Notes from Disappering Lake: The River Journals of Robert Sund

Robert Sund is our bard of the Skagit River, a singer of songs celebrating skunk cabbage, frogs, muddy water, ducks, and the rising tide.

In the summer of 1973, the poet — who studied under Theodore Roetke at the University of Washington in the early 1950s — built a small dwelling on the pilings of a former fisherman’s shed in the estuary of the North Fork of the Skagit River. Access was only by boat and though his hermitage was only a short paddle from La Conner and downstream from the active artists’ colony at Fishtown, he felt worlds away, “far, far back,” from modern society.

This remove gave Sund time and space to closely observe the rhythms of the natural world, as well as the fluctuations of his own thoughts and emotions, and he recorded these impressions in a series of thin, 26-page notebooks. The tidal marsh surrounding his shack, formed where the glacier-fed Skagit mixed with the saltwater of Puget Sound, provided him with endless inspiration for more than a decade of on-again, off-again residency.

“Out on the river you know you are in the midst of a great creation,” he wrote. “You see the old work and the new work side by side: the ancient migration routes of all the birds, and the slow building of silt and soil in the estuary.”

The choicest tidbits from Sund’s 75-plus journals have been extracted and lightly edited to produce a new volume of work from the well-loved poet, who passed away in 2001. Assembled by Sund's close friends Tim McNulty and Glenn Hughes, Notes from Disappearing Lake: The River Journals of Robert Sund presents poem-like journal entries documenting life in the Skagit River estuary alongside spiritual insights, weather reports, and pithy celebrations of friendship and community.

“Robert was obviously not there to advise us,” explains McNulty, “but he was definitely looking over our shoulder as we worked on this project. We excerpted material that was pretty much intact and didn’t need to do much editing. Robert’s voice was rough and authentic and we wanted to keep it that way. Several friends have read these pieces and said, ‘This is like spending time with Robert again.' "

July, 1973
Snipe walking through the
  flowers & grasses
picking worms & bugs out of
    the mud —

Wren on the front porch
  tiny feet
  tick tick.

Robin, swallow
crow, seagull, heron
goldfinch, duck
blackbird . . .

Who needs a radio?

Song at morning
song at evening
and all day long ...

   This is the real news:
    Local, regional, & world-wide.

Though he departed more than a decade ago, Sund’s unique voice, as expressed through his poems, painting, and calligraphy, has risen in repute since the 2004 publication of Poems from Ish River Country by prestigious publisher Shoemaker & Hoard, home of Gary Snyder, Robert Hass, and Wendell Berry. The Museum of Northwest Art’s successful Fishtown and the Skagit River exhibit in 2010 only heightened interest in the unique countercultural confluence of art, poetry, and spirituality that flourished in the Lower Skagit in the 1970s and '80s.
The recent attention paid to to this now-gone locality contrasts the original inhabitants’ desire to be left alone, hiding out in the marsh grasses where they could be free to pursue their alternative lifestyles.

“(The) burgeoning community (of Fishtown) reflected the larger national impulse towards going back to the land, living simply, and disengaging from chaotic political and social events,” Kathleen Moles writes in Fishtown and the Skagit River, the catalog for the MONA exhibit.

Sund had a deep interest in Chinese literature of the Tang and Sung dynasties — as many drawn to Fishtown did — and his shack provided him a private place to live like the hermit poets he read at night by lantern light. The seclusion, hardships and exposure to the raw elements of storms, tides and bird migrations were a forge for his poetic aspirations.

“A river mouth, in and of itself, exerts an influence on human consciousness that becomes manifest in music, literature, and art,” points out Skagit Valley novelist Tom Robbins in an essay in the MONA catalog.

Sund’s journals contained unvarnished etchings of that Skagit-flavored manifestation, and editors McNulty and Hughes’ work to unearth new material from their friend also revealed insights in to the poet’s methods.

“Robert’s journals held his day-to-day notations; they’re perceptive, unique, sometimes dazzling, and of course poetic,” McNulty explains. “His observations offer keen insights into nature, record subtle personal reflections, and explore the experience of solitude in a wild, natural landscape. At the same time they're often happy and joyful. The journals capture those aspects of Robert’s process, personality, and aesthetic in an immediate way. Chip and I had a great time exploring the journals and delighting one another with new discoveries.”

April 24, 1977   4 A.M.

In the excited mind
          words fly.

The night is still, the water still ––
          & suddenly, in the mind

(as on the night river
          a beaver
breaks the silence)

the first ripple of a poem
swims almost invisible by the river bank.

Blades of grass standing in the river
          feel the waves rise and
                    pass through them.

McNulty further says, “I see a marked contrast between the experience of Robert’s journals and the way we’ve become so locked into gadgets and digital media. The idea of Thoreau-like experiences, of being alone in stunningly beautiful landscape and following the mind’s drift on a daily basis…it can’t hurt.”

In light of this posthumous collection of Sund's work, words he once wrote seem prophetic:

Maybe exalted gestures will be

            retrieved in our time.
Maybe our grandchildren will go through
            our trunks and boxes
                  and be amazed.

Poems are copyright 2012 Robert Sund Poet’s House. Top photo: Erik Ambjor; middle: Paul Hansen, untitled (Fishtown landscape); bottom: Christian Martin

John Scurlock's "Snow & Spire: Flights to Winter in the North Cascade Range"

John Scurlock makes his living working as a paramedic for the Bellingham Fire Department, but finds his calling soaring high above the North Cascades in a small yellow aircraft that he built with his own hands. Flying in all varieties of unpredictable weather above the raggedy peaks and yawning glaciers of our “American Alps,” he circles his snowy subjects, does his best to focus his Canon 5DmkII 21 MP digital camera through the plexiglass canopy and captures vistas most of us will never see with our own eyes.

The results reveal a vast landscape buried in snow and encrusted in ice, a wintery terra incognito of terrifying beauty and austere grace: the frost-bound North Face of Mt. Triumph, impossible cornices on Cloudcap Peak, fire lookouts encased in rime, the Pickett Range hidden in mist, Mount Baker’s shining snowfields, Ripsaw Ridge and Skagit Queen Creek and Park Creek Pass in snowy, silent repose. This is the terrain that holds the world’s record for most snowfall ever recorded in a single winter, and Scurlock’s photography unveils the artistic potential of this seldom-seen northern range: “something primitive, forbidden and inaccessible, yet also profoundly and exquisitely beautiful,” according to Scurlock.

Scurlock's first book, Snow & Spire: Flights to Winter in the North Cascade Range, is a coffee-table-sized collection of his aerial photography published by Wolverine Publishing in Colorado. It represents a culmination of several years of determined labor and features stunning reproductions of his body of work, plus essays by geologist David Tucker and mountaineering historian Lowell Skoog. A display copy in the window of Winthrop's bookstore has attracted more walk-in traffic than they can remember for any other book, and the initial print run of a few thousand seems destined to sell-out as word spreads through Scurlock's networks of climbers, nature photographers, NPS and USFS staff, pilots, naturalists, scientists and other friends.

Christian Martin: When did you first start photographing the North Cascades from the air?

John Scurlock: My first aerial photographs of the North Cascades were in the 1990s when I flew up there in a Cessna with a friend, looking at routes in the southern Picket range for a possible traverse. But my first digital aerial images were in early 2002, when I began photographing Mount Baker and got connected with Dr. Kevin Scott at the USGS/Cascades Volcano Observatory. That led to my meeting with his associate and friend, Dave Tucker from Bellingham. We've collaborated extensively since then, with me supporting their research into the geologic and volcanic history of Baker. I started photographing the rest of the range in winter after I observed the winter mountains while flying above and around Baker. Because of my familiarity with the North Cascades through climbing, I knew I was seeing the mountains in a condition that was really unknown, and I knew photographs of the range in winter either were very limited or didn't exist. That led me eventually to my great obsession…

CM: What were the outlines of your obsession?

JS: Well, I was familiar with the range from climbing and hiking in the summer, but I realized at the outset that seeing the mountains in winter was an incredibly altered condition from what I was used to. I marveled at their stunning beauty after this snowy transformation. I knew I was seeing things that no one else had ever seen or photographed, and that led to my determination to somehow photograph the entire range from the air during the winter. I didn't dive right in however, but rather gradually expanded my boundaries as I gained experience. At this point, I am fairly satisfied that's I've flown into every nook and cranny of these mountains during winter.

CM: When did you begin flying?

JS: I had always wanted to fly, since childhood. I had thought that nearsightedness disqualified me, until I found out in my 30s that I could still be a pilot, though not professionally. After getting my pilot's license, I wanted to own a plane, like all pilots dream of. It was suggested that I could build a better plane than I could buy, and so after some investigation, I started in on my plane, a kit called an RV6 from Van's Aircraft. It took nine years to build, as I traveled, hiked, and skied extensively during that time. It's a small, 26-foot, two-seat tail-wheel plane of conventional construction. It's very versatile, with a fast cruising speed, good handling at slow speeds, generally docile, and a service ceiling of more than 20,000 feet. The design has stood the test of time, and it has proven to be a really great airplane.

CM: What is your goal in photographing the North Cascades and sharing these photographs?

JS: My goal with all my photography, and this book in particular, is to share the amazing beauty of the North Cascades in winter, from every aspect and angle. I've been enormously privileged to see things that are nearly incomprehensible in their wildness and wonderful aesthetics. I've been so fortunate to be in the position to photograph what I've seen and share those images with everyone else. Photography is the means to accomplish this; digital photography, a great airplane, and obsession are the driving forces, and not a day goes by that I don't remember how fortunate I've been in this endeavor.

Northwest Natural Bookshelf: Notable regional titles in 2011

Reviewed by Christian Martin

Beneath Cold Seas: The Underwater Wilderness of the PacificNorthwest

David Hall (University of Washington Press)

Skilled diver David Hall is obsessed with the weird cold-water ecosystems found off the northern Pacific Coast, with their iridescent squid, ghostly salmon, glow-in-the-dark jellyfish, psychedelic nudibranchs, curious seals and neon anemones. It is a great gift to all of us landlubbers that Hall is also a photographer who, through state-of-the-art equipment, innovative techniques and plenty of fearless gumption, captures this hidden world in glorious images rich in color, detail and ecological context. It is bewildering to learn what unseen life dwells just off of our local shores, and how little we know about this mysterious and beautiful world.

Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness

Ana Maria Spagna (OSU Press)

Stehekin resident Ana Maria Spagna writes perceptively and generously about the ties that bind communities: people to people, people to place, self to story. Also serving as a memoir of her travels near and far, Potluck celebrates the ordinary rituals that define our lives.

The Way of Natural History

Edited by Thomas Lowe Fleischner (Trinity)

An environmental studies professor at Prescott College in Arizona, Tom Fleischner’s local roots stretch back to summers spent working in North Cascades National Park and the founding of North Cascades Institute. Defining natural history as “a practice of intentional, focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world,” his vision of a zen-like study of the natural world is fleshed out in this volume with essay and poetry contributions from Jane Hirshfield, Robert Michael Pyle, Kathleen Dean Moore, Robert Aiken, Scott Russell Sanders and others.

New Land, North of the Columbia: Historic Documents thatTell the Story of Washington State from Territory to Today

Lorraine McConaghy (Sasquatch)

A unique and entertaining way to explore our state’s history, Lorraine McConaghy – historian at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle – assembles a wide-ranging selection of documents from public archives to tell the century and a half story of Washington State. Presented in colorful, sharp images, these documents range from the first telegraph to the new Washington Territory from Abraham Lincoln, the Point Elliott Treaty and a program from the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition through to FBI files on D.B. Cooper, blueprints for the Kingdome, radio transcriptions during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, a handbill from the WTO “Battle in Seattle” and poster for SubPop’s Lamefest featuring an unknown band named Nirvana. Even ordinary artifacts like letters, wills, cartoons, menus, snapshots and advertisements provide insight in to the extraordinary trajectory of the Evergreen State.

The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision for our Sustainable Future

David Suzuki (Greystone)

In 2009, Vancouver-based broadcaster, author and elder environmentalist David Suzuki gave a last lecture that synthesized his perspectives and insights on the fate of the world: where we’ve come from and where we’re going. This book expands on that talk, with a focus on exponential population growth, the technological revolution and the ecological footprint of a global economy. Luckily for us, Suzuki also presents his vision of a sustainable future that is within our reach. A harrowing yet ultimately inspirational presentation from a vital voice of sanity.

The Historical Atlas of Washington & Oregon

Derek Hayes (UC Press)

It is difficult to describe all of the riches that Derek Hayes’ latest atlas project offers to the armchair historian. Its 200+ pages brim with more than 500 maps, photos, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, illustrations, advertisements and other historical ephemera, all succinctly explained and consolidated in Hayes’ descriptive yet succinct text. The journey begins with the earliest known maps of Washington and Oregon drawn up by explorers like Quadra, Barkley, Quimper, Gray and Vancouver – scrawled yet often elegant relics reflecting the limits of knowledge of the first Europeans venturing in to this rugged landscape – and gains sophistication as missionaries, railroad workers, miners, loggers and other settlers begin to push in to the territory. Later pages are devoted to the development of the interstate road system, national parks and forests, irrigation and hydropower, floating bridges and atomic and aerospace industries. Open to any page of Hayes’ bursting compendium and you’re likely to be engrossed by the diversity of materials and depth of research.

Snow & Spire: Flights to Winter in the North CascadeRange

John Scurlock (Wolverine)

Flying a small, yellow, home-built airplane out of Concrete, John Scurlock explores the North Cascades in wind, weather and light that inspires most people to be safe and cozied up at home. The results of his extraordinary forays in to the inaccessible corners of this range are photographs of a landscape seldom seen before, a wintery terra incognito of terrifying beauty and austere grace. *Snow & Spire*, a collection of Scurlock’s aerial photography and his first publication, is a culmination of several years of determined labor and features stunning views of Baker, Shuksan, Forbidden, Terror, the Picketts and beyond, plus essays by WWU geologist David Tucker and mountaineering historian Lowell Skoog.

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

Thor Hanson (Basic Books)

Winner of the 2011 Northwest Booksellers Association book of the year award and a Library Journal Top 10 Science Book, *Feathers* tells the natural and cultural history of the feather – one of the most highly evolved objects in nature. Hanson is a conservation biologist with experience in the field studying everything from trees and songbirds in Costa Rica, bears in Alasks and gorillas in Uganda, and he possesses the rare gift of translating scientific concepts in to prose both captivating and poetic. Writing from his home on San Juan Island, Hanson takes the reader back to the Chauvet Cave in southern France, through Greek and Hindu mythology, up to recent discoveries using DNA fingerprinting, all the while exploring the development and uses of this evolutionary marvel.

Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug areKilling North America’s Great Forests

Andrew Nikiforuk (Greystone)

Celebrated in Canada as one of their most engrossing nonfiction books of the year, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk focuses his honed investigative skills towards the tale of an insect “the size of a rice kernel” that has killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska and northern British Columbia, down the Rocky Mountains range into Colorado and New Mexico. There are many villains in this man-made tragedy -- climate change, unsustainable logging practices, misguided science, a century of fire suppression – and the author makes his best attempt to draw lessons and look ahead into the unknown future of one of the world’s greatest natural heritage.

Faith of Cranes: Finding Hope and Family in Alaska

Hank Lentfer (Mountaineeers Books)

A finely-wrought memoir of a life lived in a remote town in southeast Alaska, Hank Lentfer weaves together threads of conservation, natural history, parenthood and family. Sandhill cranes, passing over the author’s home every fall on their journey between California and Alaska, serve as the inspiration for his quest to find hope in a world seemingly intent on crushing all things beautiful and natural.

Fire Lookouts of the North Cascades

I made this slideshow to accompany Gary Snyder's recent reading in Seattle -- he requested I create some visuals of the North Cascades that would put people in the right frame of mind for his poetry. It features images from a wide array of very talented photography, most of whom I work with at North Cascades Institute, and explores the cultural history of the upper Skagit Valley and North Cascades.

Slough, Decay, and the Odor of Soil

Log decomposition research site, Blue River drainage, Oregon Cascades

By Bill Yake

Trunks, once poised and upright, collapse toward

a two-century graduation into beetle and vapor,

moss, conk, and seed bed -- their boles intermittently

chiseled by woodpeckers uncoiling their barbed tongues

and probing grub-etched galleries within. Hibernacula.

Loosened bark. Sap and heartwood riddled with crawlways

where ants stalk wood-mining fungi, where inexorable

ant-infesting mycelia reciprocate. The odor of must,

cedar disintegrating through pungency to pulp and oil.

The plush, ripe scent of continuous integration.

What seemed solid, stains and softens decade by decade,

to be torn apart by bears after ants: the flavor

on their tongues that of dull sparks. All is relentlessly

hollowed, grain by grain, cell by cell, into sponge and grub

dust, salamander refuge, slug haven, frog shelter, and moss

-- all deepening to opulent, pre-ultimate, humus and duff.

From Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place, Spring 2011.

Road Trip to Yellowstone & the Grand Tetons

Around the summer solstice in June 2010, Hekter McElliott, Orbit and myself met up in Wyoming for a 10-day tour of Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole.

Hek and I had lived in the area before and done much exploring together, so we used this time to revisit many of our favorite places like Huckleberry Hotsprings, Leigh Lake, the Gros Ventres and the brewpub. We also discovered new amazing places like Druid Peak in the Lamar Valley, a great nap spot on Yellowstone Lake and the new and powerful visitor's center on the recently restored Rockefeller property near Phelps Lake.

Anyways, here's some of what we saw and experienced...

Moral Ground

Kathleen Dean Moore’s ethical response to climate change

Reviewed by Christian Martin

Because of humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels, we are warming our planet beneath a cloak of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Here in Washington State, rising temperatures and a warmer climate are causing our glaciers to melt faster than they can replenish themselves. This is leading us towards a future with less fresh water for agriculture and drinking and less resources for inexpensive hydroelectric generation. Over 40 of our coastal communities are threatened by rising sea levels. Sagebrush-steppe and alpine ecosystems will disappear as the tree line shifts, and growing seasons are changing in unpredictable ways. The loss of several amphibian species, alterations in bird and butterfly migratory patterns and invasions of unchecked, voracious insect infestations are already underway. Ocean acidification is choking the abundant life in Puget Sound and bays of the outer coast. Eastside forests are drying up and wildland fires will become more prevalent. We humans will face a deadly spike in infectious, respiratory and heat-related illnesses as the natural world around us smolders.

Heard this laundry list of doom before? Most likely you have, and it’s because scientists have done an impressive job of both studying the phenomenon of global climate change and communicating the causes and effects to the public. The effort has be so heroic that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change.”

While the data, interpretations and subsequent warnings from the scientific community are essential pieces of this puzzle, Kathleen Dean Moore, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University, recognized that something was missing. Moore, the author of personal essay/nature writing books like Riverwalking, Holdfast and Wild Comfort, teaches environmental ethics and moral reasoning to students and she soon realized that the scientists’ arguments, no matter how comprehensive, were not going to inspire us to act to save our world.

“Clearly, information is not enough,” she writes. “A piece is largely missing from the public discourse about climate change: namely an affirmation of our moral responsibilities in the world that the scientists describe. No amount of factual information will tell us what we ought to do. For that, we need moral convictions.”

In Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, Moore and co-editor Michael Nelson assemble 80 of the world’s leading visionaries, leaders and writers to create a compelling call to action. The goal of the anthology is to confront the challenges of climate change based on moral and ethical grounds. It is a chorus featuring the sterling voices of the Dalai Lama, Barack Obama, Desmond Tutu, John Paul II, Barbara Kingsolver, Paul Hawken, Thich Naht Hanh, E.O. Wilson, Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben, Terry Tempest Williams, Gary Snyder, bell hooks and many others from cultures and countries around the globe.

“Do we have a moral obligation to take action to protect the future of a planet in peril?” the editors asked of their contributors, “and if so, why?”

The answers – inspiring, creative, sobering and grounded in reason – are presented in thematic clusters, including “Yes, for the survival of humankind,” “Yes, to honor our duties of gratitude and reciprocity, “Yes, for the stewardship of God’s creation, “Yes, because justice demands it,” “Yes, because the world is beautiful.”

Moral Ground strives to start the conversation about “who we are when we are at out best, what we must do to be worthy of our gifts” and how we might live on Earth “respectfully, responsibly and joyously.” These are essential questions to ponder here at the most crucial turning point our planet has ever faced.

OlyPenn Road Trip

A trip around the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State in early spring. Destinations include Ozette Lake, Rialto Beach and the Quinault Rainforest.

Road Trip: The Olympic Peninsula

My first 2010 trip away from the Salish Sea occured in May when I caught the Keystone Ferry for Port Townsend and spent a solo week in Olympic National Park, hiking, paddling and observing the emerging lushness of spring. My first destination was Lake Ozette in the far northwestern corner of the state. I posted up at a nearly-empty campground on the northshore, dropped my sea kayak on to the lake and paddled a couple of hours south to a remote backcountry campsite at Erickson’s Bay. I was lucky to have decent, stable weather, no wind and Ozette — the third largest lake in the state — all to myself. Trails from the bay, as well as from the northshore campground, wind 3 miles through coastal forests, prairies and the remains of homesteads to the wild Pacific coast, where one can explore tidepools, view sea stacks, observe seabirds and seals and search for migrating grey whales and the famous Wedding Rocks pictographs.

At Ozette, with long agenda-less days stretching out before me, I started reading Tim McNulty’s wonderful book, Olympic National Park: A Natural History, recently updated and reissued by University of Washington Press. Tim’s amiable guide helped me to know the stories behind the nature I was so enjoying, like what the flourescent blobs in the tidepool were, or how sea anenomes and starfish interact, or where the whales were coming from and where they were going. I greatly appreciated not only the wealth of authoratative natural history information in the book, but also the friendly tone and poetic descriptions that Tim employs to make the unique “island” ecosystem of the peninsula come to life.

Sitting next to a campfire reading the chapter on the cultural history of the peninsula — and the amazing story of the Ozette Village archaeological discovery and recovery — inspired me to make my next stop at the Makah Museum in Neah Bay to witness the tribal artifacts that were discovered in the 1970s beneath a slumping mudbank facing the ocean.

Having the museum all to myself, I spent several hours marveling over all the different essential items of life that the Makah created from natural materials at hand : waterproof cedar bark hats, mussel-shell harpoon tips, halibut hooks made of bone, fishing nets woven from stinging nettle fibers — all well preserved from being encased in mud for hundreds of years. I was especially taken by the technologies that the Makah developed to stalk, kill and process whales that migrated past their villages every spring — the massive sea-going cedar canoe on display was amazing for its marriage of form and function — and could hardly imagine the fortitude and skill that was required to hunt these behemoths of the sea. I was also drawn to the displays of masks, rattles and other talismans that the tribe used to interact with the spirit world, especially in the long, wet, dark days of winter when families had retired to their shared cedar longhouses.
Leaving the northwestern corner of the park, I drove south, spent a night at Rialto Beach for more beachcombing, and then traveled on to the Quinault Valley. I was hoping to paddle around this lake too, but had a hard time finding a boat launch, and the afternoon wind was making the lake choppy, so I motored up the dirt road following the North Fork of the Quinault River until it dead-ended at another empty campground and trailhead.


The rainforest is a riot of green growth fed by 10 to 15 feet of rain every year. Within its verdant cathedrals lies a very deep and profound silence. After spending several days in the presence of this silence — interrupted only by the whirrrrr of divebombing hummingbirds, the kaw of ravens and the clacking of river stones being washed down to sea by the milky, glacial-fed river — everything slows down and you have more space to notice and appreciate what’s around you. In an age of information traveling at light-speed and the constant din of digital infotainment, a languid break in the Quinault was just what I needed. At the end of my week, I was very sad to leave this sanctuary, but made a vow to keep in touch with the tempo I had rediscovered there.
May is a superb time of the year to visit the Olympic Peninsula: no mosquitoes, no tourists, endless places to camp, low elevation (and therefore snow-free) trails and the full green goodness of spring. The national park facilities like visitor centers and ranger stations were not yet opened, but I knew what I was doing and so didn’t miss them. It’ll get quite a bit more busy for the summer once school is out, and then slow down again in September as the big leaf and vine maple leaves change colors and fall to carpet the forest floor.

Welcome Home : Getting to know your neighbors through natural history

Two weekends ago, I ventured up the Mt. Baker Highway with undefined plans to make my first sojourn of the season in to the high country. It was a spur-of-the-moment adventure and, winding my way eastward and alone, I found myself wishing I had a hiking partner to share the sunny day with – a longing that was soon satisfied when I crossed paths with an old friend at the ranger station in Glacier. Having explored Washington's wilds together for nearly two decades, neither of us were surprised to see the other. He jumped in to my truck and we drove to road's end at Artist's Point, where we struck out towards the fearsome glaciers of Komo Kulshan.



The day was blindingly bright and relentlessly hot. We strode along the trail, across lingering patches of snow and up onto an exposed high ridge that offered the hint of a breeze -- a blessing that kept the bugs at bay. The path wound through fields of lupine and valerian and rock gardens festooned with stonecrop, monkeyflower and heather in full-bloom. Below us yawned barren, boulder-filled valleys only recently released from the great pressures of scouring ice. A ptarmigan rustled in the shade of contorted spruce trees and ravens croaked overhead, swirling and diving against the flawless blue sky. We walked slow, absorbing these varied details and intoning the names of species, landmarks and processes that dovetail to shape this alpine Elysium.



All of this investigating -- our burrowing in to the layers of stories that landscape offers to the curious -- reminded me of how much more rewarding spending time in nature is when one knows a bit about where one is. Accessing this knowledge, and having a few simple tools to learn more along the way – a topo map, compass, wildflower field guide and hand lens – provided my friend and I an intimacy with our surroundings. This intimacy enriched our day by deepening our experience. It allowed us to bear grateful witness to the intertwined narratives of the landscape and, most importantly, provided us countless entry points in to the impersonal drama and beauty of the wild.

Rapport with nature fosters connection, and connection enhances our sense of belonging. This is no small comfort, to feel ensconced on a planet of rock, water and ice hurtling through the dark void of space at 67,000 miles per hour.

I once asked Northwest naturalist Robert Michael Pyle, rambler *par excellence* and award-winning author of Wintergreen, Sky Time in Gray's River and several volumes on butterflies, about the benefits of studying natural history.

"We always care more about our neighbors, and our neighborhood, when we know their names and something about their ways of life," Pyle responded. "This is just good manners for any resident of a particular place."

Knowing that, in our society, many people want to know what they'll "get" before exerting any effort, I asked Pyle what an individual gains from possessing such knowledge.

"A window on the world everywhere," he replied, "for what is local knowledge *here* is always applicable *there*: one sees patterns of relationship and connection, once one is used to looking at the real physical details of any given place. Local natural history provides a lingua franca for feeling at home anywhere. "



Lupine, raven, "glaciated andesitic stratovolcano." It was good to be home.

Spring Equinox 2010 : Samish Island to Mt. Baker

I bought a Flip MinoHD video camera in mid-March and was looking for a way to play around with it, see what it could do, so I decided to document "a day in my life." On the vernal equinox, I woke up on Samish Island in lower Skagit county and proceeded to wind my way up back roads to Mt. Baker Ski Area. The video depicts the adventures of the day.

A couple of things I learned: it is much harder to deal with "filming" while snowboarding than I expected. I had to limit recording to very easy runs, cat tracks, etc. Also, I learned after reviewing the footage that one needs to keep the Flip as steady and unmoving as possible to get quality footage -- better yet, having it stationary on a tripod delivers the best quality. Finally, the processing and editing of the footage took much, much more time than the actual recording, which makes me want to be sure I really, really want to do a project before I start capturing video.

(Update: I noticed a sound glitch about 2/3 of the way through, after I come off the mountain and start driving away. It's too much trouble/time to go back and fix it so I'm gonna let it ride.)

All in all, lots of fun and a quirky take on a typical weekend day in northwestern Washington.

The soundtrack is provided by the Grateful Dead, Quantic, An-ten-ae and the Cinematic Orchestra.

To Salish Sea or not to Salish Sea

I received this interesting email through a local kayaking listserv and it seemed appropriate for this blog -- maybe next they'll look in to making "Ish River Country" an official designation? Awesome map too -- click on it to get a larger version.

Greetings – You are likely aware that the Washington State Board on Geographic Names and the British Columbia Geographical Names Office received a proposal to adopt the name “Salish Sea” to describe the inland waters adjacent to Washington State and southwest British Columbia. The proposal is to add the name “Salish Sea” as a collective or umbrella-name to encompass Puget Sound, Strait of Georgia, Juan de Fuca Strait (Canada)/Strait of Juan de Fuca (USA), and their connecting channels, straits and passages, rather than remove or replace any existing place names.

These waters form a portion of the international boundary between Canada and the United States, hence federal naming authorities will also deliberate on whether to approve, deny, or defer the decision to adopt the name “Salish Sea” for national and international purposes. To avoid any confusion that would result from overlapping consultation processes, and to reduce the administrative burden on all parties, the four jurisdictions have agreed to share a single questionnaire, and use the British Columbia Geographical Names Office in Victoria as the single distribution and receiving point for all results.

We request your comments to help us gauge public support for the proposal to adopt the name “Salish Sea” and to determine the extent to which the name is already established and used by communities in the region. A map and information about the proposal has been included, to assist you in providing comments. Your reply is requested by July 31, 2009. Between August and late autumn, each Board and naming authority will meet and review the responses received from you or the group you represent. Any resulting decisions to adopt, deny or defer approval of the name “Salish Sea” will be based on conformance with established geographical naming principles, including comments received through this consultation process.

I've been using the term Salish Sea for a long time and find it to be a combination of usefulness and poetry. Send your comments to Meredith.Westington@noaa.gov by July 28th!