If you can see Mt. Baker, you are part of The Experience
Four decades ago, when North Cascades National Park was still one of the newer national parks on the scene, a group of park rangers, educators and environmentalists were working to get an educational nonprofit dedicated to the region off the ground.
Founder and first Executive Director Saul Weisberg recalled those early days with cofounder Tom Fleischner as filled with optimism and a vision for harnessing the power of the region to inspire deep learning. But there were some bumps in the road.
“People started registering for classes, we looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve got to get a bank account,’” Weisberg said. “We had to learn how to do everything. But things just started to grow.”
Celebrating its 40th anniversary this summer, North Cascades Institute has created learning opportunities for thousands of students from schools across the state. Since its official start in 1986, the institute has expanded its footprint from a collection of field classes atop mountain glens to a state of the art Environmental Learning Center tucked into the shores of Diablo Lake. The institute offers a range of experiential learning opportunities, including its long-running Mountain School for sixth graders, and its Youth Leadership Adventures program, tailored to high school students.
The field classes are the backbone of what the institute does, and still remain a powerful tool to help the state’s youth (and adults) unplug from their increasingly digital world and tap into something older, something more powerful.
Executive Director Bec Detrich said having a space, curriculum and staff that allows kids to connect with their pristine backyard in the North Cascades — and perhaps more importantly, one another — works constant wonders.
“For kids to be able to be overnight in a place, to be grounded in a spot that is just so different, I think is incredible,” Detrich said. “Being able to go out on trails and let kids be able to be curious and wonder and ask their own questions and follow their own curiosities, it’s so different from what kids experience day to day in a classroom.”
Detrich said one thing that constantly inspires her is seeing multiple generations of Mountain School students attending trips; kids on their first time, accompanied by their parents who went on the same journey all those years ago.
She described Mountain School as “learning wrapped up in play,” which is a very effective way of getting today’s kids quickly engaged. Phones are put away at Mountain School, and it usually takes a day or so for those adolescent brains to deprogram themselves and not immediately reach for their pockets in a moment of boredom or solitude, Detrich said.
“Instead, they’re actually just present and connecting with people, connecting with the space in a really different way,” Detrich said. “That’s one of the biggest lessons they end up having.”
With NCI’s environmental education experience, the curriculum tends to focus toward the hard sciences like biology, geology — the science of what Detrich dubbed “those angsty, teenage mountains” that make the North Cascades so iconic. But the institute teaches much more than just the hard sciences.
Poetry, photography, Indigenous history and so much more are taught at — and inspired by — the land and people of the North Cascades.
Some “lifelong learners,” as Detrich described them, have been coming back to take classes at NCI for years. Whatever the topic of the day, the ultimate lesson usually revolves around taking a moment to appreciate the stunning landscape that provides so much to its residents, and learning how to protect it.
“Our mission is about caring for these beautiful landscapes that take care of us, that we rely on,” Detrich said. “It’s about stewardship.”
That’s always been the North Star guiding the institute, something Weisberg — its founding director for 35 years — echoed.
“When you ask someone who’s done Mountain School, 20 to 30 years from now, ‘What is home?’ I would hope that when they talk about home, they talk about the watersheds and the mountains and the plants and animals that lived there as part of home,” Weisberg said. “Then you’ll treat your home like your home.”
Looking back on 40 years of the institute, founding board member and former Western Washington University Dean of Huxley College John Miles said what he sees today is beyond what he ever could have imagined.
When asked if he ever expected to see the institute operating in the way it does now — educating thousands of students and getting people of all ages outdoors — the institute’s unofficial historian gave an immediate response.
“No, no way,” Miles said. “The idea was: Let’s get some of the incredible expertise that existed in the Pacific Northwest and get them together to give people the opportunity to enjoy this place and learn about it. The rest was beyond our fondest dreams.” X
