I Ching, therefore I am (Or how the North Cascades Institute Came Into Being)

by Jack Kintner

Twenty-three years ago a young North Cascades National Park climbing ranger named Saul Weisberg and a friend, interpretive naturalist and park ranger Tom Fleischner, started talking about what later became the North Cascades Institute (NCI), a non-profit agency whose stated goal is to inspire folks toward a closer relationship with nature through direct experiences in the natural world. At one point, they addressed their uncertainties by casting the I Ching, and it came up with the phrase “perseverance further.” Though Weisberg got a laugh in telling the story later at the first open house for their new Environmental Learning Center (ELC), he was serious. This wasn’t just someone consulting a fortune cookie after a meal in a Chinese restaurant.

The ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism has at its root a view of the world as a dynamic balance of opposites, that events unfold as a part of an ongoing process, and that because of this, change is inevitable. That’s why Weisberg, despite the chuckle, said several times in his short speech that “this [facility] will change us and will change what we do and how we do it.” Balanced but struggling forces is a reasonable description of the ongoing fights of conservationists to protect wilderness areas, and leads to terse and pointed epigrams like “We have not inherited the earth from our fathers; we are borrowing it from our children.” So persevere they did, and in February of 1986 NCI was born. Five years later they were asked to participate in mitigation hearings for the re-licensing of the Seattle City Light dams on the Skagit River. What’s mitigated in this process is the supposed impact the dams have on those who live around them,only in this case there were only two affected parties, native tribes and the North Cascades National Park(NCNP) complex, which includes two recreational areas.

The North Cascades Conservation Council,which had been instrumental in establishing the national park, joined the mitigation process as an intervener and suggested ongoing environmental education, which led to the ELC. The stated mission is to conserve and restore northwest environments through education. It’s taken a while to get to the point where the center’s up and running. Delays were caused by problems with the original contractor and a severe road washout. A regime change at Seattle City Light resulted in cost-cutting attempts to trim the number of major buildings, but this was resisted for the most part,and on this past July 2 the center opened for its first set of classes,Fourth of July in the Mountains, a family getaway.

This summer there were 24 adult programs, seven summer youth adventures and two more family getaways. “Mountain School” begins in the fall with the first public school class to visit, fifth graders from Mount Vernon. The size of the campus when one first arrives is a little deceptive. “There’s really no boundary to speak of,” said NCNP superintendent Bill Paleck. “There are seven million acres of wilderness around us right now, and at the park we’re letting them put these buildings inside our part of that wilderness.” The ELC was designed, furthermore, to minimize its visual impaction the surroundings and mimic what architect David Hall sees as basic elements to the forest canopy,so the buildings have roof overhangs that partially cover a central walkway that was to have had a stream running through it, and the steel posts that hold them up are branched like a tree as well. Light filters through the gaps. Lights are on sensors so the brighter the day, the less light will be put out by the classroom fixtures. There are exterior sprinklers under the eaves, and it is hoped that some of the more heavily traveled graveled trails can be paved over with large cast concrete bricks to minimize damage to the fir floors. The bricks were eliminated in another cost-saving move. Hall said the chance to design such a campus was a “once in a lifetime opportunity.

It began as a single building but as the project grew we kind of pulled it apart into the 16 distinct structures you now see. The higher on the hill we went the lower the buildings, again to minimize impact.” The central dining hall is the only structure left from the days of Diablo Lake Resort, and commands a view of Diablo Lake that’s filtered though a screen of fir and hemlock trees. A program called the “Food Shed Project” is designed to feed residents and guests of the center from organic and sustainable food production farms in both Skagit and Whatcom counties. The cook,Charles Classen, and his family are some of the few permanent residents, along with facility manager Eric Dean.

The learning center has a 20-per-son canoe and some smaller canoes that will be used for excursions on the lake. The campus, roughly five acres in area, slopes up 400 feet from the dining hall to the dormitories at the top level for the 14 graduate students from Huxley College of the Environment at Western Washington University who will live therefor a year. The amphitheater is immediately outside the dining hall, and on the next level are classrooms, labs,an administration building and a library that has a four by fourteen foot solid fir table. It’s striking, even with the widespread use of wood in the floors, window casings and interior roofs of the buildings. It was constructed by Craig Holmquist, NCNP trails foreman,out of fir that came from a blow-down on Baker Lake. The wood had been obtained for another project at the Cataldo Mission in Idaho,and Holmquist said he got enough wood so he would have some leftover in case he made a mistake. “It’s a repair that will be highly visible,so we air dried the four slabs of fir for a year and then Pacific Rim Tonewoods of Sedro Woolley helped me pick the best three out of four pieces, and two of those went into the project at the mission.”

The other two were edge glued and assembled by G. R. Plume Lumber of Ferndale, a manufacturer of “glue-lam” wooden beams, and the finished table was then carried in one piece to the learning center library by the trail crew, whose last names sound like a Swedish hockey team: Olson, Jensen, Swenson,Swanson, Benson and Holmquist. “We wanted to put the wood to good use, and this is a perfect place for this table so we gave it to NCIas a gift for their opening. I need another one, though, so now I’m looking for wood again,” Holmquistsaid. On October 8, representatives from the National Park Service, the City of Seattle and NCI will get together for an official dedication of the $12 million facility that sit sin the middle of a continuous wilderness of over seven million acres, a place where people can come to learn about that wilderness and natural world that surrounds them. The learning center may be contacted at 360/856-5700 or online at www.ncascades.org.