gray backdrop so common to a winter in western Washington, they glisten like diamonds. Birds. By the hundreds, thousands even, they flock from near and far to the fertile, tilled soils at the mouth of the Skagit River, one destination of many on their migratory journey.

Snow geese. Trumpeter swans. Bald eagles. These are but a few of the many species you will find on an adventure of bird watching across the flats. Other local residents, such as a variety of hawks and ducks, the barred owl, and the infamous great blue heron, paint an elaborate portrait in winter, making the Skagit Valley one of the most prized destinations for bird watching in the Pacific Northwest.

» Continue reading Watching winged friends

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…