Chattermarks

Last weekend Cohort 11 graduate students had the chance to step away from our roles as Mountain School Instructors and again return to being students of Natural History during our three day Fall Grad Retreat. After weeks of training and teaching 5th and 6th grade youth about the diverse ecosystems of the North Cascades, the respite from such high activity was much appreciated by all. Our explorations took us by hand and knee through douglas fir forests near home, and by car and foot through the ponderosa pine and fire-scarred forests in the Methow Valley.

Day one of the retreat was spent near the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center campus with M.Ed. graduate alumna and mycologist Lee Whitford discussing the amazing yet unfamiliar world of fungi and their fruiting mushroom bodies. After learning some basic facts and characteristics about our earthy friends, we set out to do some local harvesting of our own (on Forest Service land, of course!). It took some time to adjust our eyes and hone our observational skills to the often unnoticed specimens hidden between leaf, detritus, and tree trunk, but half an hour and handfuls of mushrooms later our forage had yielded an impressive and diverse variety of them.

» Continue reading From Teacher to Student and Back Again

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

The morning of September 27th was one of those mornings that you wake up, look out the window and know instantly that there is nothing keepin’ you indoors. When I walked out into the day, it didn’t matter what I did as along as it involved being active in my huge backyard of the North Cascades. At breakfast in the dining hall, Katie mentioned she was going to hike up to Trapper’s Peak and, just like that, my day began.

Katie, Justin, Rebecca and I all piled into Katie’s car, drove to the Thornton Lake Trailhead, just down valley from Newhalem. The 10+ cars parked on the road surprised us. Apparently quite a few people had the same idea we did. The first quarter of trail was an old logging road and had a low grade of elevation. The variety of mushrooms lining the trail was incredible. It seemed as though there wasn’t a size, color or shape we didn’t come across.

As we climbed higher in elevation, the blueberries were at the height of their season. We could barely take ten steps without having to stop and gather a handful. The berries’ deep blue color created a beautiful contrast against their bushes, which had begun to change from green to a reddish-brown. Justin’s lips and fingers, in particular, maintained a blue tint throughout the hike.

» Continue reading Blitzing Trapper

……they grow on everything. They come in all colors, shapes, textures and sizes; orange, yellow, brown, spotted, purple, red, smooth, white, black, shaggy, cupped, and fringed. Every day I head down the trail wondering what new mushroom will have pushed its way into the world. Actually my favorite mushroom trait is their earth moving powers! Okay, it’s more like their humus moving powers. Big mushrooms remind me of big, slow moving school yard bullies. The mushrooms shoulder out the hummus, twigs, diminutive plant material and force their way into the world.

» Continue reading Mushrooms are everywhere…..

I had an unexpected natural history moment a few weeks ago when the first group of Mountain School students arrived. They were restlessly waiting in the amphitheater to head out for their first hike when one student yelled, “There’s a squirrel in the tree with a cookie!” I looked over curiously thinking, a cookie? The squirrel did have something in its mouth, but a cookie? I had no time to investigate but made a mental note to check out the willow tree the squirrel was scampering around in later.

That evening I stopped at the willow and found a large piece of a mushroom on a branch. I was now interested, was the squirrel drying the mushroom to harvest later? Do squirrels cache mushrooms? It was almost like learning that Pika gather grasses and store them for the winter. I wasn’t convinced, this was only one mushroom, maybe the squirrel was startled by the noisy 5th graders and decided to abandon his lunch for a more peaceful setting?

» Continue reading Squirrels eat mushrooms?