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

By Debra Daniels-Zeller, author of The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook — Join us for a special vegetarian harvest celebration at the Learning Center when Debra is the guest presenter for our September 24-25 Sourdough Speaker Series event!

This tray of fall fruit from Grouse Mountain Farm at the University District farmers market is a rainbow of culinary possibilities that can fill fall kitchens with sweet scents of the season. Decades ago friend Margie made this cake.  It’s so simple a child could make it.

Margie’s Raw Apple Cake
(Makes one 8-inch cake)
2 cups raw diced apples (use your favorite sweet-tart local apples)
1 egg
1/4 cup oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon soda
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
1 cup flour (use Nash’s whole wheat pastry flour)
1 cup chopped walnuts or hazelnuts

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. degrees.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, blend egg with raw apples. Then add oil, cinnamon, soda, sugar and salt. Mix well. Stir in flour and nuts, leaving some out to decorate the top of the cake. Place mixture in baking pan. And bake for 35 to 45 minutes. Test with toothpick. Cool on cooling rack before slicing.

Here’s another easy recipe perfect for the end of summer!

Coleslaw with Apples and Carrots
(Make 6 servings)
Cabbage and carrot lovers in the Northwest can rejoice because these are available most of the year. For this recipe, I use traditionally made apple cider vinegar from Rockridge Orchards in Enumclaw, Washington. For ginger flavor variation, add ginger juice (squeezed from 1 tablespoon of grated ginger.)

1/2 cup aioli or mayonnaise
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon ketchup
1/2 tablespoon chopped bottled hot peppers (optional)
Pinch of salt
2 medium Granny Smith apples, peeled and shredded
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 medium carrot, grated
4 to 4 1/2 cups thinly shredded green cabbage
1/4 cup chopped dried fruit such as apricots, figs, or sour cherries

1. Whisk together the aioli or mayonnaise, vinegar, ketchup, hot peppers if desired, and salt in a small bowl. Toss the shredded apples with the lemon juice.
2. Combine the apples, carrots, cabbage, and dried fruit in a large bowl. Toss and mix well, and blend in the dressing.

To find more of Debra’s recipes, visit her blog Food Connections at http://foodconnections.blogspot.com.

By Debra Daniels-Zeller, author of Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook — Join us for a special vegetarian harvest celebration at the Learning Center when Debra is the guest presenter for our September 24-25 Sourdough Speaker Series event!

Fall, apples and pears naturally flow together. Summer harvest is over and rainy winter days loom on the horizon. This time of year, baking with autumn fruit refreshes my seasonal passion. The fragrance of baking apples mingling with cinnamon brings back memories of my grandmother’s delectable homemade apple pie. Locally grown apples were always the essential ingredient.

Today, Washington provides an abundant selection of crisp apples and juicy pears. But the tree fruit industry also is vital to the state’s bottom line, reminding us of why it’s important to buy local.

The State Horticultural Society reports that Washington tree fruit is first in the state for overall economic value. More than 142,000 jobs are generated, from field work to advertising and sales. The total cumulative value is greater than that from Microsoft and Boeing combined. It’s also greater than the value of the biotechnology industry, which reportedly employs 19,300 statewide and generates only $1.8 billion in revenue.

The economic value of Washington tree fruit is more than $2 billion a year from the Yakima Valley alone. Half the apples grown in the United States and approximately 64 percent of our nation’s pear supply comes from Washington.

» Continue reading Why local matters, Washington apples and pears

In celebration of our 25th year of connecting people to nature through hands-on experiences in the outdoors, North Cascades Institute has opened over 50 new programs for registration, ranging from natural history classes focused on birds, butterflies and bugs to family camps, art and writing retreats and backcountry adventures in North Cascades National Park. All the details are now available at www.ncascades.org/get_outside or by calling (360) 854-2599.

Plan ahead to join us and take advantage of the Early Bird discount. From now through the Spring Equinox (March 20), when you sign up for most programs with tuition over $100, you’ll receive $25 off each registration. It’s a great opportunity to sign up for as many as you like and save! (The Early Bird discount is not valid for Family Getaways or Base Camp and cannot be combined with scholarships. Tuition must be paid in full at time of registration.)

To register with the Early Bird discount, call us at (360) 854-2599.

The 2011 slate of North Cascades Institute programs for people of all ages includes Family Getaways, Base Camp, the Sourdough Speaker Series, Diablo Downtimes and over 30 different classes and extended retreats that explore the natural and cultural history of the Pacific Northwest. Class topics range from art (watercoloring, digital photography, cedar weaving), biology (corvids, dragonflies, rare carnivores, butterflies, mushrooms, birding), history (of the Skagit dams, of Ross Lake, of Washington State trails), writing (poetry, natural history essays, blogging) and field excursions (exploring Mt. Baker, Seattle, Ross and Diablo Lakes in North Cascades National Park). The roster of teaching staff includes Robert Michael Pyle, Dennis Paulson, Tim McNulty, Libby Mills, Molly Hashimoto, Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Langdon Cook, Mark Turner, Ana Maria Spagna, Jennifer Hahn and Nick O’Connell. More information and registration at www.ncascades.org/get_outside

Most Institute classes take place at North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, our award-winning green facility on Diablo Lake in the heart of the North Cascades run in partnership between the Institute, National Park Service and Seattle City Light. Other classes take place in the field, exploring the natural history of Seattle, the Skagit and Methow Valleys, the Arid Land Ecology Reserve and North Cascades backcountry.

Doug Chadwick, a renowned writer of natural history based in Whitefish, Montana, is our first fall speaker in the 5th annual Sourdough Speaker Series at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center. His work has taken him all over the world to research books about whales, grizzlies, ants and elephants. On October 9-10 in the North Cascades, Chadwick will discuss the elusive and wonderful wolverine — its natural and cultural history, the challenges it faces for survival in the 21st century and ways in which we can make sure this amazing predator continues its place in the web of life. Join us in the golden month of October for an illuminating presentation, a delicious dinner, overnight accommodations and a Sunday breakfast and guided outing — all for only $95 per person. Registration is at www.ncascades.org/speakerseries, nci@ncascades.org or (360) 854-2599.

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There’s a story in your new book, The Wolverine Way, about an Alaskan gold miner who traps a wolverine, bashes in its head, and then, thinking it’s dead, ties its front legs over his shoulders to pack him out, only to find out the wolverine still had fight left in him. What, if anything, does that tell us about wolverines and man’s relationship with them?

The tale is a reminder of how wolverines have been portrayed mainly as whirlwinds of destruction – something like big backwoods goblins on crack. That’s not to say wolverines don’t have a ferocious side. They are exceptionally strong and amazingly fearless. Can you think of any other 20- to 40-pound animal willing to try driving grizzlies off carcasses? I’d rank wolverines among the toughest mammals in the world. But as we finally begin to peel away the mysteries surrounding this species’ natural history, those frontier yarns featuring perpetually pissed-off, dangerous wolverines turn out to be … well, not complete b.s., but only one part of a much larger and more fascinating picture.

You’re a writer of natural history with a background in field biology. But when you volunteered with the Glacier Wolverine Project in 2004, you had no intention of writing about wolverines – despite the promise of some great story material. What changed your mind?

During the time I volunteered with the project, I was also traveling to report on snow leopards in central Asia, right whales in the sub-Antarctic, weaver ants in Australia, elephants in Thailand, the ecology of Southeast Alaska’s great coastal rainforest, and rhinos and tigers in Assam, among other magazine assignments. I loved each job. Nevertheless, the last thing I wanted to do back home in Montana, was continue being a journalist every day. Glacier National Park is my backyard. It may sound strange, but dragging bait to lay scent trails to wolverine capture sites, following paw prints while skiing through blizzards and dodging avalanches, radio-tracking the animals over summer passes and peaks … this was my vacation. Besides, the researchers really needed an extra hand. They didn’t have the money to hire enough people to keep up with their radioed subjects, not ones that cover vast, rugged territories as relentlessly as wolverines do. The challenge of trying to keep up long enough to discover more about these wildest of wild lives drew an extraordinary team of mountaineers and conservationists happy to help out for free. Being part of that crew was a reward in itself.

Wolverines, I began to realize, are every bit as cool as wolves and grizzlies – and equally important as symbols of the last untamed places. Debates over better-known wildlife and protection of the homelands they depend upon seemed to be in the news almost daily. Meanwhile, wolverines were becoming rarer south of Canada than either wolves or grizz, yet hardly anyone was paying attention. The need to get wolverines on the public’s radar was largely what prompted me to start writing this book. Folks will work hard to save a species they care about, but they first have to be able to envision its life and needs. Since I had the privilege of getting acquainted with a number of individual wolverines and their offspring over half a dozen years, I decided that it was time to start sharing everything the animals and the researchers had been teaching me.

Wolverines inhabit some of the world’s least hospitable terrain, and you guys spend days and nights out in sub-zero conditions trying to find them. It must be really taxing work. Can you describe one of your forays into the field and how you guys handle one of these tightly wound bundles of tooth and claw when you live-trap one?