By Liz Blackman, graduate student in the institute’s 14th cohort. As I slide over the edge of the raceway and landed knee-deep in water I can barely see …
Read More of Giving a "Dam": A Natural History of Beavers
Woke up at 0555 to a pack of coyotes (Canis latrans) howling and barking in a playful manner with one another for about ten minutes. During this …
Read More of Beavers and Hawks: Graduate Fall Retreat Seminar 2015
Hot. Dry. Dusty. A perfect description for the Methow Valley, an area currently in a severe drought. So it was rather surprising then when the new graduate …
Read More of Classroom in Bloom: Growing the locavores of tomorrow
One of the highlights of this my time in this graduate program so far (seven months!) has been our seasonal natural history retreats. In the fall, Cohort 14 …
Read More of Chasing Winter: A Natural History Retreat
The East side is burning. A certain degree of compartmentalization is required to brush away images of treasured places in flames, wildlife fleeing for their lives, and homes …
Read More of Prometheus in Paradise: Fires in the Methow Valley bring loss but reveal a committed community
The weight of a winter storm has whisked away the opportunity to further my exploration of the Methow Valley for another season. The fragile thread of concrete …
Read More of The Last Days in the Rain Shadow
Terror surged silently through my viscera as I watched the swirling inferno twist red and merciless up the talus in the smoke-blackened darkness of night. Trapped on …
Read More of The Gifts of Prometheus : the natural and social dimensions of fire ecology
August 2nd through 4th, 16 participants, three Institute staff, and one instructor spent a wonderful weekend exploring the order of the Odonata. Due to cold and cloudy weather, …
Read More of Order of the Odonata
Last weekend Cohort 11 graduate students had the chance to step away from our roles as Mountain School Instructors and again return to being students of Natural …
Read More of From Teacher to Student and Back Again
After several weeks of preparing for and teaching fall Mountain School, graduate students of Cohort 10 momentarily stepped away from their roles as instructors and transitioned back …
Read More of A Naturalist's Weekend: Exploring Fungi, Fire and Beetles
