North Cascades Institute

Okay, so I mentioned in the last post that we had an awesome-jam-in-the-fun-love-the-mountains-and-the-bay-fest-of-awesomeness a couple of weekends ago, right? Or, I said something like that, at least. Anyways, that appliance derby was funny, but, well, to be real for a minute, nothing man-made can beat the geography of this beautiful place in which we've chosen to live. So, are you ready for the Saturday post of the chronological series of posts I promised you? Here goes...

There's this place in the Cascade Mountains called The North Cascade Institute (http://www.ncascades.org/). We'd caught wind of it last summer, but, unfortunately, we had commitments or poor weather rained out our parade on all of the free days, and, though I wish it wasn't so, we couldn't, nor can we now, afford to attend the non-free days. This summer, though... Phew Wee!... We were ready. We attended a free "day trip" at the institute. The website didn't give us too many details, and so we didn't quite know what to expect. The one thing we did know was that we would get to go canoeing on Diablo Lake in a canoe made for a dozen people. That was all we needed to know. We were off.

Since we couldn't reserve spots for this shindig, we woke up early, 4am early, and drove until we hit the Cascades. Then, we kept driving, until we were in the middle of the Cascades. I should say, Mike drove. I should also say that I love him very much for driving when I don't want to.


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We pulled in...

We got excited...

And, then, we checked out the gift shop, found the bathrooms, ate some breakfast, and waited for a couple of hours until the staff showed up. Our efforts, however, put us at the top of the list for all free-day activities, including that big ass canoe. I wish I could say this mattered, being there early, but, sadly, only eleven other people showed up for this free day, and most of them were family members of the staff and students at the institute. It was great for all of us there, but I'm not sure why more people didn't make the trek out for such a cool opportunity.

Anyways, when we went to sign up for our respective two seats in the canoe, we learned that the free day encompassed more than a canoe adventure. We got to sign up for an informational dam walk and a naturalist-led hike as well. Howdy-doo-dee, eh? Talk about having your cake and eating it, too! We were just a couple of thrilled Thelmas, we were!

On our walk down to the dam, we learned a few things:

• The dam is property of Seattle City Light. That same dam cooperates with Gorge and Ross dams to power 25% of all of the electricity in Seattle. That might not seem like a lot, you know, "not even half" - right? BUT... consider this, Seattle is, like, a major U.S. city. 25% of Seattle's electricity is a lot of electricity. So, I wouldn't fuck with these dams if I were you; they mean business.
• Since this dam is situated within a national park, which strikes most as a juxtaposition, some very important people had to do some very important thinking. Such serious thinking resulted in the area with the dam being separated, politically, from the national park. The dam is within Ross Recreational Area. You see, since the dam was there before the area was deemed a preserved national park, they were able to resolve the clashing moral situation by creating a "recreational area." Our guide informed us, though, that Seattle City Light still has to go through a mitigation process every year or maybe every few years. The results of these mitigation processes have required Seattle City Light to provide education to the public in conjunction with their dam. This is how The North Cascade Institute, a non-profit, comes into the picture. If you visit the institute's website (linked earlier), you will see that their facilities are extremely nice, architecturally speaking. They don't look like a non-profit. Here's the deal-- Seattle City Light built all of the buildings on the institute's campus, and they rent the campus to the institute for $1.00/year. The institute then is able to thrive and provide environmental education for the public, which allows Seattle City Light to hold up their end of the bargain and keep their dam running.
  
• The enthusiastic young woman leading our dam walk informed us that she was not a staff member at the institute, but instead was a graduate student earning her master's degree in environmental education. Cool, huh? She gets to spend a year in residency at The North Cascades Institute in place of writing a thesis. Then, she attends classes at the university here in B'ham for a year, and then she has a degree. She didn't pick a bad program, if you ask me.
• The forest ranger who accompanied us on our dam walk and later led our hike, Ranger Mike, has a bachelor's degree in literature. He doesn't have any graduate schooling. Do this math, folks. Mike, as in the one we all know and love, has a literature degree. There could be two friendly forest men named Ranger Mike! Whoa!

Okay. You're welcome for all of that knowledge I just dropped on you. Now, the dam:

The view from the middle of the dam:

Behind us is the dam. Behind that is Pyramid Peak:

Full of knowledge and ready for more, we strapped on some personal flotation devices and boarded the eighteen-person canoe. That's right, y'all. They have a twelve-person and an eighteen-person canoe. It was awesome.


On the canoe, Katie, our guide, informed us of a couple of cool bits o' history:

• We canoed between two small islands situated in Diablo Lake. One island, Deer Island, got its name because deer used to swim out to the island to have their fawns in order to raise their young in a place safe from predators. Once the babies weren't babies anymore, the mother and her young would swim back to the mainland together. The other island, Monkey Island, got its name because, back sometime around, gosh, I want to say the 1930's??? Let's say that. Back around the 1930's, some entrepreneurs found themselves a bunch of monkeys. In the morning, they'd take the monkeys out to this tiny island by boat and release them. They'd let the monkeys do their thing on the island for the day and then would go round them all up again at night and take them off the island, again by way of boat. They advertised to the masses that monkeys were living on this pocket-sized island in the middle of the North Cascades. How bizarre and terrific! Wham, bam, a tourist attraction is born, right? Well, apparently it didn't go over too well, and the entrepreneurs never saw their desired fortune. "Monkey Island" stuck, though. I still looked for one as we canoed on by, but, if there were any stragglers, they sure knew how to hide. Or they evolved. One or the other.
  
• We had a lovely view of Sourdough Mountain, which got its name in... a long time ago, like before the mountains were named...which got its name when a climber was exploring and making his way up the mountain. This climber had with him a jar with starter for sourdough bread. During his journey up the mountain, the jar exploded, and sourdough flew everywhere. There you have it -- Sourdough Mountain.
  

After paddling, we had a long lunch break, which Mike and I used to play on the shore.








Re-fueled, we met up with Ranger Mike and a few other hikers. Ranger Mike led us up to a waterfall and a stunning vista. On the way, he showed us evidence of bears and cougars. This one, I believe, was from a bear:


Ranger Mike also introduced us to spring beauty, a flowering plant that is edible to humans and tastes better than any salad greens I've ever had:

We learned about cones on the way. I'd write "pine" cones, but I'd be lying. We learned about Douglas fir cones and hemlock cones. We also learned that squirrels leave their food remnants (i.e. pieces of pine cones) in large piles. Those piles are called middens.


And, then...

...

the vista!








And, the waterfall.

In short, The North Cascades Institute is crazy-awesome-cool. We'll definitely be going back.

You know, pals, I was hoping to get another blog up today, but... this one was a doozy. I think I'm going to sign off for now. Stay tuned, though. You've got to read/see what the rest of this particular weekend brought. Then, after that, I can fill you in on my birthday weekend (last weekend), which was also phenomenal!!! So, yeah, stay tuned. Good stuff goin' on...