by Liz Blackman, Cohort 14, Institute Master of Education candidate The shift was abrupt. It came with little warning. As smoke billowed up the Newhalem Gorge and filled the tiny mountain town of Diablo, I had 20 minutes to grab everything I could. I felt an adrenaline rush unlike anything I have ever experienced: a […]
A Call to Education toward Resilience
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Patience and Persistence: An Interview with Grizzly Bear Biologist Bill Gaines
Bill Gaines has been at the forefront of the grizzly bear recovery efforts in the Pacific Northwest for 25 years. I recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with him about the historical struggles of recovery efforts, the impacts of other carnivores in the North Cascades ecosystem and the role education must play […]
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Watch your nose: Understanding White-Nose Syndrome and the Bats of the North Cascades National Park, part 1
On March 11, hikers found the sick bat about 30 miles east of Seattle near North Bend, and took it to Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) for care. The bat died two days later, and had visible symptoms of a skin infection common in bats with White Nose Syndrome. -U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. This comes […]
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Watch your nose: Understanding White-Nose Syndrome and the Bats of the North Cascades National Park, part 2
Photo taken by Alan Hicks. Retrieved from batcon.org This is part two of my series on bats. You can find part one here. On March 11, hikers found the sick bat about 30 miles east of Seattle near North Bend, and took it to Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) for care. The bat died two days […]
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Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata): A story…
By Ginna Malley Campos, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. Long, long ago, when ice and snow covered the land as far as the eye could see, we speckled the landscape. Only a few of us grew here and there. But soon came a time when the ice and snow began to retreat. And […]
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In the Era of Fire Lookouts: Fire Suppression in the North Cascades
By Adam Bates, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. Fire lookouts have captured the imagination of the American public for over seventy-five years. The notion that one could spend a summer atop a mountain in solitude and seclusion holds a certain romanticism that was perpetuated by numerous authors, poets, artists and backcountry enthusiasts. Therein […]
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Eating Snow: Climate Change, Snowpack and Agriculture Water-Use Policy in the Methow Valley
By Annah Young, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. I wedged myself between two boulders on the summit of Silver Star Mountain in Okanagan County, Washington and peered out over the North Cascades range. It was May 1, 2016. Mount Baker was crystal clear some 100 miles to the west across the snow cover […]
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Urban Foraging: A back-country approach to front-country living
By Rob Healy, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. Somewhere at the murky crossroads of a lifelong passion for preparedness and survival, the excitement of days spent hunting, fishing and foraging, and the soul crushing reality that is the ratio of time spent in front versus back country, I hatched a plan. Whether famine, natural disaster […]
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Mapping a Sense of Place
By Aly Gourd, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. Imagine a world that makes sense. Mentally erase all of the tangled lines on the old, industrial-age maps — city, country, state, and provincial boundaries, highways and railroads, the international borders. Let the original face of the place shine through: rivers, mountains and valleys, coastlines […]
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The Social Lives of Trees: Part 1
By Emma Ewert, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. I have always found trees comforting and familiar. Playing in the dense woods surrounding my childhood home, they were the walls of my forts or the home of woodland fairies. Living in the Salish Sea, my childhood trees were the stately Douglas-firs, scrappy Shore Pines, […]
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The Social Lives of Trees: Part 2 Mycorrhizal Fungi
By Emma Ewert, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. Take a look at part one of her series on the social lives of trees! It is almost impossible to distinguish root systems from the fungi that they are connected to. In fact, the term mycorrhizal means “fungi-root”, and refers to the root system as […]
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Wolverines: A Natural History
By Tyler Davis, graduate student of the Institute’s 15th cohort. Wolverines are elusive creatures that are primarily found in the far reaches of wilderness areas. These animals are symbols of the wild, strong and seemingly fearless. They are also a source of fear stemmed from misunderstandings. Sadly, there is still a lack of knowledge about […]
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The Social Lives of Trees: Part 3 Underground Partnerships
By Emma Ewert, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. Take a look at part one and part two of her series on the social lives of trees! While the partnerships between trees and fungi that I have been discussing in my previous posts are fascinating, what really intrigues and excites me is how these mycorrhizal networks […]
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A Question of Scale: Plant Phenology Across Time and Space
By Joe Loviska, graduate student in the Institute’s 15th cohort. March 20, 2016. I’ve been keeping an eye on the western flowering dogwood (Cornus nuttallii) out in the parking lot of the Learning Center. It’s a small tree, maybe twelve feet in height. Its gray trunk and branches are spindly, filling out the vague shape […]
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What is a cohort? An Introduction To C16
The 16th graduate cohort has arrived at the North Cascades Institute. Tasked with the responsibility of introducing ourselves to you readers, I thought it best to start by looking at the word ‘cohort’, as it has come to be a large part of our identity as a group and as individuals. I remember the first time […]
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Wildlife Encounters In The Methow: A Natural History Intensive
Chompers and Lewisa, the new beaver residents of Beaver Creek, quickly became much more active as their wire cages were placed in the cold creek, splashing about and looking to explore. The beavers looked on disdainfully as we humans created a small dam in the creek, to give them a suggestion of where to build […]
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Seasons In The Skagit: Fall
Fall Hello everyone! We are moving towards the end of fall and the beginning of winter in the Skagit Valley. The leaves are falling from the trees here at Lake Diablo. As the days march slowly towards December we see the seasons changing all around us. The sun rises later in the morning and disappears […]
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A Look Back At Our Summer in the North Cascades
It seems a little strange to write about summer as we step into winter but there has to be a start to every story and the story of C16 begins with our arrival to the Environmental Learning Center on a warm July day. We were to begin the first course of our year long residency, ‘Place Based […]
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S’more Knowledge, S’more Fun: Kulshan Creek at Lyman Slough
Kulshan Creek Neighborhood Youth Program is a year-round educational program that engages young people ages 5 to 18 from two Skagit Valley neighborhoods in a series of monthly field trips to explore the outdoors and learn about our local watersheds. The weather is ominous. Big, gray rain clouds, wind and chilly temps definitely impacted the […]
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30 Year Anniversary: A Look Back at 2016
As today marks the last day of 2016, what better place than Chattermarks to look back at the memories and highlights of the year here at the North Cascades Institute. I have only recently joined as a contributor to the blog and many of the posts this past year were submitted by guests, naturalists, C15 […]
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More Pages to Explore .....
