Institute offers broader array of programs, including sourdough
by Tara Nelson
Deep in the heart of the North Cascades mountain range, on a lonely stretch of highway between Sedro-Woolley and Eastern Washington’s Methow Valley, lies an unexpected gem. Tucked away into a pocket of forest near Lake Diablo is the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, a place where children learn and adults get hands-on training in the 684,000-acre wilderness playground known as the North Cascades National Park.
Don’t let the name fool you. While the center provides a variety of outdoor educational programs, it’s an excellent way for grown-ups to have fun in the woods and explore a variety of outdoor activities – no equipment or prior experience necessary.
The center, created in 2005 as part of a mitigation agreement by Seattle City Light for its use of the Skagit River for hydroelectric projects, offers outdoor interpretive excursions led by staff naturalists. It was founded in 1986 by Saul Weisberg, then a North Cascades park ranger, along with his college buddies as a side project. With a $39,000 budget, they offered multi-day trips around the Cascades and group camping trips, often forgoing a salary to keep the operation going.
“We love this place and saw the potential for it to get torn apart because there wasn’t a place for people to get good information,” he said. “The dialogue back then was always us versus them and it was always angry. We thought if we could get more people exposed to nature, the conversation might become more informed and more civil. Our goal was conversation and also to help save this place we love.
“We like to joke we’re a faith-based organization, in that we have faith that the more people experience something the more they’re going to care about it and the more they’re going to want to know.”
Today, the non-profit manages a $2.5 million program and 16-building complex that features a library, dorm-style bedrooms and classrooms that feature workshops on everything from photography to geology to butterflies and art.
Although the center was first designed to offer youth programs, director Saul Weisberg said they have added more adult seminars, retreats and other programs in the past few years. Some of those classes – including the Sourdough Speaker Series offered twice a year – are geared toward older audiences. Last season’s series included a presentation by noted Northwest landscape photographer Lee Mann (see interview, page 10) with an overnight stay in comfortable guest rooms, breakfast and a guided canoe trip across Lake Diablo. The series is named after the nearby Sourdough Mountain, where beat poet Gary Snyder served as a fire lookout.
Another popular series “Searching for Kerouac in the North Cascades” reflects the fact that author Jack Kerouac (On The Road, Dharma Bums) served as a fire lookout at nearby Sourdough Mountain as did poet Gary Snyder.
Each Sourdough engagement begins Saturday around sunset with wine and hors d’oeuvres on the deck of the lakeside dining hall, one of the only buildings refurbished when the North Cascades Institute built the complex on the existing foundation of the former Lake Diablo Resort. Guests also enjoy an informal gourmet dinner using local and organic foods whenever possible. .
The campus is designed to encourage guests to be outdoors whenever possible. Realizing that it rains more often than not in Pacific Northwest, architects with Henry Klien group in Mount Vernon included overlapping eves made from a mix of recycled fly ash and concrete to allow guests to walk throughout the complex without getting wet.
“They really got the issue of sustainability before it was even a buzz word,” Weisberg said. “We used simple materials and simple systems because sustainability also involves longetivity. Although at the time, we had a hard time finding subcontractors who were certified.”
Site placement was selected with the sun’s heat in mind, capturing southern exposure in the winter and shading from the intense northern exposure in the summer. As a result, no air conditioning is needed.
The campus also features trails, a canoe dock, outdoor learning shelters, an amphitheater and the Wild Ginger library.
The North Cascades Learning Center’s website is www.ncascades.org.
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