Harvey Manning, the godfather of Washington's wilderness system and tireless trail bodhisattva, passed away last weekend at the age of 81. Manning's influence as an environmental leader, author and advocate cannot be overstated, and as his friend and former president of the Alpine Lakes Protection Society Rick McGuire succintly put it, "I feel like one of the great cedars of the North Cascades has fallen. It's hard to sum up a man like Harvey. He was a force of nature."
Most people will know Manning as the co-author, along with his longtime hiking partner Ira Spring, of the "100 Hikes" series of trail guides published by The Mountaineers Books. Compared to the bland, unimaginative trail guides of today, his creations were full of personality and passion, wit and wisdom. He never hid the conservationalist agenda present in his prose, and he was unapologetic in his fervent love for all things wild.
Incidentally, my favorite Manning title is not a trail guide at all, but an idiosyncratic travelogue entitled "Walking the Beach to Bellingham." It is a hilarious book in which Manning, well, he walks the beach, all the way from Seattle to Bellingham, following the shore of Puget Sound and sharing local lore, natural history, political diatribes, bad puns and sharp observations all the way. You can all of his offerings here.
The Seattle P-I has a story on Manning's life here and the Washington Trails Association has another one here. While it is hard to read, Peter Potterfield's excellent Manning profile for Backpacker Magazine is reproduced here.
The Alpine Lakes Wilderness, North Cascades National Park, the Issaquah Alps, Mt. Baker Wilderness -- all of these places remain green, rugged and wild in large part because of Manning's zealousness. I hope there are more like him alive and kicking in the Pacific Northwest today. As McGuire puts it, "He left the Cascades a much better place than he found them."
1 comment:
My father was a force that is for sure. Every summer he would put up a calendar of where we would be going for the next 3 months. If there is one thing that pissed me off about hiking was that my birthday was in August which everyone knows is the best time to go hiking. Most of my childhood birthdays were spent high up in the Cascades playing with bones of long dead animals and listening to Daddy tell stories like the Monkey's Paw or the Grey Man of Ben McDew around a camp fire. That man could tell a story that had my friends frightened to leave their sleeping bags at night.
I can't tell you how much I will miss daddy and all the great and wonderous things he showed me.
Claudia
daughter number 3
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