Chattermarks

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”

North Cascades Institute is very fortunate to have so many talented and dedicated instructors leading a wide variety of classes, field excursions and retreats at the Learning Center and across Washington State this summer. Our goal is to help people of all ages experience and enjoy the mountains, rivers, forests and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest — so all will care for and protect this special place. We rely on the dynamic skills of the Pacific Northwest’s most knowledgeable teachers to help us foster these connections between people and place.

We’re excited to have celebrated author Rick Bass joining us for the first time ever at the Learning Center July 30 – August 2 for the Eleventh Annual Thunder Arm Writing Retreat. Having written so many amazing books — staff favorites include Colter, Where the Sea Used to Be, The Hermit’s Story, The Lost Grizzlies and The Book of the Yaak — it is wonderful to have him coming from northwestern Montana to Diablo Lake to share his prodigal skills and insights over four days in the peak of summer. We’re especially intrigued to have him introduce us to his brand-new publication The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana.

Rick will be joined at the Writing Retreat by another out-of-town guest, Kathleen Dean Moore, a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and University Writer Laureate at Oregon State University in Corvalis. Best known for her books about cultural and spiritual connections to wet, wild places — Riverwalking, Holdfast, and The Pine Island Paradox, Kathleen has recently co-edited three books involving fierce love for land: They are How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova, Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge and In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens. Kathleen writes for Orion, Discover, Audubon and Northwest Review, serves on the board of directors for the Orion Society and the Island Institute and is co-founder and director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. Whew! We’re lucky that, considering all of her activities, Kathleen has made time to teach at the Learning Center this summer.

» Continue reading 11th Annual Thunder Arm Writing Retreat: Rick, Kathleen, Jim and Holly in the North Cascades

If you know anything about Gary Snyder, then you can understand why we here at North Cascades Institute are incredibly excited about his forthcoming visit to Seattle on May 27. Strands of Snyder are interwoven in to the Institute, our mission, our staff and our North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, and his poetry and worldview have an almost totemic presence in our work.  The 50 years of poetry, interviews and essays that Snyder has produced has educated, inspired and illuminated many of us in many different ways. Some of us came out west after reading one of his books on the mountains and trails of our region. Others have been impacted by his writing about community, culture, watersheds, ecology and sustainability — concepts he was exploring decades before they became influential buzzwords in our society. I know of people that have become fire lookouts or trail workers, poets or environmental educators, Buddhists or off-the-grid pioneers in part because of the example Snyder set in both his lifestyle and his writing.

Has Gary Snyder likewise inspired or informed you in some way? Has a particular poem crystalized some thought or feeling for you? Did one of his essays change the way you look at the world ? Which of his writings have impacted you and why?

We’re curious and hope you’ll share your Snyder story with us. Everybody who responds to this post with a germaine comment will be eligible to receive a free copy of Snyder’s book Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, a compendium of mountain poetry that is turning 50 years old this year. I’ll give folks a week to respond and then randomly pick three lucky winners, announcing them in the comments early next week.

» Continue reading Gary Snyder and “Riprap” book give-away

Though we haven’t coerced him in to a Sourdough Speaker Series presentation — we’re working on it! — Skagit Valley scribe Tom Robbins is definitely a part of the cultural history of our region. His first novel Another Roadside Attraction, published way back in 1971 and today a certifiable cult classic, was set in the Skagit Valley, and the La Conner-dwelling author recently penned the Foreword for Skagit Land Trust’s book Natural Skagit.

Robbins will be reading from his latest book “B is for Beer” in Bellingham at, appropriately enough, Boundary Bay Brewery on May 7. It is a testament to his popularity in this region that the event was sold-out months in advance. In lieu of getting to experience Tom Robbins in person, I’d like to suggest you purchase a copy of my recently-published ‘zine featuring the story “Tom Robbins Incognito: Tracking the Pacific Northwest’s Elusive Literary Outlaw” from the website MagCloud. It features a semi-serious, semi-farcical quest around western Washington in search of Robbins, from La Conner to Seattle’s Blue Moon Tavern, and it concludes with an exclusive enlightening interview with the reclusive novelist.

» Continue reading “Tom Robbins Incognito”

American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau

Edited by Bill McKibben, Foreword by Al Gore, The Library of America

I already own plenty of different anthologies of nature writing, but Bill McKibben argues in his introduction that “environmental writing” is different — “it takes as its subject the collision between people and the rest of world,” he explains, “…it seeks answers as well as consolation, embracing controversy, sometimes sounding an alarm.”

If this distinction is too vague, you’ll soon get a sense of what this genre contains as you read the many different authors collected herein: Whitman, Muir, Pinchot and Roosevelt; Jeffers, Snyder and Abbey; Carson, Eiseley and Leopold; Lopez, Dillard, Bass, Momaday and McPhee; Pollan, Kingsolver and Solnit. Aside from the rousing, incisive, often epochal classics, McKibben makes some surprising choices, too: John Steinbeck, Philip K. Dick, Alice Walker, E.B. White, R. Crumb and Joni Mitchell.

The overall feel of the combined readings is modern yet empathetic. The tones are often urgent but seldom strident. Humanity may be in precarious position on Planet Earth, but without the thoughtful ecological influences of these gathered writers, it’d probably be a lot worse.

» Continue reading American Earth: book giveaway contest!