Chattermarks

By Dr. James M. Ford

Recently I attended the annual Skagit Land Trust fundraising auction where some 240 people gathered to raise more than $50,000 to help conserve land and critical habitat right here in Skagit County. Corporate sponsors from throughout the county and scores of volunteers stepped forward to lend a hand. The event served as a timely reminder that the health of our environment is equally as important as a sound economy. Clearly, people throughout our community are working together to promote the well-being of this special place.

Although Earth has suffered a great deal of damage due to human activities, there’s growing interest in a healthy and maintainable environment by a broad diversity of citizens who realize that a healthier natural environment can nurture a more sustainable business environment. Business and industry leaders have long recognized the importance of locating in communities that offer plenty of opportunities for health and outdoor recreation.

As a biologist, I remember well when we would question, what is more important, “nature” or “nurture?” We soon realized that humans need both the gift of genetics as well as a healthy environment in order to develop and flourish. Likewise, a successful and productive economy requires a clean and healthy environment.

My generation made plenty of mistakes because of what we didn’t know. We believed that technology and invention could solve everything. Now, we understand that’s only one part of the solution. Our planet has been damaged but, thanks to a new generation that understand and appreciates what needs to be done to sustain a healthy world, it may get the tender care it needs.

Locally, many nonprofits are working to improve our environment. I have been involved with three that are working cooperatively to inform and inspire our citizens, including young people, and bringing hope for a more vibrant and healthy Skagit environment. These deeply dedicated groups are Skagit Land Trust, North Cascades Institute, and Friends of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands. They are responsible, well-managed and particularly effective at accomplishing their goals. In doing so, they are meeting an essential need of our community: to conserve and restore Northwest environments, the world my grandchildren, and yours, will inherit. Using sound scientific principles, an inclusive and nonjudgmental approach and powerful experiences in the natural world, these groups are helping kids and their families see that if we want a healthy, beautiful place to live, work and learn, then we must make careful decisions.

It’s important work and these three organizations are doing it well. Although the need is urgent given the breathtaking rate at which the global population is growing, we still have time to make the critical changes we need to make in order to meet this challenge. With the leadership of these dedicated organizations and thousands of volunteers throughout our community, effective strategies can be developed for preserving our environment.

Many hands make light work.

An old saying at the forefront of my mind throughout the first North Cascades Wild spring day trip. A dozen NC Wild participants, several North Cascades Institute instructors and national park staff came together for a day of stewardship work at the North Cascades National Park native plant nursery in Marblemount. In addition to providing some service to the nursery, the effort was also a chance get to know each other and begin building community among NC Wild participants and staff.

These students from Whatcom and Skagit counties, as well as others from Northwest Washington, will embark on 12-day backpacking and canoe wilderness expeditions in North Cascades National Park and Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. During these trips, participants focus on leadership development, community building, sense of place and stewardship. Spring and fall day trips, such as this one, provide a chance for students to build community through service work.

In the North Cascades, signs of spring are before us, as the dark, cold days of winter slowly transform into longer, warmer days, signaling the time to prepare the Park’s nursery for the busy growing seasons of spring and summer. This meant much work was needed to de-winterize the facility and promote healthy plant growth.

» Continue reading NC Wild Springs into Stewardship

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

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 sheer power of water was apparent in the North Cascades this last weekend after a recent Pineapple Express hit the Northwest. Warming temperatures combined with a significant amount of rainfall fell onto several weeks worth of snow in the Cascades. Consequently, mountain creeks filled to the brim and several landslides covered Highway 20, closing a stretch of this road between the towns of Diablo and Newhalem. Several M.Ed. graduate students and our graduate coordinator were staying at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center and in the town of Diablo, and got to see this dynamic shift in nature first-hand.

At the Learning Center, the recent weather demonstrated how quickly land is shaped by water as we watched Sourdough Creek quadruple in size Sunday afternoon. This was an amazing shift to see as Sourdough typically runs as a trickle in late summer to a swiftly-flowing mountain creek in late spring. Sourdough Creek runs next to the Learning Center’s parking lot under a “Texas dip,” a removable piece of roadway designed to prevent washout. But this road feature was barely recognizable as the creek filled with brown, fast-running water that undercut the bank, causing large chunks of earth to collapse and wash away into Diablo Lake.

» Continue reading Natural Shifts in the North Cascades

The transition from spring to summer has been a long awaited and hopeful one to those of us living in the Pacific Northwest this year.

This past week, our hopes have finally been fulfilled as the summer sun no longer conceals itself from behind overcast skies and the snow so prevalent upon the high peaks surrounding North Cascades Institute‘s Environmental Learning Center melts away to reveal the rocks of this rugged landscape. One of the best ways to take in and experience the summer in the North Cascades and Skagit Valley is to go hiking, to see places you have not seen before!

As a way to welcome the season of summer in the North Cascades and Skagit Valley, several staff, graduate students, and board members of North Cascades Institute hope to inspire you to enjoy this beautiful onset of summer weather by sharing their favorite hikes in the region of the Skagit Valley and North Cascades.

Ptarmigan Ridge Traverse – Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest

A favorite trail, after 40 years and perhaps 400 hikes! An impossible task! Nonetheless, one favorite takes me out the east face of Table Mountain from Artist Point, then onto Ptarmigan Ridge. The trail winds along the ridge, slowly rising as it traverses the east slope of Coleman Pinnacle, then winds around to Lasciocarpa Ridge and ends at The Portals. Pass through The Portals and step onto a Mount Baker glacier. The scenery on this hike—when it is not cloaked in fog and cloud—is simply amazing! On the way out, Mt. Shuksan looms over the left shoulder and Mt. Baker soars upward straight ahead. Marmots whistle and pikas squeak. Pink and yellow monkeyflowers nod over the trickles and seeps, and groves of lupine wave in the mountain breeze. If you know where to look, mountain goats are nearly guaranteed, resting in small groups in the meadows (or on snowfields on hot summer days), the nannies and kids in small herds, the billies solitary on shaded ledges in unlikely places often high on the rock walls and ridges. A winter trip out this trail is also possible, with skis the best way to go and always with an avalanche transponder. The winter scenery is fantastic, but the risks are a bit greater. Lots of people make it part way out this trail in late summer and fall. The section along the east face of Table Mountain is perhaps the most heavily traveled trail in the entire North Cascades, but most do not go beyond the fork to Chain Lakes. If you don’t want to share this remarkable place, go in winter, but do go!

~John Miles, North Cascades Institute Board Member