Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer A certain power …
Read More of Gifts of Spring: Flowering Plants of the Skagit Valley
I sat on a pile of leaves and conifer needles in the space between where two large roots of a western red cedar sloped to the ground.
Read More of Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust: Excerpt from Heather Durham
Here’s a story line. A boy grows up in an idyllic place, a small rural place, the plains of Nebraska, say, or small town North Carolina. What …
Read More of UPLAKE: Restless Essays of Coming and Going: Excerpt from Ana Marie Spagna
Officially, we celebrated our planet Mon., April 22, and many of us took part in a wide variety of celebrations, work parties and other gatherings intended to …
Read More of Climate Science: From Students to Stewards
I was given the opportunity to go on my first camping trip when I was 15. It was a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, …
Read More of “Why I Do The Work” : A Testimony from Youth Leadership Adventure’s Elle Gasperini
On an unusually warm and sunny March Saturday in the Skagit Valley, I visited the home of Kimber Burrows, North Cascades Institute’s Mountain School Manager. Cars filled …
Read More of Listening to Community Voices: Proposed Mining in Marblemount
Do you have childhood memories of daydreaming about being a squirrel and gliding from tree to tree in a forest? Can you recall getting lost in tiny …
Read More of Forest School: An Environmental Education
The North Cascades Environmental Learning Center is home to an extensive Natural History collection used for environmental programming located in the Sundew Classroom. Named after a carnivorous …
Read More of Under the Stars: Astronomy at the Environmental Learning Center
The North Cascades Institute offers a great diversity of year-round programming, but few will disagree that Mountain School has been one of our greatest successes. For 28 years, the …
Read More of On the Bus to Wonder: Burlington-Edison Joins Our Mountain School Community
The Skagit Valley has been one of my favorite places to photograph bird life in Washington state. Winter season is one of the best times of the …
Read More of Raptors of the Samish Flats: The Photography of Mukul Soman
