Chattermarks

For those of you who have worked in environmental education, at a summer camp, or with kids you may have played the game, “Bob the Weasel.”

You stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, with one person in the middle. The outside circle passes an object – the weasel – around behind their backs while chanting, “Bob the weasel keep it going, keep it going” and the person in the middle tries to guess where the weasel is. At any point in the passing you can taunt the person in the middle by raising the weasel over your head – if you can get away with it – and everyone who sees the weasel says, “I saw the weasel.” The kids love this game and you can use it to teach them about weasels and their behavior. Weasels try to stay hidden from view, especially from overhead predators like Eagles by traveling illusively under downed wood, brush and vegetation. This helps them surprise their next meal and protects them. Every once in while you will see a weasel pop out of nowhere and then quickly disappear under cover.

“I saw a weasel!”

» Continue reading “I saw the weasel”

Every family has different holiday traditions.  Most families gather for a big meal on Thanksgiving. Some watch or play football. My family likes to run in a local “Turkey Trot”. But how many people go for a canoe ride in a 14-person voyageur canoe on Thanksgiving?

This year, several families had that opportunity as participants in the first Thanksgiving Family Getaway program at North Cascade Institute’s Environmental Learning Center on Diablo Lake.

Families from all over Washington and Oregon gathered at Diablo Lake to celebrate Thanksgiving while surrounded by pristine beauty. Though the forecast called for rain, rain, and more rain, we were showered with more sunshine than precipitation. Families enjoyed activities such as canoeing, hiking, tracking, art classes, and the microscope lab.

» Continue reading Rewriting Thanksgiving traditions

I have found that with the oncoming winter ushering in shorter days and enduring rains, I have needed a greater sense of initiative to spend time outdoors naturalizing and experiencing the North Cascades for what it has to offer. It has become increasingly easy to allow myself respite from the day’s bite by spending time indoors with a pot of tea and a growing pile of books and work.

On a recent, clear day, I jumped at the opportunity to don my naturalist gear and head off down the road toward Diablo Dam with the intention of photographing, bird watching, or journaling, whichever happened to catch my interest based on possible encounters. I quickly became engaged in photographing minute details, focusing and framing things that I’ve walked by too often without taking time to notice. The bracken ferns have turned brown and curled through the progression of autumn, and are actually quite beautiful in contrast with green moss and the deepening blue tint of Diablo Lake.

» Continue reading Encounter with a black bear

Each footstep crunching beneath the layers of newly fallen leaves has now transitioned to the soft silence of detritus, and of snow. Autumn’s transition to winter has been a tug of war. At the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, the snowline has risen and fallen along hillsides like the lapping of waves against a shore. We have been watching, our eyes patient and waiting, the white, wintry callings only a few hundred feet above us for over a month.

This weekend looked promising for powder, with forecasts for the North Cascades to see snow at significantly lower elevations. Like a child during the holidays, I awoke with joy Friday morning, gazing upon fat flakes of frost falling from the sky. It may have been only a minute amount of snow, but its company was welcomed with excitement and an eagerness to go out and play.

» Continue reading A moment of snow

It is as simple as taking some time for yourself.

So often are we scheduled from dawn until dusk, moving from meeting to meeting, checking the clock for what event awaits us next. With hardly a moment to breathe, we are already looking past what is in front of us, skimming over what marvels may meet us, on the daily life journeys we lead.

When we make the choice to, for a moment, embark upon a walk, we may find what a walk can truly reveal — about our selves and the world surrounding us.

» Continue reading What a walk can reveal

One of the trickiest parts of being an instructor during a Mountain School session is how to properly transition from boisterous, high-energy games and songs to more quiet, less obviously engaging activities. Too abrupt a change and the high energy spills over into the supposed-to-be quiet activity. Since the boisterous activities are often fun equally for the instructor and for the students, a tendency can emerge for the instructor to concentrate so much on the attraction of group interaction that the interaction between student and nature can suffer. By their “nature,” these latter, quieter activities have more reaching power, in terms of having the students directly encounter the close-by wonders of the world outside. Underlying all of this, too, is the goal of increasing observation skills, those of both the students and the instructor.

Here’s where the students can teach you something as well.

Students & chaperones from Fidalgo Elementary enjoying a Mountain School campfire

So what does this have to do with a magic moment? During campfire program a couple rainy weeks ago, students, instructors and chaperones were having the usual time of our lives singing songs at the top of our lungs, interpreting legends via skits, laughing and enjoying the fire and company. The warmth of the company and activities concentrated everyone’s attention on the human world within the glow of the campfire. Rebecca then led a wonderful transition activity, a “rain circle,” in which participants mimic the sounds of different levels of rainfall. This is accomplished through the rubbing of hands together, clapping with two fingers, snapping, full-hand clapping and slapping one’s thighs.  The leader transitions sounds from a falling mist to a downpour then back to a falling mist.

» Continue reading Magical Mountain School moments

Why do leaves change colors in autumn? While some cultures found the answers in the stars, Mountain School students can find the answer on their breakfast plate.

Native Americans believed that a long time ago, as the air was getting colder and the days shorter, three great hunters were pursuing game in vain. With cold weather settling in, the hunters desperately tried to find food for their tribe. They searched for days and days, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and fought through dense thickets but still could not find any food. Eventually, the hunters found themselves in the celestial realm. One of the hunters spotted the Great Bear and quickly shot him with his bow and arrow. The blood of the bear dripped onto the leaves of the earth down below. In joyous celebration, another hunter pulled out a pot in which to cook the bear meat, while the other hunter lit the firewood he had been carrying. As the pot boiled over, the yellow fat of the bear painted the other leaves on the trees. In the night sky, you can still see these three hunters as the “handle” of the Big Dipper in the Ursa Major constellation.

Red vine maple shows its colors at the Environmental Learning Center

Mountain School students just have to peer at their breakfast plate to find a piece of the autumn colors mystery. During the winter, deciduous trees cannot receive enough sunlight or water for photosynthesis. Additionally, their leaves are too fragile to withstand the chill of winter. Instead, these trees will live off the glucose produced and stored during the summer. As autumn daylight continues to dwindle, the production of green chlorophyll halts, resulting in pigments underneath being revealed. Leaves covered by shade display a yellow pigment, xanthophyll, which can also be found in bananas and egg yolks. Leaves that change orange share a common pigmentation with carrots called carotenoid. Red and purple shades are caused by anthocyanins, a pigmentation found in grapes, beets, and red apples. Formed by glucose trapped in the leaves of some trees, the red pigment thrives during autumn seasons with bright sunlight during the day and cool nights.

Sunlight dances among vine maples

Visits to the North Cascades flaunt this fall’s great conditions for vibrant leaf colors. Pockets of gold and streaks of red, surrounded by green evergreens, paint the landscape. Hearty enough to last the winter, the leaves of evergreens do not seasonally lose their leaves. Evergreen leaves are resistant to cold and water loss, containing a special fluid resistant to freezing.

Highlighted in the New York Times, the North Cascades is home to a deciduous conifer, the subalpine larch, which loses its needles seasonally. The yellow needles are displayed before dropping for the winter. Great hikes for viewing this stunning display include Cutthroat Pass, Blue Lake, and Maple Pass, all trailheads easily accessible from Highway 20. So pack some food containing your favorite fall pigments, and enjoy the stunning season in the North Cascades!

A larch’s vibrant yellow needles against a blue sky backdrop at Cutthroat Pass

The rain, at first, came sweet and softly
as if to tease, as if to taunt me.
Light moisture perched upon my shoulder
gave subtle call to damp and colder.
No jacket yet, no need for shoes
this region’s rain is common news.

Yet, with each drop, it grew in size
and as a blanket, cloaked the sky.
Like the pitter and patter of baby’s toes
it giggled down in rows and rows.
And steadily shower spigots came
it rained, it rained, it rained and rained.
Buckets full, the rain came down
quenching thirst of parched Northwest ground.

I focused less on orange and red
seeking jacket, for rain, instead.
Still it drips and drops it seems
from peaks on high, low-valley streams.
It collects on leaves, in dirt, in pools
it sees no boundaries.
it knows no rules.

Rain’s song is loud, its lyrics, clear.
Rain’s presence—constant, important here.
This land, it breathes, because of rain.
The moment it goes, it comes again.

So think a moment before you shout, “What is all this noise about?”
Learn to listen, beyond the racket.

Go outside.
Don’t forget your jacket.

» Continue reading Welcoming the falling rain

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