North Cascades Culture

North Cascades National Park from Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Summer 2010. 

North Cascades National Park, Summer 2010.

Some readers may have noticed that it has been a while since I last posted. Some will also note that this post is pretty long. I think the posts over the last two years have painted a fairly accurate picture of my life in the North Cascades. Though I have held back in certain areas, particularly concerning my family, I have tried to be honest about my various successes and mistakes as I, like everyone else, fumble through my imperfect life. Rather than go through another year of the cycle of my life which, though different from other years, would also fall into somewhat monotonous regularity (this monotony is part and parcel of the subject of this post/essay), I will be doing a series of essays. These will take a lot longer to put together into something that resembles coherency. So please bear with me.

For over 100 years, non-Native American settlers and the people that followed them have been making a living and interacting with and using the resources in the North Cascades. A culture has evolved from this. This non-Native culture isn’t as distinct as cultures in other places that evolved in isolation. The connectedness of the world for last hundred years or more has ensured that the people here adhere to many of same societal norms as the rest of the country. This lack of obvious distinctiveness is even more pronounced due to the recent increase in globalization. Yet this culture is as unique in its own way as any other culture in the world. One should consider that even the oldest culture in the world didn’t start out being thousands of years old.

The non-Native American culture here also isn’t as distinct as the Native American cultures that it impacted, in many ways adversely. It is important to note that the non-Native peoples living in the North Cascades owe their presence here, in part, to the displacement and often marginalization of the Native people that had lived here for millennia. It is also important to note that no one living today is responsible for these past practices, most, if not all, of which were wrong. If those practices were wrong then, similar practices today are also wrong.

So, what exactly creates a culture? I don’t know what textbooks say but my own personal observation on this question is that the immediate environment of the people living in a given area is an important factor in shaping a culture. A culture is molded and shaped by, among other things, climate, geography and availability of resources.

People living in a given area adjust their lives to what resources are available and the timing of when these resources are available. They also adjust their lives to the limitations of that area. These adjustments, some obvious and some more subtle, I think, are a strong base for a culture because they cause people to view the world in a certain way, which is often unique.

A favorite example of mine of adjusting your life to timing of resource availability is putting up hay in western Washington. If you want to put up dry hay for livestock, you need to do it when the grass is ready and you have enough sunny days to cure your hay so it won’t mold or burn your barn down. In western Washington this can be a tricky proposition. Early July is usually the prime time for haying in our area though, depending on where you live and the weather conditions of a particular year, successful hay crops can be harvested from May through September. Early July is usually the best time though. This is when the grass is tall enough to make a good crop and when the weather conditions are right for curing the cut hay.
 

Therefore, I keep my schedule clear and don’t make any commitments in early to mid July (unless my hay has already been put up, a rare occurrence for me) because I don’t know when we will get haying weather. In order to successfully put up a hay crop you quite often have to take action quickly and you can’t afford to be overcommitted or overextended. Haying weather doesn’t always fall on weekends either, so you have to be ready to take days off work to get the hay done.

I have also noticed that July is a popular time for people nowadays to have parties because the weather is typically nicer. I have a hunch that this wouldn’t have been the case here not too long ago, at least not for people who had to make hay to feed their stock and maintain their livelihoods. Back in those days the weather forecasting wasn’t very good and everyone hustled to get the hay in before it got rained on, working well after dark many times, as I have heard. At that point, I imagine everyone would have been too tired to party much and besides, unless they were done for the year, they had to get up early the next day and do it all over again.

Hay is a kind of high stakes all-or-nothing crop. One way around the high stakes risks of making hay for livestock fodder is to do silage or forage root crops like mangel beets or turnips. By the number of old unused silos around, especially when I was younger, it is evident that silage was a more common crop in the old days. There might have been a cultural shift from silage and root crops to more hay before my time. This shift may have occurred due to improved technology, weather forecasting and equipment that made it a better bet to do hay but, from all the stories I’ve heard, they still made a lot of hay in the old days too.

Another good example of seasonal resource availability is berry picking. There is usually a short window when a given berry species is available so, if you want some, you had better concentrate on getting them in their season before they are gone for the year.

I don’t think many groups of people in history that depended heavily on seasonal availability of any resource, whether it was crops grown in the field or something hunted, caught or gathered from the landscape, held many celebratory events during the peak of resource availability. I do think most people held big blow out celebratory events but I have a hunch that most of those events were held in lull times before and after peak seasonal availability of crucial resources.  

Some other examples of how resource limitations shape the way one thinks and the culture are some trips that I made Down Below at the end of March and early April. Eastern Skagit County isn’t really very remote compared to many parts of the world but the population density is low enough that many goods and services are not available here. To get these things necessitates a trip of between eight and fifty miles (eight miles is still local, fifty miles is Down Below) from where I live. Quite often a trip Down Below can burn up the better part of a day.  

When you burn the time and fuel to go fifty miles, you generally want to get the most bang for your buck so to speak. So I had a list of things to take care of when I went Down Below in the afternoon. I got blood drawn for some tests, the studded tires off my car (the shop did quicker than could have done myself and for free), a medicated worm block for the cows and groceries on way home. The next week in the afternoon, I got a haircut, new work clothes, some things for Easter, had an appointment with a urologist about fixing my failed vasectomy (not going to be any fun), got some non prescription medication that I can’t get locally and got groceries again.

If I had made special trip for all of these things separately, it would have probably taken a total of about four days of my time, most of which would have been on the road traveling. So I saved a lot of time by doing multiple errands on each trip, about three days worth, and I saved several tanks of fuel.

Many people who don’t live here don’t understand the whole trip Down Below thing. I don’t know how many times have seen people new to the area try to start car pools. But usually when you have to go Down Below for any reason, you have list of errands and this list is probably going to conflict with the schedule of anyone who would be riding with you, who probably has a list of their own to work through. The system of individual trips to do multiple errands is probably pretty efficient unless you are only going down for single items or events, which sometimes happens. In this case, car pooling with people with the same schedule as yours would make a lot of sense. To really know which system is better in a given situation, one would actually have to do a scientific study to compare the two.

When my dad was a little kid, they went Down Below maybe once a month. Undoubtedly this shaped his thinking. You didn’t waste things and you didn’t throw something away if it was still good or had useful parts because you couldn’t just go to the store and get one if you needed it at some later date. Some of this thinking and behavior was passed down to me. I think there was probably already some tendency toward hoarding in my family but this type of thinking and behavior, born from a lack of resources in the past undoubtedly amplified it in today’s world of overabundance. Hence we wound up with an old house stacked full of stuff.

Finally, one last resource limitation in eastern Skagit County that is highly relevant in today’s world is the lack of reliable internet access and even power. I must admit, the power outages have been minimal in the last several years, kudos to Puget Sound Energy, they seem to be doing something right or maybe its just the last few winters have been very mild. And, while internet access and general connectivity have also been improving, neither can be counted on in the way that they are in more populated areas. Small, relatively isolated areas like this are always going to be behind the curve when it comes to the technology that drives our urban centric society.

The North Cascades are, and probably always will be, my home. Except for the six years I spent in the U.S. Navy, I have never called another place home. This place was literally the entire world to me as I growing up and I viewed the rest of the world through this lens, even after I started learning about other lands and people in school. When I was really young I thought the whole world was like the North Cascades. Who knows how this informs and creates a unique point of view based on this place?

Undoubtedly having grown up here shapes my view of the world in ways that I am not even aware of. I have read of studies that indicate that every time we retrieve a memory, it is altered. So oral histories will naturally shift over time. I don’t remember every story or bit of information that I have heard in my life verbatim and I don’t remember every experience. I, like probably everyone else, carry around in my head a lot of information that can’t be retrieved at will. That is, it is almost as if I didn’t know the information at all and am unaware of its existence except that, if the right question is asked, or the right context given, it comes to mind, usually without effort. I have no doubt that this subconscious information, a lot of which is based on a lifetime of experiences in this place, has an influence on the conscious mind, shaping a unique perspective on the world.

This unique perspective, based on, and specific to, this place is not something that can simply be re-created if I move away to somewhere else. The same is true for just about every kid who grows up here. Like me, this place, to a large degree, is literally the world during their formative years. As they grow up they are accumulating information, stories and experiences based on their immediate surroundings. You can’t buy this, you can’t teach it in a few short days or weeks and you can’t read about it in a book. You have to live it and living it results in the authenticity that certain segments of our society seem to yearn for so much. I think this unique perspective, among other things, is a cultural base and, like any other culture, the only way you can really preserve it and have it continue into the future is to have people who continue to live it.

Almost everywhere I go, I am literally moving through history. My previous Lesser Known History of the North Cascades Posts highlight this experience. I generally can’t go more than a quarter mile on the North Cascades Highway (State Route 20) without passing one or more spots that have some story attached to them. There are stories and history everywhere, not just along the highway, and, though I am not particularly religious or spiritual, I often feel like I am communing with my ancestors and relatives and the people they knew as well as my own past. For me it gives the experience of living here an extra dimension, that of personal history, layered on to my existence.

This is also something that you can’t buy that or read it in a book. I never experienced this type of feeling of being surrounded and enveloped in personal history in the six years I spent in far flung places in the U.S. Navy. Hawaii and Guam, though certainly beautiful, seemed kind of flat and one dimensional to me. This extra dimension of personal history as well as the traditions I still practice while living and making a living here that create a deep relationship with the place are some of the reasons I stay in the North Cascades, not for something as superficial as the beautiful surroundings.

At this stage of my life I do appreciate the aspect of the beauty of this place but if there was nothing more to it than that, the experience would be as flat and superficial as the ones I had in the U.S. Navy. While I was in Hawaii and Guam, I was basically a tourist, observing but not taking part in the deeper experience of participating in the daily life of those places.

By the time they are adults, my kids will be heir to over 140 years of local and family history here. I understand that this is a drop in the bucket compared to many people the world over but it is significant for the descendants of European American settlers in the North Cascades. How powerful would it be for them to read my grandma’s journals and have the sense of connection not only to the ancestor who wrote of her experiences here but also to the experience of still dealing with some of the situations and using some of same resources in a similar manner that she did? Obviously you can read the journals but you have to live the life to get the rest of it.

The culture here isn’t limited to just the people who grew up here either. Throughout history people all over the world have moved around. It is no different here. People have always come and gone and you always need a certain influx of new people to keep your community fresh. My mom didn’t live here until she was eleven years old and my dad’s parents weren’t born here either. So obviously they didn’t start their lives and experiences here as old timers. They started first at a day, then a month, then a year, then decades, the same as many others who came here from somewhere else.

As I stated previously, all through a person’s life they accumulate stories about their surroundings and experiences and make myriad observations. When someone new arrives here this process continues, only the stories and experiences are now related to this place. So someone who has lived here and made a living here for a significant amount of time will also have a large store of knowledge and experience about this place that informs a unique perspective.

Many people who have arrived here relatively recently are my highly valued friends and are great contributors to my community. I have learned many interesting and valuable things from many of these folks. They have thrown their lot in with the community and I consider them to be as much a part of the culture here as anyone else. Because they have thrown their lot in with the community, in so many ways, their experience is indistinguishable from the old timers. Again, these experiences help shape a cultural perspective on the world specific to living and making a living in the North Cascades.

There is a saying in Africa that goes something like “when an old person dies, a library is destroyed”. Something similar happens to the knowledge carried by the people of this culture when they leave this place. It isn’t necessarily destroyed but it is quite often out of context and useless in new settings and is lost to the people who stay behind and quite often to the knowledge carrier as well, something I will expand upon shortly. This loss may, in some respects, be more significant when someone who has grown up here and has a family history here leaves but, in a small place like this, with limited resources, the loss of anyone who has gained unique knowledge and a unique perspective on this place from having lived here and made a living here, whether it be relatively few years or many, is significant.

It is truly tragic when a culture that has existed for hundreds or thousands of years goes extinct because each different culture has a unique perspective on the world and many of these perspectives are quite specific to living in a place. The loss of more recently evolved cultures with unique perspectives and knowledge particular to a place, while not as great as much older cultures is, nonetheless, significant.

Cultural knowledge and practices as well as languages can be recorded but if no one uses them any more, the culture and any language linked to it die. All that is left is whatever historians have managed to capture. I think pursuing and recording history is a very admirable endeavor but a recorded history is a dry and dead thing compared to a living culture of people actively interacting with the conditions and environment that are responsible for the evolution of their culture. A good analogy to this is trying to learn about the behavior of the great auk by observing the last stuffed member of this species in a museum (I don’t know what museum the last great auk is in, if there is one, and didn’t take the time to look it up). Depending upon the taxidermist’s skill, you can see what the bird looked like from the mounting and get some information about its behavior by the shapes and forms of its various body parts but you won’t learn nearly as much as you would by observing the living creature in its habitat because many subtle details are lost.

Maintaining a culture, I think, is closely tied to enough people, a critical mass, practicing that culture, usually in the place where it evolved. In order to do that, there has to be enough of an economy or at least enough venues and options for people to make a decent living in that place. Lack of economic opportunity is a plague in the North Cascades though it is hardly unique here. I think that lack of economic opportunity is closely tied to loss of culture all over the world as poor people leave their ancestral homelands for a chance at a better life.

It doesn’t bother me if someone who grew up here leaves to seek opportunity elsewhere of their own free choice. But it breaks my heart to see someone who grew up here and wants to stay but can’t due to lack of opportunity. I think it should be the right of everyone to have a decent opportunity to live, and have a decent quality of life, in the place where they were raised, assuming the resources to support this still exist. This doesn’t mean a handout. It means a fair chance.

Resources still exist here that could provide much more than they currently do for the well being of the communities in the North Cascades. Societal decisions that limit the prospects of economy here to one that is based largely on tourism which typically generates some of the poorest paying jobs in this country, that has, as the main attraction, public lands where wilderness designations and, more recently, road closures deny access to the majority of the general public is not a decent opportunity or a fair chance. Such an economy generates very few stable, living wage jobs for the people who want to live here. 

As I have stated earlier, I often think that the beauty of this place causes a lot of problems for the people who are trying to make a living here. I often think that my personality would have led me to be just as attached any other place if I had happened to grow up there, even if the surroundings were much less dramatic. I sometimes wish I had grown up somewhere less dramatic where I wasn’t beholden to fantasies projected by people from the outside.

As I also stated before, in small communities like this the loss of even one person can be significant. A good example is the Marblemount Community Hall. Every one of us involved with the hall is swamped with things we need to take care of in our personal lives yet currently there is a small group of us who is willing to make the time to show up on a regular basis and put work into it.

In a situation like this, loss of even one or two people means those that are left who already have work hard, have to work that much harder and become more prone to burnout and dropping out. This can create a cycle of burnout and dropout, this tends to create a self-perpetuating downward spiral that greatly lessens overall quality of life and results in a cultural decline. The same holds true for volunteer fire departments. I have also been told that the presence of more kids with parents well off enough to create stable homes lives goes a long way to stabilizing classrooms in school. In a small school, every student with a stable home life is very important.

Protection of endangered species is another reason given for the resource use restrictions that are so detrimental to rural economies. I have nothing against logical, socially just measures taken to try to protect endangered species. I hope this blog project to this point has made it abundantly clear that I appreciate this place and everything that lives here as much as anyone else. I certainly don’t want to see the extinction of any species and there are arguments that I think are valid that every species lost damages the resilience of an ecosystem and, if you lose enough species, the ecosystem collapses and loses much of its function. This is somewhat analogous to the cultural decline described above.

However, the lifestyles and actions of all of our society are creating most of the extinctions and environmental problems that we face today. Until everyone from top to bottom of society is on board with the pain and sacrifice needed to change things in a significant manner, our environmental problems won’t go away. These problems aren’t going to be fixed by scapegoating a small segment of our population and this isn’t an effective way to deal with real world problems. About the only effect scapegoating will have is to make some of the folks who feel guilty about creating a demand for resources feel good about themselves because they are trying to stop the “bad” people who are producing those resources.

The needs of my family and the people around us should not take a back seat to someone else’s superficial feel good preservation project or recreational experience.

The folks who do feel that rural communities needs are superseded by such projects and recreational experiences could just as well live out here and set examples of how to live a righteous life in harmony with nature, using only a bare minimum of resources to get by. There are actually people out here who, to their credit, live this way and I can tell you that their third world standard of living isn’t what I aspire to. I seriously doubt most people would and I am pretty sure that most of the people in the third world would want to improve on their present conditions. Just because we happen to live in a pretty place I don’t think my family and community should have to pay the price to mitigate the environmental degradation that creates the excess wealth in certain areas of our society that enables preservationist attitudes there. I don’t have any issues with everybody who happens to live in such areas. Nobody should be blamed for trying to make a living in the best way they feel that they can. I have a problem with hypocrites who have their needs met by economies that create near biological wastelands telling other people they can’t have an economy based on practices which create a fraction of the ecological impacts.

Again, if we want to live in a just society, the needs of the people who live in an area and depend on its resources as a means to make a living and to contribute to society need to be considered first, before anything else. We, as a society are all creating the conditions that are leading to the extinction of other species. Again, we all contribute to environmental problems to some degree. No one culture is responsible for it all so no one culture should bear most of the burden in trying to fix the problem. Likewise no one culture has the moral authority to designate itself blameless or another as the sole source of the problem. No one culture has the moral authority to designate another as unimportant or insignificant.

The people of all the cultures here are just as much a part of the American story as any other. People from here have fought and died in this country’s wars and they once helped produce the raw materials, timber and minerals that helped build the economy of this region. Some of the cheapest, cleanest energy available in the form of hydropower produced here still continues to contribute to the regional economy.

The culture here isn’t nearly as old as many other cultures in the world but it is unique and, because of this, it is significant in its own way and it deserves to exist as much as any other culture, certainly as much as those cultures that have recently appeared on the scene that are dedicated to “saving the world” by promoting “protection” of the environment in areas where they don’t live, make a living, or contribute to the community.

It seems to me that the culture here is in steady decline. Of course, I am a pessimist.  Things always change and it isn’t the same here as when I was younger. I don’t doubt the decline of culture has been bemoaned by people all over the world for millennia. That being said, the local economy in the North Cascades is very weak and there are very few ways to make a decent living based on the local resources available here.

Historically much of this area’s wealth was generated from local resources, quite often on public land and quite often by business owners who also lived in the local communities. Now much of the economy depends on resources from outside and, not surprisingly, the communities here are beholden to the desires, whims and availability of excess wealth of people who aren’t trying to make a living here.

Most of the good jobs are far away. So many people either move away and live where their work is or they spend a lot of their time driving back and forth. And, ironically, though this area is isolated enough that people who live here don’t get to partake in many of the advantages of more the populated areas without long commutes, it is not isolated enough to keep from getting overwhelmed by the less attractive aspects of excess wealth in nearby areas. Many homes and properties here are unaffordable because wealthy people from those nearby areas pay more for their second or third “vacation” homes here than someone trying to make a living here can afford to pay for their first, and probably only, home.

The physical location of the natural resources on public lands that are being managed by the various state and federal agencies are in rural areas like the North Cascades and this would lead one to believe that there are a lot of jobs associated with that management here. However, most of these jobs are in the bigger towns and cities miles away. So, if you live here and are in that line of work, you are commuting many miles and many hours a week. Any kind of active use of natural resources is now pretty much restricted to private and Washington State DNR lands. There are still a few decent timber related jobs that pay family wages, mostly related to private land but not nearly as many as there used to be.

I would not at all be surprised if my children were members of the last generation of this culture. If things keep going the way they are, I don’t see much of a future here. I don’t know if I would want them to live here anyway, in a place plagued by perpetual economic depression and all of the peripheral problems this causes. This is not my decision to make though. Hopefully, between Sacha and I, we will raise our kids well enough that, when it is time, they can be trusted to make their own decisions on the matter, based on what is right for them. When the time comes, I will try to let them make this decision without interjecting my own fears and prejudices into it. But I can easily see myself, consciously or unconsciously, telling them to get the hell out of here.

This is very depressing and it makes me reluctant to teach a lot of the local human and natural history that I know about this place to my kids and thus pass some of it on to the next generation. Sometimes it seems like so much of this knowledge is a waste of time in today’s world and, judging from my experience, it is doubtful that it will lead to a stable means to make a living. I probably will pass on a lot of my knowledge about this place, though, just because it is the natural thing to do, like teaching your child another language whether or not it may be useful to them in the future.

Another part of me wants to see my kids and the other kids that are growing up here stay here and carry on cultural and family traditions, but wouldn’t want to see any of them have to scrape by just to carry these traditions on.

Assuming I do pass on much of my knowledge, if my kids don’t stay here, much of it will be out of context, like artifacts removed from an archaeological site. In other words, if my kids aren’t living the life that the knowledge refers to, it will be largely useless to them and it will be completely meaningless to their children. So this out of context knowledge probably won’t get passed down from my kids to their kids. Much of this will be in that subconscious store of knowledge that I referred to earlier that needs a context in order to retrieve it. If they don’t live here, there will be no context to retrieve it in. Since most of this knowledge isn’t in any book, it will be lost. To preserve this type of knowledge you have people living lives where it is relevant.

Ironically, my kid’s contemporaries, who will probably be the future natural resource managers here will be learning at least some things in the classroom as adults that my kids will have known about before they could even read and write. And, once these newcomers show up in the field, they will be learning even more things that weren’t covered in any classroom that my kids will have known for most of their lives. Vashti, before the age of three already knew about cedar trees and salmonberries and quite a few other things relating to this place.

On public lands, the U.S. government protects, among other things, historical artifacts through several vehicles such as the Antiquities Act of 1906, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, and the Archaeological  Resources Protection Act of 1979 which provides for fines up to $500,000. This is done to protect the history and knowledge that belongs to all of us and rightfully so.

I find it quite ironic that the same government seems to care so little for the living heirs of this country’s rural history, many of whom have intimate ties to objects protected by the previously named acts. The federal government once managed federal lands in part with an eye on caring for the well being of the communities that bordered these lands and depended on them for resources to sustain their livelihoods. This no longer seems to be its focus.

The culture of the early non-Native settlers in the North Cascades, probably like so many rural cultures in the U.S. are all part of the national narrative we tell about ourselves as a people. With all the other cultures of this country, Native and otherwise, they are a part of our historical legacy, our national heritage, akin to any biological legacy. These cultures in small areas of the U.S. like the North Cascades and small places around the world are being lost at least in part due to active discrimination, oppression and simply neglect.

To my mind, expending great effort to preserve the artifacts of a culture on the one hand while pursuing policies that cause that culture to wither away on the other is the equivalent of the bygone days when various officials, were vying to shoot the last few individuals of species on the brink of extinction so that these individuals could be stuffed and saved by proper curation. In effect, they were delivering the final blow of extinction so that dry, dead representatives of these species could be preserved for posterity.

Time will tell. I definitely don’t know everything and there may be a whole realm of possibilities for my kids and their contemporaries of which I am not even aware. I find some hope in my ignorance of both the present and future.

 

North Cascades National Park, Summer 2007. It took a solid day of off trail walking to reach this spot. 

North Cascades National Park, Summer 2007. Same area as previous photo. 

Same area as previous photos, Summer 2007. 

Making a Living in the North Cascades Part III, Assessment

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. It took me three attempts, each over multiple days, over three years to get to this spot. 

Same spot as previous photo, about half an hour later. I made sure to get up early to get the sunrise, which I hoped would be dramatic and produce some good photos because I didn't think I would ever get back to this place. 

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. 

During two recent posts I have detailed how I have made a living in the North Cascades to this point in my life. This post is my assessment of the experience, what I think about it and how I feel about it.

During my work history I have experienced a number of setbacks. I know that many people everywhere have experienced setbacks throughout history so this is hardly unique to my experience. Many people have experienced setbacks that make mine pale in comparison.

Undoubtedly the reader will find some whining and self-pity among the words that follow. Along with the self-pity, I would hope that the reader will also find well founded observations and grievances. I would also hope the reader will forgive me if a little sarcasm or accusatory language bleeds through in these writings. Some of this may not be warranted but I feel like I have had my back to the wall for years and it is hard to maintain a balanced perspective in this type of situation.

I have watched the place where I grew up and still live, languish in an economic backwater during the last few economic booms this country has experienced. During the Great Recession things certainly didn’t get better. When I was young, even though it was hard, there was work here for those willing to work. It is  depressing to see the place where you grew up, where most people could once make a decent living, get hollowed out.

Readers of my previous blog posts will note that I don’t know everything, I am wrong about some things and I have, and continue to, sometimes make bad decisions. Like everyone else in the world, I am far from perfect and, though I haven’t included every screw up and faux pas of this period in my life, I have tried to make it apparent that I am not perfect in the stories contained in this blog.

This writing also suffers from a lack of editing. For this I apologize. I realize that I repeat myself several times in places throughout the text but, as I write this, it is past my bedtime and I can’t think of a better, more coherent, way to say some of the things that I am trying to say.

With the previous statements in mind, these are some thoughts about the past and current situation here in eastern Skagit County.

The economic backwater that now exists in eastern Skagit County is the result of many forces but much of it has been artificially created by denying the local population use of local natural resources, mainly federal timber. This was done, in large part, by people who didn’t live here and it was done through policies, lawsuits and government actions that prevent almost all federal timber harvest and create set asides.

These practices continue to this day. Set asides are usually created in the name of saving the environment. The set asides, along with most of the lawsuits and policies pursued in the name of saving the environment focus on simplistic preservationist measures like denying use of the resources rather than harder, messier solutions like trying to help the people and communities who, for a viable economy, depend upon natural resources such as timber, find better, practical ways to use these resources so as to cause less environmental damage. Many preservationists like to behind the term conservationist but there is a significant difference between preservation and conservation. Where conservation focuses on using resources, and yes, this would include harvesting timber, in a practical, responsible manner, preservation prohibits all but the most superficial use, in other words, you can look at it but that is all you can do and you had better be careful where you step when you do go to look at it.   

During the course of my working life I was first told that access to federal timber for harvest was going away because of the Northwest Forest Plan. I had a good job that went away with it. This was because certain threatened and endangered species needed to be protected. With the two years of college I got for the retraining of displaced timber workers, I decided to get on the non-production side of the resource use equation while trying to earn extra income as an artist. I actually hoped that the art, using the beautiful scenery of the North Cascades as photographic subjects, would eventually become the majority of my income and be enough to support me.

Then I realized that my art was probably never going to make any money. In hindsight this shouldn’t have been surprising at all. The “starving artist” is a well known and well warranted cliché. I believe there was a lot of denial and wishful thinking on my part that involved fantasies of making a living as an artist. To top it off, my photography mostly featured wilderness areas. Most people can’t access many of the areas my photos feature so most people aren’t familiar with them and don’t relate to them.

Finally it became clear to me that, even though there was plenty of work to be done for the federal government in maintaining and protecting public lands and facilities, via North Cascades National Park and the U.S. Forest Service, there wasn’t much of a budget to pay for it. So I was regularly laid off, making my employment situation and annual income highly unpredictable. Time and time again during my working career, I turned to timber to make ends meet until I was finally lucky enough to get a stable job. I find it quite ironic that logging helped finance my National Park Service career.

I never had any big ambitions for my life. All have ever really wanted to do was make a living and contribute to society. I never wanted a handout. Yet other people, who lived far away and didn’t share my economic fate, decided to abruptly cease sales of the federal timber that my community depended on in so many ways. This was done in the name of protecting threatened and endangered species and it was done at our expense. Who was looking out for us?

Then, even though it was deemed necessary to cease federal timber sales because of the Northwest Forest Plan and a flock of lawsuits, it wasn’t deemed necessary for the federal government or any other institutions, governmental or otherwise, to reliably fund conservation or restoration work at a scale to employ people like me, locally, in any reliable, predictable manner. This cost me, and a lot of people around me, jobs. Again, who was looking out for us?

North Cascades National Park is now one of the few employers locally where I live, though the majority of the permanent, stable jobs are at headquarters, almost 50 miles away. I know some people who seem to do okay or at least get by on seasonal Park Service work. More power to them. It didn’t work for me or, I should say, it wasn’t stable and predictable enough to work well for me. I also know people who grew up here who have been able to thread a needle and be in the right place at the right time with the right type of degree or training to get a permanent job with the Park. My hat is off to them. I believe that these are exceptional people. But I believe their experience is usually more the exception than the rule (hence they are exceptional). Due to a lack of foresight and some bad decisions and bad luck, this was not my experience and it hasn’t been the experience of many people I know.

When rural people and communities are denied access to local resources, an artificial downward pressure is exerted on the local economy which depends heavily on those resources. This is not the result of jobs going away due to globalization or mechanization. It is an artificial economic situation because the resources still exist and are in demand by our own society as well as global markets. So they haven’t been exhausted or outsourced. They have simply been put off limits, literally by someone’s say-so. The Northwest Forest Plan was just one of a long string of ongoing attempts over decades to put all but a few minor uses of resources off limits on public lands. These attempts continue today.  

It is true that I have had a number of good jobs over my working history and I have had some good opportunities, Timber Retraining Benefits was one of these. And I have a good job today. But it is not enough that I have a good job. I need the people around me to have good stable jobs as well. It makes a big difference on everyone’s quality of life to have money in a community. Resources in the form of revenue help create a stable part of the fabric of any community and make it a more pleasant place to live. When you lose people with stable lives, it creates a downward spiral that feeds on itself.

While it is also true that there is still work around here, even in the timber industry, the situation could be much better. Today it is largely an all-or-nothing economy in the North Cascades. Either you have one of the scarce family wage jobs with a government agency or you own one of the few viable businesses or you have nothing and commute many hours a day. There is much less opportunity for many of the people who want to live here. And the options are very limited when the job you are working dries up for the season or goes away.  I would suggest to those who say “money isn’t everything”, that they go try to live without money in a community that doesn’t have a lot of it either.

For many people, like myself, to be able to make it, we need to be able to use our natural resources. This is the reality. In many ways, it has always been hard to make a living here. I believe it always will be hard. When we are not allowed to use our natural resources, the jobs and tax dollars that help people and communities survive evaporate and it becomes even more difficult to make it unless you are lucky enough to get a stable job. Even at that, if there are fewer stable jobs there is less money and fewer resources within the community, making it overall, a poorer and less pleasant place to live.

Time and time again during my working career I turned to timber as my main job or to make ends meet until I could get into something else. Producing and selling logs gave me access to markets that I had no hope of reaching with my photography. Producing and selling logs also generated earnings for other people around me as well as tax revenues that benefited society in general. And, as I stated earlier, having the skills to work in the timber industry actually financed my Park Service career early on and supported me throughout.

Over the years while I struggled to remain employed year round, I lived within sight of millions and millions of board feet of timber worth I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been harvested to provide not only jobs but tax revenues that would benefit not only the local population but the entire state. This timber could be harvested in a manner more sustainable than organic farming but this has been prevented by federal red tape and numerous lawsuits filed by people and organizations who don’t live here.

I think it is an issue of social justice when access to existing resources that have been used historically are denied to any group of people if there are no provisions taken to find a means to maintain these people and communities at some level of economy equitable to pre-set aside conditions. There never are. And when you remove a major pillar of an economy where people are already having a hard time of it, the impacts are often devastating.

The populations of areas where resource set-asides usually occur are quite often rural, small and easily disregarded, and therefore, vulnerable. They seem to be the last to be considered when our society and the government institutions that are the organs of our society’s will consider land use policy. If we want to live in a just society, the needs of the people in an area that will be impacted by some set-aside should be considered first, before anything else.

Of course the impacts of land use actions by the federal government on local communities has to be addressed. But the studies done to fulfill the requirements to address these impacts are typically and purposely contracted out to some group or entity far removed from the communities in question. I suppose this is in order to maintain “objectivity”. In this type of situation however, it is very easy for anyone not having to live with the results of the land use actions to see the people who are impacted simply as statistics, dry numbers with no real human context. And, quite often, since the groups or entities conducting the studies are not from the areas in question, they are less familiar with them and make many flawed assumptions in study design.

The loss of jobs to an area has a lot more impact on you when the people who had those jobs and have to leave for work elsewhere are the same ones you depend upon to staff your local volunteer fire department and other community organizations or send their kids to the local school, which because many funds are tied to enrollment, means there are more resources for that school. Job loss also means that there are fewer people around to help create a critical mass of people with money in their pockets to spend at local business, creating a larger customer base and allowing these businesses to stock a larger variety of items, giving everyone more choices.

I think studies on the impacts of job losses to communities created by land management actions would be much more accurate if there was significant input to them from people who actually have to live under the conditions created by the land management actions. This input should be given weight proportionate to where a person lives, their years of experience living there and how they make their living. More importantly, these studies should also be revisited at regular intervals to determine if the assumptions made in them are correct or not. It would be really nice if study authors had to live in the communities impacted by the decisions made that are based on, or justified by, their studies for at least five years. They would no doubt gain some valuable insights.

The setting may be beautiful but eastern Skagit County in the North Cascades isn’t always the nicest place to live. It is one of the most economically depressed areas in the state and it shares many of the problems faced with poorer areas anywhere in the world. Supporters of simplistic preservation policies that put public lands and resources off limits to uses that would significantly benefit rural economies, not just here, but everywhere, need to own this.

I am really tired of hearing “but it’s so pretty here” and how lucky I am every time I talk to someone who doesn’t live here about the trials of people who do, as if living in a pretty place makes up for everything else. Because the place where a person lives is beautiful is not a good reason to deny them economic opportunity in order to satisfy the sensibilities of people who don’t live there.

I was born and raised here. I didn’t choose it as a pretty backdrop to my life or for something as superficial as a recreational experience. When I was younger, as far as I knew, the whole world looked like this place. How can a fish describe what it is like to be wet when they have nothing to compare the experience to? I had no concept that others from outside might think my home was beautiful and even less that people like me might be oppressed because of this beauty. If the beauty of the place can’t be converted into a significant source of revenue for my community, I don’t know how much of a benefit all the beauty is or really how lucky I am.

The fact that the North Cascades are beautiful, I think, is actually a big part of the problem. It encourages some pretty vocal people who haven’t invested their lives and resources here and don’t really have a stake in living here to pursue strict preservationist actions and policies that harm the local economy without any thought to compensating people for lost opportunities or resources.

The idea put forth by preservationists who push ultra restrictive land use policies when confronted with the impacts of those policies is that the people affected by their measures can turn to tourism for a living. Recreational tourism is typically held up as the savior for rural areas like this, the answer to job creation and revenue generation without having to actively use natural resources. I don’t think this has been well thought out by its advocates which is hardly a surprise when you consider that most of them won’t have to try to make a living in a local economy based almost solely on tourism. It is hardly a secret that most tourism jobs have poor wages and stability. So much so that the U.S. Secretary of Labor, as recently as a year ago, characterized tourism jobs as “low quality jobs”.

From my observations, it seems that, typically, if you own a tourism business and you work very hard, you have a chance of making a decent living in tourism. Obviously I have failed in this. But, assuming that you are successful, depending on the business, quite often, through no fault of your own, you can’t afford to pay the people who work for you a whole lot of money, not to mention providing them any type of benefits.

So, assuming everyone has the savvy to run a business in the first place, which not everyone does, and given the limitations placed on tourism opportunities for the general public, not everyone who lives in the North Cascades and needs a job is going to get to be the owner of a tourism business here.

I think tourism is very important for a certain segment of our population, and I don’t begrudge these folks a living at all, I consider most of them important members of my community but this type of industry isn’t going to support a robust economy in the area. In Hawaii, while I was there, the tourism industry didn’t provide many high quality jobs, I doubt that it does today. If it didn’t provide very well for people in a place like Hawaii, it certainly won’t here. 

One of the main attractions for tourism here is supposed to be outdoor recreation but outdoor recreation here isn’t like it is in other places. Much of the public land in the North Cascades is designated wilderness. Wilderness designation of lands is specifically designed to limit access to people. Wilderness rules restrict access to much of the general public by, among other things, forbidding mechanized travel. This means only those with the proper gear, skills, physical fitness level and free time to spend on ventures many days in length can really make use of most of the wilderness areas here.

Something like 98 percent of North Cascades National Park, one of the things that should be a major draw to the area, is designated wilderness. There are also a lot of U.S. Forest Service lands that are designated wilderness. This, coupled with decreasing access to public lands not currently in wilderness status as well as decreased access on private lands, I think, decreases the appeal of this area to the majority of people. Decreased appeal means fewer visitors and thus fewer tourist dollars. What kind of tourism industry, or business of any sort for that matter, is based on a main attraction that is designed to discourage most people from using it?

So, ironically, many of the strict preservationist measures to taken to “protect” this place also end up limiting access to the majority of the public to all of this beautiful public land.  This limits tourism opportunities and disenfranchises both society in general as well as local people. It also limits jobs and economic opportunity where they are sorely needed and erodes the tax base that benefits everyone, locals and society at large alike.

I am sure that there are many parallels to this situation throughout history but, to my mind, this is not unlike old feudal systems where peasants were punished for taking game on lands belonging to kings and lords. This wasn’t because the kings and lords were hungry and needed to hunt to feed their families like the peasants. It was because, when the king or lord went out to hunt for sport, he wanted to make sure he had plenty of game to shoot so he could have a good time. People here aren’t starving for the sake of recreational opportunities for a small sub set of our population but they are suffering for it.

Because the majority of the public can’t access and use most our main natural attractions, I think the number of viable tourism businesses a place like the North Cascades can support is very limited. Another thing that doesn’t help and another prime example of how “protecting” something can have marked, negative impacts on local businesses by limiting opportunity is the designation of The North Cascades Highway, State Route 20, as a Scenic Highway.

I agree with this in principle. I don’t want to see a bunch of tacky advertising signs along the highway. However, at the same time, the Scenic Highway designation prevents people from advertising their business in a market where chances to get business are already very slim. In a tourism economy how are you supposed to attract people if you are severely limited in advertising your business? This hurts the local economy. The impact and burden on individuals who are affected by it isn’t recognized and their losses aren’t compensated

If the reader still harbors any doubts about what I have said, maybe they read recently that North Cascades National Park generated an estimated 30 million dollars plus per year in local communities, I ask them to go to the communities in eastern Skagit County and look around. Does it look like any part of 30 million dollars was generated here in the last year? Where are the businesses that are based on all this tourism? There are people out here looking for work that would like to know where they can go to get a job.

The truth be known, I think that often there is a lot of snobbery behind preservation measures that so adversely impact small, resource dependant communities. From conversations I have heard over the years, it seems that many in the preservationist camp are more worried about having to put up with the “wrong type” of people who “don’t really care about the environment” while they are out trying to have their recreational “experience”. And I think that many are afraid that the scenery will get messed up and their recreational “experience” will be ruined.

I think a lot of the people who support such strict preservation measures may occasionally come here to recreate but they don’t actually live here. Others may live here but don’t have to make a living here or they are lucky enough hold one of a handful of available, specialized jobs and, therefore, don’t share the economic fate of most of the rest of the people around them though they do have to live in a more impoverished community.

Over the years I have heard a lot of talk about rural communities and natural resources that seems to be based on prejudice, dogma and slogans and quite often, it seems that precious little effort is given to critical thinking. There also often seems to be a very poor grasp of ecology, the environment or even how the world works. Local people seem to be seen as some vague other, either endowed with true insight and deep knowledge if they support some cause to “protect” or preserve something or morally deficient, ignorant and backwards, if not stupid outright for even considering something as sacrilegious cutting down a tree. And there is plenty of cognitive dissonance. I recall two people I knew when I was going to college who protested timber sales to the point of physically going to logging sites to try to stop them. On many occasions I heard these same people swap notes about their log cabin dream homes. 

In my estimation, many of the folks trying to save the world by preserving small corners of it that they happen to be infatuated with aren’t any better informed or more intelligent than people like myself who actually live here and are just trying to make a living and contribute to society.

You would think the people of a region like ours that, for all appearances, prides itself on being an innovative technology hub that specializes in thinking outside the box would have come up with some kind of a solution for the plight of its rural areas by now, one that addresses not only the environmental side of the equation but also the social justice issue of disenfranchisement of rural populations. Yet we seem to cling to 18^th Century management models that try to preserve certain areas, often at the expense of the populations who live in the vicinity, while continuing to exploit everything else on the planet for the benefit of the larger population.

I think this is at the root of many of our environmental problems. Under the 18^th Century model of preservation as mitigation for environmental damage, you don’t really solve any problems related to the need for humans to use natural resources. You just shift the problem somewhere else. Set-asides increase pressure on the lands where resources are still being extracted because the overall availability of resources is decreased. Whatever resources you decide to set aside are gotten somewhere else, often using unsustainable practices, either in this country or places in the world that are quite often more ecologically sensitive and prone to political corruption. That might have worked when this system was created. There were still vast amounts of resources available for exploitation and lots of places for displaced people to go then. We have a lot fewer of both nowadays.

I am definitely not against parks and wilderness areas and I am not advocating resource extraction in such areas that are already established. But we have wilderness designated lands running the length of the North Cascades from British Columbia to Stevens Pass where any sort of development or resource extraction is prohibited. The remainder of the public lands in these areas not in wilderness status should be made available for use in a sustainable, responsible manner to help nearby communities. I have some ideas about how this might be done that I will write about later.   

Most of the environmental groups that I see filing lawsuits that, among other things, tie up federal lands are based in the urban areas around Puget Sound, one of the most polluted areas in the state. I think these groups reside in urban areas because that is where most of the money is. The pollution that occurs in these urban areas is the natural result of all of the economic activity that is generating the money that supports, among other things, the environmental groups.

None of these environmental groups have ever, to my knowledge, contributed in any significant way to the rural communities that their lawsuits harm, whether this be through scholarships or sponsoring school projects or local organizations. Yet I have seen many “bad” organizations like timber companies and mills making many contributions to their communities along with providing living wage jobs, or at least they did when they were in business. My beef here is not with people who live in the urban areas around Puget Sound. Everyone should be able to make an honest living if they want to, including the people who live in and around Puget Sound. My beef is with hypocrites.

Citizens of a just society are obligated to look out for the well being of their fellow citizens. This doesn’t mean giving handouts and freebies. This should mean sharing fairly the resources held in common by everyone to allow those members of society who need them to be able use them in a responsible manner in order to make a contribution to society and have a chance at a decent life. It could be argued that timber resources weren’t always used responsibly or sustainably in the past. I don’t disagree with that. The trouble is, rather than taking steps to ensure that these resources were being used responsibly and to help resource dependant people find workable solutions, the resources were simply, and abruptly, put off limits. 

Continuing to cling to 18^th Century land management models that preserve certain areas at the expense of the people who live there while continuing to rampantly exploit other areas is not the mark of an innovative, forward thinking, or just society. I think we, in the Puget Sound area and the Pacific Northwest in general, can do much better. I hope so.

 

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007.

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007.

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2007.

Strange Winter

Since my last post we have experienced a few minor emergencies. First the car we use to transport the kids broke down. Luckily the kids weren’t in the car at the time. Sacha and my mom ended up walking in the dark the last quarter mile or so to the library event they were going to. They made it on time. It was a pretty easy fix for this car though I am cursing myself for not checking it out before getting it towed. It was something I could have fixed myself for cheaper than we ended up paying but I assumed a worst case scenario.

Then my little commuter car broke down. The radiator is shot. It didn’t strand me and I was able to limp it into the shop. Again this was something I could have fixed myself only I didn’t know what was wrong with it. It was already in the shop and they figured out the problem so I figured they should get the business.

Finally the well pump at the home farm quit working. I spent a good part of the day Sunday figuring out how to get it working again. I got a replacement part, a pressure switch, and I thought I could limp through to the weekend when I was going to try to fix it. I didn’t want to try after work because, if something went wrong, mom and the cows would be out of water until I could get it fixed. This would probably mean taking the next day off work. Mom could get by but the cows would get mighty thirsty. I was hoping that I wouldn’t burn up the pump before the weekend.  

However, we have a friend who is a professional plumber and he agreed to meet me Wednesday night to see if we could get it fixed. He took the old pressure switch which had been fried, out. Unfortunately the pipe fitting for the pressure line from the pump to the pressure switch didn’t fit the new switch.

This was what I had been afraid of. We needed another part to get things going but all of the local stores that carried such things were closed for the evening. The nearest store that was open at this time of day was about fifty miles away. If I had done the job on Saturday, I would have only had to go sixteen miles for the part.

We were looking around for enough parts to cobble things together until we could get the right part and our friend was looking at some old pumps that had broken down and been set aside for parts. There were at least three whole ones and other parts that had, over time, become the piles of junk in the old house that I have been fighting and trying to get cleaned up over the last several years.

Our friend found a fitting that he thought he might be able to cobble on to the pressure switch to get it going. He took it down to the pump and was getting ready to install it when I had the thought to look at another, older, pump that had broken down and been set aside. Wouldn’t you know it? The exact fitting we needed was on that old pump.

The logic of keeping things because you might need them or their parts some day paid off in this instance. In my experience though, this is rare. Usually you can’t find what you need because it is buried by other stuff you have saved. And this almost happened this time. The old pump kind of blended in with the other junk and we had been walking right by it for an hour. It was mostly an afterthought that I looked more closely at it.

At any rate, the pressure switch was put back together and the pump was checked. Everything seemed to be working fine. Problem solved and I have no complaints. Now I have all day Saturday to continue cleaning out the basement and probably, ironically, scrapping that old savior pump.

The topic of this blog post is Strange Winter, but all of what I have just related is not really strange. Little emergencies happen with us all the time, as I am sure they do with most people and, quite often, they seem to happen in clusters. Now to the topic of this post:

I thought I would be a little remiss if I didn’t mention the strange winter we have been having. As I have stated in a previous post, the Incredible Shrinking Glacier of  1/31/14, I happen to think that climate change is real. This one overly warm winter isn’t necessarily proof of climate change, similar ones have occurred in the past. In that previous blog post I also mentioned that one year, around the turn of the last century, my grandpa and great uncle didn’t get any money for the fur they caught in the mountains because it was so warm that the animals didn’t quit shedding that winter.

However, a steady trend toward warmer overall average temperatures over many years, which we are seeing does provide proof that the climate, overall is getting warmer. Warm air and water rise, cool air and water sink. Strange, unpredictable weather is what we can expect as the change in heat in different parts of the globe effect how the air and water currents that affect huge hemispheric weather patterns move.

From my completely anecdotal observations, the last seven or eight years have been kind of strange. Summers, since about 2007 and 2008 have seemed much more humid. Last February and March were very wet, March was the wettest on record. This last fall and winter there have been at least three flooding events due to heavy rainfall and very high snow line where we, in my experience or to my memory usually only get one, rarely two at this time of year. It is interesting to note though, that the higher snowpack that provides the water for the utility I work for is considered to be normal so far this year at least as far as hydro power generation is concerned. Last year it looked like we were going to get an early spring but then we had a pretty good cold spell in March. It doesn’t appear that this will be happening this year. Maybe we will have a cold spring. We will see.

Weather patterns affect biological patterns. In 2012, the summer was very dry and the high mountain blueberry crop in areas that I observed was minimal with small, dry berries. I think this might have been due in part to the way the snow melted out. The spring was pretty cold and the snow lingered late in many areas. Then it turned off very dry and I think that when the snow melted off many berry patches, there was no moisture left in the ground. The only areas that seemed to produce berries were the more exposed ones and patches along streams that would have melted out the earliest and had water during flower pollination and berry formation.

Weather patterns may affect some things positively or negatively, at least from the human point of view. Grass was starting to grow in our cow pasture in February when it usually doesn’t start until the middle of March. Warmer winters have been linked to the increased survival and, therefore, population of bark beetles in parts of Canada, which increased tree death.

No doubt many things will be changing in ways that might be subtle or subtle at first that will eventually have wider reaching, more dramatic effects.

This year slugs were out on the 13^th of February, and I observed coltsfoot (Petasites palmatus) in Marblemount and Osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis) in Rockport beginning to bloom a week later. These things usually don’t start until mid-March at least. At the same time, some willows that I am familiar with haven’t put out catkins yet when it seems like they are usually blooming in February. I haven’t seen many frogs out yet this year. Red-legged frog (Rana aurora) breeding season starts in March and I haven’t seen any on the road at night yet. It is quite common to see them during breeding season so it appears that at least this species is still on a typical schedule, which may be influenced by photo period or length of daylight. 

Sauk Mountain, February 2015. In my post, The Incredible Shrinking Glacier of January 31st, 2014, I mentioned my concern that the brushy areas near the bottom of the meadows didn't have any snow. As one can see, this year the entire mountain didn't get much snow. A day or two before I took this photo I heard about some people who walked all the way to the top without snow gear. 

Sauk Mountain, winter 2008. This is the winter look of Sauk Mountain that I have been familiar with most of my life. 

Sauk Mountain from Highway 20 near Hamilton, February 2015. 

Same spot as above photo, winter 2008.