Beauty and Renewal in the North Cascades?

I wrote most of the following post/essay before the presidential election of 2016. I was as surprised, as many were, with the results. Ironically, I think this post/essay might speak to some of the reasons behind the results, which, it seems, a lot of people have been pondering.

I can’t speak for other places in the U.S., rural areas, small towns, industrial towns, coal country etc. but here in the North Cascade the driving force behind many local people’s choice for president is, I think, disenfranchisement of rural and small town populations.

If the reader is wondering, I voted for Clinton, though I despise her husband. I do know a lot of local people here who voted for Trump. I think a lot of people here feel invisible and powerless and this was their way to speak out and be heard in a region that is overwhelmed by wealthy and powerful area, namely Seattle, but also much of the greater Puget Sound area. A lot of folks living in these areas profess to be liberal and progressive yet so much of the rhetoric I hear coming from these areas supports natural resource policies that are regressive or oppressive to rural  communities.

A commentator I heard on the radio summed it up quite well saying something to the effect that Washington State is considered to be a blue state but in reality it is one blue dot (Seattle) in a sea of red. This is of course a simplification, the republicans do quite well in this state as far as holding seats in the state legislature but, for so many things Seattle calls the shots. What the rest of the state thinks or wants or even needs doesn’t count.

I think rural and urban people hold many distorted views of one another. This is probably the natural result of a world where many people are overcommitted and algorithms continually steer us to the same or similar people and places on our electronic devices. This undoubtedly exacerbates a natural disconnect that probably always existed between people of rural and urban backgrounds and it also undoubtedly exacerbates the distortions in our views of one another. We might not have talked much to each other in the past. We talk and interact even less now.

The big difference between distorted urban views of rural people and distorted rural views of urban people being that, distorted rural views of urbanites has little to no impact on urbanites (possibly the present presidential election situation excepted, at least for liberal leaning urbanites). For example, I live in a sparsely populated area where people are spread out. There is no organized voting block. And the towns that do have elected mayors are small and their voting blocks are often insignificant. As a rural citizen I feel largely powerless to realistically effect any change in public policy.

The urban environment has a critical mass of people in a small area, plenty of infrastructure and a large talent pool of people available to make the difficult task of organizing large groups of people behind any given cause much easier than in a rural area. Thus it is relatively easier to create large, significant voting blocks which drive a lot of the public policy that rural people have to live with. Some of this public policy is tolerable or even good but some of it is based on distorted urbanite views of rural areas.

The following post/essay explores one of these organizing efforts and the distortions that I, as one coming from a rural background, see in it. As I have stated, I have my own distortions, prejudices and filters. I will leave it to the reader to determine if the arguments I have laid out have merit and the grievances I have voiced are justified. Thus ends my preamble to the preamble of a rather long post/essay.

About three years ago I received e-mail from Braided River Publishing, the publishing arm of the Mountaineers Club in Seattle, about a book and “communications campaign” about the North Cascades. The e-mail was soliciting  photographs for the book. The photos would be paid for (which was surprising to me, quite often such solicitations ask for donations of photos in the name of the cause). No other input was asked for.

I knew what this was about. I had been aware for several years that a number of people, most of whom don’t live in the North Cascades, were attempting to get North Cascades National Park expanded. I had also read in newspapers that park expansion proponents were going to try to build support for it outside the North Cascades since they weren’t having a lot of luck locally. The book “The North Cascades: Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby” written by authors who don’t live here in the North Cascades was one of the results of their efforts.

I assume this book is to be part of the “communications campaign” about the North Cascades and an effort to sell the expansion of North Cascades National Park and other preservation schemes to a greater public who also doesn’t live in the North Cascades. The authors of this book don’t participate in the everyday life of the people who do live in the North Cascades and they only spend a limited amount of time here on vacation or on “retreats”. In this book they have put together an artfully spun tale with a lot of dynamic, pretty pictures and half truths that are all the more deceptive because they have the aura of truth about them.

This book is designed to influence and persuade people who don’t know much about the North Cascades to get behind efforts to preserve even more land over and above the large area that is already preserved. This will be at the expense of small local communities who are in the minority and have very little voice. The attitudes and philosophies of the authors of this book are the epitome of what helps create the poverty that, in turn, creates the problems experienced by the people who live in the North Cascades and no doubt in rural areas everywhere.

I knew that this book wouldn’t have any local perspective outside of a select few people who work for North Cascades National Park or some other government agency or who may actually live here but make their living elsewhere. And, while I think that these folk’s perspective is certainly valid, it doesn’t tell whole story. The ideas the authors of this book are presented with an air of inevitability, like Manifest Destiny “the Forest Service road system will shrink”. It wasn’t clearly stated but seemed to be continually inferred that because no kind of industrial uses or development should be allowed in the rural communities of the North Cascades, there is really nothing else besides tourism and catering to the elite few whose situation in life allows them to access remote mountainous areas. So, the thread of the book goes, the people who live in the North Cascades will just have to get by on tourism and that is enough. Nowhere does it address many well-known shortcomings of an economy based largely on tourism which, in most cases, and certainly in the North Cascades, produces few family wage jobs.

Ask yourself: Would you like to try to make a living, buy a house, raise a family solely on the wages provided by service jobs in a highly seasonal tourism industry that is only really viable for about 6 months a year? Is that a future you would want for your children? If this is not good enough for the majority of people, and I suspect it is not, then why should this be the sole option for anyone who happens to live in the North Cascades and doesn’t want to commute to work several hours or more each day?

I am here to emphatically say that an economy based solely or largely on tourism is not the only option in the North Cascades. Unfortunately I lack the skills and resources to do this as effectively as the authors of the book. Be that as it may, I feel something needs to be said about the state of affairs in the communities of the North Cascades (specifically mine of which I am most familiar). Since I feel “The North Cascades: Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby”, hereafter referred to as “the book or this book”, is the epitome of the problems faced by the people who live in the North Cascades, in this essay I will try to provide a rebuttal of sorts to this book. The most effective way I could come up with was to provide direct quotes by the book’s authors and then add my commentary on those quotes. My apologies if I didn’t get the quotes exactly right every time. I make no apologies for what I think.

It seems that nowadays image is much more powerful than reality, especially if you aren’t subject to the realities misrepresented by the images you receive. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it has always been this way since before written history. The creators of this book are, for the most part, professionals who specialize in creating and selling images and ideas. They have a well oiled machine or process with a well honed message, calculated to persuade by tugging at people’s emotions. I would not be surprised if public relations specialists and focus groups were employed to help figure out the best words and turns of phrase to be canned and distributed as messages and mantras. The main author, William Dietrich, fairly crows about how these tactics were employed in preservationist campaigns of the 1960’s. The people behind this book are well positioned in areas where the wealth and power of our society is concentrated, where networks that include many powerful people can be easily built and where there are wealthy people to solicit for funds. They don’t actually live in the North Cascades where there is no money.

I do live in the North Cascades. So did my dad. And so did my grandparents, my grandpa coming here in 1888. I don’t have an editor or PR staff. And it will quickly become obvious to the reader that I could really use an editor. I am writing this on own time at night, during the dregs of my day. I am usually very tired and would rather be sleeping by the time I sit down to write. I haven’t spent much time honing my writing skills and writing is difficult for me. I dread sitting down in front of the computer every night. The task of trying to hammer thoughts and words into something coherent is even more difficult because, when I am attempting to do this, it is usually after my bed time and I am dead tired from working all day.

My messages won’t always be on point and many of the tangents I take could probably become essays in their own right. My messages are not slick or groomed for maximum effectiveness or carefully calculated to persuade people though I am definitely trying to persuade the reader to think more deeply about the North Cascades and the people who live here. I realize that in this writing I might alienate some people that I think rather highly of. This is regrettable but I think what I have to say needs to be said.

I am quite sure that I don’t speak for everyone who lives in the North Cascades and I can only speak with authority on the northwestern part of the North Cascades, where I live and am most familiar. But I am just as sure that there are a significant number who do live here who would agree with the majority of my views. These people are seldom heard in most discussions about land management issues for a number of reasons, including lack of time, lack of public forums that are readily accessible to them and lack of communications skills. This doesn’t mean that these people are stupid or that they don’t care. For 

By chance I have tended to be more bookish than my peers and probably possess certain communications skills, no matter how rudimentary, that many of my peers don’t. This doesn’t make me smarter than my peers. They are every bit as intelligent as the next person. I am probably just a little better at communicating through writing. Make no mistake though, compared to the creators of this book, I am a rank amateur. Incidentally, because the creators of this book are better at communicating than me and my peers, this also doesn’t make them smarter than us.

Here is the point of view of someone who has lived, and made a living, in the North Cascades for decades, whose people have been here for generations. Ask yourself : Do most of the authentic people in world walk around with slick sales pitches ready to hand? Or, even if a person is well spoken, do they occasionally stumble or ramble? I can only hope reader understands this and will give the following words a fair examination as tedious as this may become at times.

In the introduction (pp. 18, 19) of this book the publishers make it clear that their main focus is preservation. At the start, they use the word conservation, i.e. “leaders of conservation groups” but they use the word preservation almost exclusively in the rest of the text.

They try to make it seem like the book will take an even-handed approach to the subject of the North Cascades, stating that there was disagreement among leaders of conservation groups involved in making the book on what should be preserved and how but didn’t want to “take sides”. They then go on to explain why more preservation is needed in the North Cascades, stating as threats to the North Cascade along with industrial uses like timber, water use and mining; pollution, climate change, roads, housing, recreation and tourism.

If they are not “taking sides” how come there is no one from either the mining or timber industry featured in the book? Timber, at least can be done as sustainably as anything else, there is a mountain of science on this. And timber produces much better wages than tourism. And, as far as the pollution and climate change goes, the overwhelming majority of that comes from the places where the authors live. It is the byproduct of the economy that supports their existence.

Historically, industrial activities like timber harvest were one of the most important economic engines in rural areas and small communities in the North Cascades. These activities not only provided good jobs that allowed people to raise families and buy homes but they also generated tax revenues that helped support public facilities and infrastructure. It appears to me that these people and economies are seen by the creators of this book, most of whom don’t live in the North Cascades and most of whom contribute very little to the well being of the communities here, as a threat to their utopian vision of the North Cascades. When the authors visit here occasionally they don’t want their “experience” ruined.

I honestly think the creators of this book would be much happier if all of the local types, the people with the memories and long personal history in this place, would just disappear. This is already happening at a rapid pace. If many of the visions contained in this book come to pass, it will accelerate.

   

Conservation and preservation are not the same thing. The aim of conservation is the sustainable use of natural resources. The key word is “use”. In other words using the land to meet society’s needs for raw materials without damaging the land’s capacity to produce these raw materials. An analogy would be if a resource were held in an account like in a bank, sustainability would be living off the interest of that account without touching the principal.

The aim of preservation is to attempt to maintain something in a static or unchanged state by excluding human presence and activities as much as possible. Maintaining living, ever-changing natural systems in an unchanged state is a tall order even if we weren’t in the throes of climate change.

Preservation of lands prohibits use of the resources found on those lands for all but the most minor activities. The activities allowed on preserved lands could be classified as a use but it isn’t a use that meets the majority of society’s needs for basic needs. And it adversely and disproportionately impacts the local populations nearest to preserved lands, who depend on those resources in order to generate enough revenue to have a functional economy.

These local populations are typically small and lack the resources to mount large campaigns to protect their interests. Because they are small, they are also politically vulnerable. In the list cited above, even recreation and tourism are cited as threats that theoretically need to be curtailed. The business of tourism has notoriously thin margins and low wages and, if this activity (tourism) was curtailed along with everything else that is stated as a threat, that doesn’t leave much by which a person who lives in the North Cascades can make a living (commuting long distances to work falls under the pollution and climate change threat categories).

I think a certain amount of preservation is warranted but preservation by itself isn’t a silver bullet that will save the world. Preservation strategies have a number of problems and shortcomings, chief of which, is that, when overdone, they oppress local, resource dependant populations. A close second to this is that it is not a question of if human society will use natural resources. Every society on the planet uses natural resources. The question is: In what manner these natural resources will be used?

The problem with preservation is that, by setting aside a given part of the land base and prohibiting any resource production, more pressure is put on the remainder of the land base to meet society’s needs for natural resources. Or this demand shifts elsewhere out of the public eye of the nimbyists in wealthy areas and impacts another part of the planet.

There are already 2.7 million contiguous acres of land preserved in the North Cascades. That is enough. There is also plenty of science that could be used to figure out how to use the resources on the remainder of the unpreserved land base in the most sustainable manner possible. I think timber and forestry is particularly promising.

There are entire colleges in this country and around the world devoted to forestry, environmental science, ecology and, social science and economics. The science is there. We need to get past our misconceptions and hangups and use it.

It would appear that the main focus of this book, according to the introduction, is preservation. Though the introduction claims to want to take an even-handed view, the perspective of someone from one of the small communities in the North Cascades who has made a living locally here, independent of environmental groups or the National Park Service or other federal agencies is completely missing.

This is not to say that the perspectives of people featured in this book who are associated with the aforementioned groups isn’t valid. I know a lot of these people. They are good people and their perspectives are absolutely valid. However, their perspectives are not the whole story. I also know a lot of people who have made a living here locally independent of the federal government and their perspectives are usually quite different. These perspectives are every bit as valid as any other and they deserve to be heard. But they are so completely missing from this book that it is almost a theme. It is like these people and their perspectives are invisible.

I have lived here my whole life and I have moved in several different worlds, working for the National Park Service, in private industry and now for a public utility. I will try to present the North Cascades from the perspective of someone who lives here and has made a living here locally.

From my reading of it, this book is not even close to being even-handed. It has a strong and definite slant towards preservation. The invisible local people I previously mentioned are most likely invisible in order to tightly control the message of this book because their ideas would tend to disagree with that message. It seemed to me that even the messages of the local people featured in this book who would tend to be more sympathetic to preservation ideas were tightly controlled, or edited, as well.

There is a strong theme in this book of using words and phrases calculated to manipulate people by pushing buttons and to deceive by not quite telling the whole truth (or accurately representing reality might be a better word). There are parts of this book that practically celebrate such deceptions. This is a dangerous game to play because two can play it. Examples of some buzzwords I have personally cooked up to describe many of the philosophies I saw expressed in this book: Environmental Apartheid, Enviro-dogma and Enviro-babble. These words are calculated to push buttons and may be inflammatory or inspirational to certain people, depending on one’s world view. But they don’t tell the whole truth (or represent reality) either. I think that such things as truth and reality are hard to even determine in many cases because the world isn’t black and white. Reality and truth can’t be summed up in simple buzzwords. In statements on any given subject they omit the overwhelming majority of information, depending on pushing people’s buttons to get them to react in a manner that the buzzword creator desires.

The bias of this book is usually quite subtle and can be all the more deceptive for that, especially for someone who doesn’t know much about the North Cascades. I will attempt to point out subterfuge where I can. I prefer to give the creators of this book the benefit of the doubt and say that they don’t understand that preservation actions lead to the disempowerment and disenfranchisement of local, resource dependent communities. After all, none of them live in the North Cascades and none are dependent on the local economy here in order to make a living.

The foreword of the book is by Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods”. If I understand the situation correctly, this is a guy who, at the time of the writing, lived in San Diego and who lived in Seattle for a year or two and maybe visited the North Cascades a few times. In the first place: If he only lived in Seattle for a year or two and only visited the North Cascades a few times, what does this guy know about the North Cascades? Secondly I would point out that having a book published and any of the notoriety accompanies this doesn’t make one omniscient and I don’t know how you build enough knowledge about any place to speak with authority after only a few visits.

In the foreword Louv states that the beauty of landscape has the “power to transform and renew human beings.”

Probably for certain people this is true. It is for me. However, there are others for whom aesthetics are an afterthought or for whom these types of experience are not that transformative. If we stick to those for whom aesthetics are important, how can they be transformed if they can’t access their public lands? The book, “Last Child in the Woods”, this guy’s claim to fame, is all about getting children out to experience nature. Access to natural areas on federal public lands has shrunk dramatically since I was a kid and it continues to shrink today. The “protection” measures, mostly preservation measures, championed later in this book are responsible for much of this decline and will only serve to limit access even more, leaving the relatively few remaining areas accessible to the general public crowded and hectic. On top of that, access to private land and state owned Department of Natural Resources (DNR) land has decreased dramatically as well. Currently, some of the remaining places on federal public land that are very popular are already crowded and hectic. If more access to public land is cut off these places will become even more so, probably initiating restrictive permit policies as is the case in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness where, as I understand it, you need to make a reservation to get a permit to visit during certain times of the year. So even fewer people are able to use the public land that they own and pay taxes on.

Louv states, “We hunger for authenticity”

What can be more authentic than people who have lived and made a living in the North Cascades for generations? People who have literally been shaped by their lives here? There are still a lot of people in and around the North Cascades who fit that description. My family has been here for about 128 years as of this writing and I know of others of European descent who have been here longer, not to mention those of Native American descent. That being said, there are also a lot of people here who, while they may not have been around as long as some of the old-timers, are no less authentic because they have made the investment of living here and trying to make a living here. Nowhere in the book is this perspective presented outside of a few people who made their living working for North Cascades National Park or other government agencies.

Louv also states, “Natural history will, or could be, as important to our personal and regional identities as human history, particularly in those places where human history has been interrupted or forgotten.”

I don’t know exactly what he is talking about and I don’t know if he knows what he is talking about. I know that for myself and many other local people, the human history of eastern Skagit and Whatcom Counties, of my ancestors and their neighbors and people who came before them, surrounds and permeates just about everything. There are a lot of stories and history out there that is either personal or a common about nearly every mountain and stream in this area. I have pointed this out in my series of Lesser Known History of the North Cascades which covered a tiny fraction of this human history. 

Eastern Skagit County is not unique in this respect I know a lot of people in similar areas along the Cascades where the same is true. If this history has not been perfectly preserved, I would point out that neither has the human history of our cities. It seems like any time there is a major digging project of some kind in our cities, something is unearthed that no one knows or remembers exactly what it was for or why it was configured in a certain way. I would also point out that a many of the people who live in the North Cascades interact with the natural world on a daily basis, sometimes whether they want to or not. Natural history is an almost inescapable part of their lives. Therefore the natural history of this area is already a part of their personal and regional identities. Of course, Mr. Louv never talked to me or anyone like me. I would venture to guess he has never attended any of the frequent old-timers picnics or reunions where there are still people living who knew some of the first white settlers in the North Cascades and a lot of the Native people from that era. Neither did the other authors of the book. They all got their information from other books, most of which were authored by others who also never bothered to talk to anyone with a long history in the North Cascades.

Louv goes on to cite the benefits of interacting with nature, better mental and physical health, sharper cognition, more creativity and productivity and the “nourishment of the spirit.” He also cites studies that more species in parks appear to benefit human psychology and “interacting with nature appears to lead people to nurture close relationships with fellow human beings, to value community and be more generous with money.”

I would agree with at least part of the above statements. I enjoy being out in nature and I certainly feel better mentally and physically after most of my outings. This is all well and good but, again, if you restrict access to the majority of the general public, those few areas where access can be had will be just as overcrowded and hectic as any urban center, only the scenery will be different. For the majority of the general public who, for whatever reason can’t escape those crowds, I think this is going to impair a lot of the benefits just cited. I know I personally find crowded trails and trailheads nearly as hectic as urban areas I have been to.

As far as the presence of more species being good for human psychology, there is a lot of really cool stuff in the North Cascades but most of it doesn’t jump out at you. These species are not the so-called charismatic megafauna that are recognized by a wide section of the general public. Many of the species one finds in the North Cascades are small and nondescript. In many cases you have to be a naturalist, often with a pretty narrow field of interest to even know what you are looking at, much less appreciate it.

And as far as the larger animals, deer, bear, cougars, etc., the so-called charismatic megafauna go, the North Cascades aren’t like the African savannah. Dense forests and brush, at least on the west side, make it difficult to spot even large animals. I have been on many outings deep into the North Cascades. On the majority of the trips I’ve been on, I didn’t see any large animals.

As for nourishment of the spirit, I think this is also important for certain people, myself included, but I know other people who don’t really care to go out into, or deal with, nature. One also has to enjoy a certain level of economic security to be able to afford to look at the world and think that your spirit needs nourishment.

Nourishment of the body and keeping a roof over your family’s head and clothes on their backs is going to take priority over nourishment of the spirit for most people. For many of the people who live in or near the North Cascades this is the reality of their lives.

I do believe that many people on the lower end of the economic spectrum do use the outdoors but, from what I have observed, these folks tend to use more of the front country and car camping areas. They aren’t buying a bunch of expensive gear to do extended trips into the backcountry. I would guess that many of these folks prefer the few areas that still don’t require a permit or fee to stay. Which brings up a question: What happened to all of the areas where one could access public land for free?

Most campgrounds and trailheads that were free when I was younger now require you to buy a permit to use. I can easily afford these fees but they are still enough to make me wince a bit after buying a year’s worth of permits for the various jurisdictions.

More importantly, these fees exclude a lot of people on the lower end of the economic scale. How are their spirits going to get nourished? We no longer have a very democratic system. Some of the few places where one can still get out on public lands for free are U.S. Forest Service roads where you can drive and park for free as long as you are more than a quarter mile from a trailhead. Many of these roads are slated for closure because there is not a budget to maintain them. Again, I would point out that if people can’t access their lands, all of the benefits that Louv cites are for naught.

Finally, Louv states “The three major environmental challenges of our time-climate change, the biodiversity collapse and the disconnect between children and nature-are linked.”

In the name of protecting biodiversity, certain groups, many of whom are behind this book or are authors in it, seem to be pushing to make access to our public lands more difficult. This is justified in order to “protect” public lands and the species of plants and animals that live on them. Discouraging people from using these lands will prevent people from damaging them so the argument goes. As I have pointed out in a previous post, while the biodiversity in the North Cascades might be high, it is not on the same level as many tropical areas or even other areas in the temperate world.

To quote material in one of my previous blog posts, Why We Shouldn't Expand North Cascades National Park:

 “I have never heard it stated that there are many, or even a few, species of plants and animals that are endemic to the North Cascades. To my knowledge there aren’t any but, of course, my knowledge of the North Cascades isn’t encyclopedic so I could very well be wrong on this point. However, I have lived and worked here almost my whole life and a number of those working years involved environmental monitoring, including many of the species of organisms that occur here. So, I think I would be safe in saying that there aren’t high levels of endemism in the North Cascades. In other words, there are very few species endemic to the North Cascades, if there are any at all.

What are endemic species? Endemic species are very important for biodiversity because they are found only in a specific locality or area and nowhere else in the world. Since endemic species are, by definition, limited to small geographic areas, they are often more vulnerable to extinction, causing rapid loss of biodiversity. So, while there are a lot of different species found in the North Cascades, most, if not all of these species are also present in areas outside of the North Cascades, in the Pacific Northwest Region, or even across the northern hemisphere. In other words, most, if not all, species found in the North Cascades have a large geographical distribution outside the North Cascades and are at less risk of extinction than endemic species in other parts of the region or world. Hence there is less risk of worldwide biodiversity loss from human activity in the North Cascades.

The North Cascades are not as important to regional or global biodiversity as other areas in the Pacific Northwest that do harbor endemic species such as the Olympic Peninsula which harbors at least 20 species of endemic plants and animals or other parts of the state and region that harbor endemic species. From a global standpoint, the North Cascades are not even in the same ball park as many tropical areas. The record holder of endemic species worldwide is Madagascar with over 600 endemic species. The North Cascades don’t qualify as a biodiversity hotspot according to Conservation International’s criteria, which are used to help determine priority areas for species conservation.

So there is biodiversity and then there is biodiversity. Preserving more lands in the North Cascades would probably increase pressure on natural resources around the world. This would probably serve to overall lower global biodiversity or at least apply pressure in that direction natural resources are sought in parts of the world where there are high rates of endemism and biodiversity. Over the last few years, I have seen articles in magazines like National Geographic that chronicle the loss of important tree species in tropical forests around the world, sometimes even the loss of entire forests.”

As far as connecting children to nature goes, if your goal is preservation which is basically keeping as many people as possible out of natural areas in order to “protect” biodiversity, how are you going to connect children with nature in any meaningful way? Most of the private land where I was exposed to nature as a kid is now off limits, developed, gated, posted. All that remains are our public lands. The really sad thing about this is, as I have pointed out, the biodiversity here is not on the same level as other areas in the world and it is probably much more resilient than in those other areas in the world. Yet biodiversity here is being “protected” at the expense of those more fragile areas and at the expense of our public, children included.

Preservationists have been working very hard to put the idea in the public’s mind that wilderness areas are diminishing. While this may be true in many parts of the world, it is not the case in the North Cascades where 2.7 million acres, the bulk, or at least a major part, of the range, are preserved in wilderness areas. Ironically, since much of the public can’t access these areas, I think most people have difficulty grasping just how much area is preserved, including the people behind “The North Cascades, Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby”. If one sticks to the main trails, it might seem that many areas are quite crowded. However, if one follows the old trails or gets off trails completely, one rarely sees another human being. I have spent a good bit of my life traveling to obscure places in the North Cascades. Many places I go to are off trail and away from popular climbing routes and other areas of heavy recreational use. In about thirty years of such travels, much more than the authors of this book, I have barely scratched the surface of the area in the North Cascades and only about twice have I run into someone else
   

Finally, barring what I have just said about keeping people out of natural areas, if you do want to institute programs to connect children with nature, how are you going to pay for it? The groups and authors behind this book don’t generate much revenue by themselves. They depend on the larger economy to generate enough excess revenue to fund their projects through grants and other means. This larger economy is based on global trade, which, I should point out, we are all a part of, myself included. This global trade in turn is responsible for much of the greenhouse gas generation on the planet and the degradation of sensitive natural areas around the world. Even federal grants are based on money that, in theory, is generated from taxes which are also tied to global trade in many ways.

Much of the rest of the book is authored by William Dietrich, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Dietrich paints the North Cascades as besieged on all sides by development and the current booming population. He then goes on to state that, “This region (the North Cascades) is the largest contiguous body of protected lands along the four-thousand mile US-Canadian border, totaling 2.7 million acres.”

Two point seven million acres that will never be developed, assuming the Wilderness Act stands as is. “the largest contiguous body of protected lands” between Canada and the US. How is this under siege by development? 2.7 million contiguous protected acres is not enough?  It is also interesting that during the time that civilization has laid so called siege to the North Cascades, I have seen access to public lands in the North Cascades dwindle dramatically.

I have walked a lot of the ground in the North Cascades, almost every summer week for at least 25 years, both on and off trail and I feel quite confident in saying that the sheer ruggedness of these mountains, whether they fall into a category that is considered “protected” or not, guarantee that they are going to be safe from hordes of people for a long time to come. This is especially true of the off trail areas. They are simply too difficult for most people to access. It is also why 2.7 million acres in this type of landscape where all development and motorized use is prohibited is enough. We don’t need any more.

Dietrich states that the North Cascades are a “refuge of calm in a frenzied world”, that “In a warming world, they are a remnant of the Ice Age. In a homogeneous world, they remain exotic. They are best befriended by foot.”

Befriending the North Cascades by foot is a quaint, naïve sentiment. In the first place, I don’t see the North Cascades as a place one befriends. In fact, these mountains share no human emotion and the unfeeling rock and elements in them will cause the death of anyone or anything through the laws of physics, falling rocks, limbs and trees, cold temperatures, swift stream currents, electrical storms, etc. Nothing more. Nothing less. There is nothing there to reason with or to be buddies with. The only human emotion or sensibilities to be found in these mountains are in one’s fellow human beings or within oneself.   

Secondly, I see people every day that I think should get out and exercise more and I can, admittedly, be kind of critical of such people. However, I am not such a snob to think that, because someone doesn’t want to walk long distances, they shouldn’t be able to enjoy at least part of the public land that they own. And I don’t think the reluctance to leave a motor vehicle is laziness alone. There are many people who lack the physical ability, time, and knowledge required to walk long distances safely in the North Cascades, in other words, the more casual users. Are these people to be denied the “refuge of calm”? Are these people to be forbidden from seeing some of the last few glaciers before they disappear? Providing a refuge of calm is possible even if you provide easy access to some areas as long as there are enough areas to spread the pressure of recreational users out. Many times I have driven up logging roads to scenic areas (some where you could even see glaciers not too far away without seeing anyone. This is becoming much more uncommon as the number of accessible roads dwindles.

The figure is 2.7 million acres of wilderness where mechanized equipment is prohibited. That is enough. We should be using the rest of the land base for the benefit of everyone, including those who lack the physical ability, time and knowledge to readily access the mountains. I personally do a lot of walking as my past blog posts have shown. However, I quite often find myself strapped for time so I will go to some spot where access is easy and I can get away from it all. With small children this is even more critical. The little kids of today don’t do well on hours long death marches (I don’t know if kids of any era never did). And I would think easily accessed areas would be even more important for those who live fairly far away but still want to get out occasionally.

At some point, commenting on visitation in North Cascades National Park Dietrich states, “only 26,000 venture far enough from cars to enter the park proper.”

While in some (probably many) instances people are too lazy to leave their cars, I don’t think this is true in every case. Try to imagine you are someone coming from a background where hiking is not the norm. You’ve only been hiking a few times in your life or not at all. Maybe you are on a vacation tour to see the sights in the U.S. You show up here in the North Cascades. Even if you have the time in your vacation itinerary and the physical ability to go on a long hike you probably lack the knowledge and the gear to get very far. The wilderness areas in the North Cascades, including North Cascades National Park are geared for a certain type of user, the serious hiker, climber or horseman. Everyone else has doesn’t get to see most of the really awesome things here like seas of mountains and glaciers and waterfalls. 2.7 million acres of wilderness is enough.

Dietrich takes the reader on a virtual hike where we contemplate existence and switchbacks in a pseudo-zen fashion while sipping water and unwinding from the hectic pace of modern day life.

I don’t know if this is really how it is for him or just a fancy of his imagination. It is not how it really is for me. My reality? Pain. Burning lungs, burning legs, nausea, a general overwhelming uncomfortable feeling, soaking, itching, stinging sweat, excruciating leg cramps, psychological barriers that urge me to just quit at every turn. I usually do eventually reach a point where I hit a groove and am able to continue on despite the pain and discomfort. There is some element to every long, hard hike that I have ever taken, and I have been on quite a few, that is akin to going to the dentist. I know that to get the rewards bestowed by such activities, there will be some discomfort, if not outright pain, that will have to be endured.  

That how it is for me on a trail. Off trail is much more difficult; slick, steep slopes, nearly impenetrable brush that you spend sweat soaked hours pushing your way through sometimes just to progress a mere quarter mile, thorns scratching and festering in your hands and forearms for days, falling rocks, limbs and even trees, dangerous wildlife, streams with slick rock bottoms that threaten to sweep you away and drown you if you make a misstep. And then you step into a bee’s nest and get stung and bitten numerous times.

You need something to help you get through experiences like this, at least I do. My personal method usually involves some song or another, usually a rock song constantly looping through my head, along with all the people and situations that I am pissed off about in the world. When all else fails one word sticks in my mind during tough, monotonous stretches, “endure”. Crude, not pretty, but it gets the job done for me. 

Maybe these cruder methods have some relationship to the pioneer spirit that Dietrich knocks. The spirit that seeks to conquer everything. I don’t know. Some of the mountain trips I do require me to cover a certain amount of ground in a given period of time but I am always interested in the things I see along the way and quite often I get a break as I check out something that I’ve seen. So, for me, it is as much about the journey as the destination and it isn’t all about conquering something.

But being descended from some of the earlier European Americans in the North Cascades, and being familiar with many pioneering stories, it seems to me that if those folks had spent a lot of time in contemplation about esoteric questions instead of getting down to business and working very, very hard, they would have starved to death. Then we wouldn’t have so many of the things that we take for granted that make our life today much easier in comparison.

Dietrich makes the claim that North Cascades National Park is “Wild by Design” “It is deliberately roadless. You have to seek it”.

North Cascades National Park might be deliberately roadless and it might have been designed that way but this was done by certain individuals who hijacked the original vision of this park and substituted their own agenda and through fortuitous circumstances (for them), mainly the lack of funding by Congress, were able to pull it all off.

It was not supposed to have been this way. As I have pointed out in a previous post, (Why We Shouldn’t Expand North Cascades National Park) the national park in the North Cascades was sold to the public largely with the idea that a national park would provide access to more people than wilderness designated land under the control of the U.S. Forest Service. This is spelled out numerous times in The North Cascades Study Report which was commissioned to determine whether a park should be created or not.  

To quote page 15 of The North Cascades Study Report of 1965 under the section for North Cascades National Park:

“A major reason for recommending a National Park is that by means of access and development, the area can be made available to large numbers of people rather than retaining half the area in Wilderness area status, as would be done by the Forest Service”.  (Italics mine).

My apologies for not using the proper indents right on the above quote.

The result of ignoring the recommendations of this report by deliberately limiting access to North Cascades National Park, which Dietrich seems to celebrate, is that the majority of the public can’t experience the “refuge of calm in a frenzied world” or the glaciers that are a “remnant of the Ice Age” on land that they pay taxes for and, in theory, that they own. North Cascades National Park is largely the domain of an elite group who has the physical strength, specialized gear, specialized knowledge and a big enough time budget to access.

There are real scientists featured in this book and they talk about real science in the North Cascades. In their fields of study and other closely related fields, I defer to their knowledge as it is superior to mine. As to the rest of the book, my reading of it found a deceptive mish-mash of anthropomorphisms and subjective statements with some oblique references to science mixed in.

Anthropomorphisms assign human qualities and values to things that are not human, a big no-no in science, as are subjective statements, which are opposed to the objective statements that are the hallmark of hard science. One example of this is when Dietrich talks about “befriending” the North Cascades. Another is found on page 39 where Dietrich refers to the old idea that old-growth forests were decadent and needed to be replaced. He states, “Further research revealed that nature knew best…”

Nature doesn’t know anything. What we would collectively refer to as nature or the natural world is the result of universal physical laws that create a given set of conditions. Evolution acts upon organisms that live under those conditions to produce the best adapted species for that set of conditions. The same evolutionary mechanisms that create species adapted to live in oceans or deserts create species that live in old-growth forests. These mechanisms of evolution have been observed in numerous scientific experiments.  There is no hard scientific evidence of some unseen anthropomorphic entity, no matter what name it is given, guiding it all. Of course, one can go that route, that it is being guided by some entity, but then one is talking about religion, not science. I am not opposed to religion I believe it is very important to a lot of people and has a valid place in our society, but it is subjective, based not on real, observable phenomena, but on a given person’s feelings or emotions. It is not science based on hard, observable phenomena.

I may defer to scientists on certain subjects but when it comes to what the North Cascades are all about and what it takes to make a living here, I defer to no-one, not scientists or Pulitzer Prize winners. Except for the six years I spent in the U.S. Navy, living in the North Cascades and making a living here is the sum total of my life experience. Nobody featured in this book, that I can tell, lives in the North Cascades and also makes a living here independent of North Cascades National Park or some other federal agency. I have.

While we are on the subject, my arguments and those of locals undoubtedly have aspects of the religious and emotional that I just lambasted. I would point out that these have been in large part created and informed by this place, the North Cascades. Science should be separate from the emotional realm. But if one wants to venture in the emotional realm.  I would ask that if one were to compare emotional reactions, which would be more valid? That of one who lives in a place and depends upon that place for a living or one who doesn’t live in that place and only recreates there occasionally? We all have our filters and agendas, even scientists. My views of the North Cascades which I write about are filtered from a lifetime of experience and a long family history in the North Cascades, a point of view that is largely absent from the book.

On page 40 Dietrich states that the American sensibility is to conquer things with a progress oriented can-do attitude left over from the pioneer days. He then goes on to state that you have to sit and watch for months and observe in order to gain entry into the North Cascades.

Here are my thoughts on these statements:

First, most people nowadays are not in positions that allow them months of free time to just go and observe. Believe me, I would love it if this were the case for me. Dietrich mentions several people who were actually paid to do this while in the seasonal employ of the U.S. Forest Service or Park Service. This is not the case for the overwhelming majority of people.

Second, the people who are in the best position for having watched these mountains on a daily basis for months on end and have this apparently sacred knowledge needed to gain entry into the North Cascades are the people who actually live here year round and have family histories here that stretch back for decades, centuries or millenia. While my family is just over the century mark, both my grandparents and my parents have spent many, many years in these mountains and, as a matter of fact, my dad was a fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service to boot. There are others who still live here who have similar stories. Again, these people are not even represented in this book.

My grandparents undoubtedly had a pioneer mindset because they were literally scratching a living from the ground and if they didn’t have such a mindset, they would have failed and possibly even paid for that failure with their lives. They didn’t have much excess wealth and had to look at the world in a much more practical way than people do today. Maybe this idea is foreign to folks like Mr. Dietrich who are able live off the excess wealth our society generates by specializing in writing instead of exhausting themselves by spending the majority of their waking hours in any given year in tedious, back-breaking labor just to put food on the table.  

Dietrich calls the North Cascades “today’s spiritual refuge.”

This with several other comments alludes to pseudo religion or, maybe even a full fledged religion. I like going out into the mountains and I do get a sense of well-being from my trips there. I would even go so far as to say that I can feel spirits in the mountains, people who have been there before me as well as non-human entities. And each given part of the North Cascades where I have spent time has its own unique “feel” to it.

All that being said, I also think that everything that I feel while I am in the mountains I bring with me. These feelings and sensations are all manufactured in my mind and are unique to me. As I have stated previously, these mountains share no human emotion. I also wouldn’t expect every other human being to see these mountains the way I do. I am sure that there are plenty of people out there who don’t really want to have anything to do with these mountains.

Unfortunately for many of those who are interested in visiting these mountains, access for the general public in the North Cascades is steadily declining due in no small part to land preservation measures. Are the majority of people to be denied “spiritual refuge” because they lack the physical ability, knowledge and time to access them?

On page 68 Dietrich outlines the events that lead to the Northwest Forest Plan. “Causes sometimes coalesce around a name. The invention of “ancient forest” gave a catchier description for “old-growth”, “virgin” or “late successional” and succeeded in capturing the public imagination, leading to a Northwest Forest Plan that sharply curtailed logging on federal land.” “Environmentalists were raising an outcry and enlisting science to protect the endangered spotted owl.” He states that one of the results of this is that timber harvest statewide in Washington went down from seven billion feet in 1987 to four billion feet in 2000 after the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented.

My thoughts on these statements:

Not a single word in this, or any other part of the book about the devastating socioeconomic impacts that the Northwest Forest Plan had on timber communities, our fellow human beings. Disgraceful. I have heard a lot of lip service (some from Mr. Dietrich himself) over the years since the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan about how automation has eliminated many jobs in the timber industry. This, I feel, is partially true. But even with automation you would still need a lot of people being paid good wages to harvest and process 3 billion feet of timber. It’s not like someone pushes a button and lumber magically appears from the ether.

And here is what I think about the term “ancient forest” in an excerpt from my post Know Your Forest Cow Heaven. This isn’t a simple, catchy sound byte or buzz word so there is a lot of information (and opinion) here if one is truly interested in being informed about the subject.

“In the last several years, some people have been using terms like “ancient forest” as synonyms for old growth forests. I think such terms are designed to play on people’s emotions and are confusing while not providing any real description of the forest. I like to call these terms “enviro-babble”.

When someone describes another living person as “ancient” it is understood that this is a metaphor and that person is not actually ancient. The way the term “ancient” has been used in the context of forests and trees seems to be an attempt to be literal rather than metaphorical.

West of the Cascade Mountains, before the fire suppression of the 20^th century, every 300-600 years, on average, most forest stands experienced a stand replacing forest fire. This means that some part, often a large part, of the forest was almost completely burned and replaced with a new stand of trees that grew back from the ashes.

In human terms, ancient history ended 1500 years ago in about A.D. 500. So, by human measurement, the life span of a 600 year old tree reaches only to the end of the Middle Ages. While a 600 year old tree is very old compared to a human, by the time it reaches this age, its days are numbered. Six hundred is also very young compared to trees like bristlecone pines, many of which are truly ancient in human terms. While certain individual trees in Northwest forests may actually exceed 600 years old they don’t even come close to the 6000 years of the bristlecones. If a tree can’t be considered ancient in human terms, how can it be considered ancient by the standards of trees?

And, while certain individual trees in these forests may exceed 600 years old, most don’t even come close due to mortality from natural disturbances such as fire, disease, animal damage, floods and landslides. So it would be wrong to describe individual old trees as “ancient” let alone an entire forest around them that is made up of many trees that are much younger.”

My apologies for not using the proper indents on the above quote.

“Ancient Forest” may have captured the public imagination but the term has more to do with semantics and spin than reality. Terms like “Ancient Forest” create subtle deceptions that mislead. If we want to fix problems in this real world we will have to operate in the real world with information as close to reality as possible not by misleading people. This might be a little more boring (or even confusing depending on your disposition) but it is also more solid. Again, this type of tactic has more to do with influencing people by tugging at their emotions rather than looking at hard, measureable evidence.

As to the dramatic decrease in timber harvest from 7 billion feet to 4 billion feet between 1987 and 2000, I worked as a logger during that time period and didn’t have a problem finding work until the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan in the early 1990’s. After that there was still work to be had as a logger, there still is, but not like there was before. The demand for timber didn’t go away with the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan. So, to meet the demands of a global market, that extra 3 billion feet a year has been coming from other places.

One of these places is British Columbia where, presumably the spotted owl also needs habitat since B.C is within its range of distribution. Probably another source for timber has been increased production on private timberland in the state (much of which is owned by “big timber” interests which are generally maligned by environmentalists, who, ironically, are actually helping these very same companies by creating an artificial shortage of timber). These private timberlands are also potential spotted owl habitat if the trees on it were ever to get big enough. Of course this won’t happen because the shift in pressure and increased production necessitates shorter harvest intervals.

Finally, a certain amount of production has shifted to tropical forests in countries where environmental laws aren’t as strong as ours and where political corruption which leads to over-exploitation of resources is common in many countries. It seems like there has been a steady stream of National Geographic articles in the last several years that cover the problems of rampant illegal logging in tropical areas.

These tropical areas more often than not have high rates of endemic species that need those forests for habitat and, unlike the Pacific Northwest, these species are usually not adapted to forest disturbances.

All this for what? Despite the near cessation in logging in federal forests for over 20 years, the spotted owl has recently been proposed for listing as and endangered species (evidently Dietrich got that one wrong, at the time of the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan, the spotted owl was listed as a threatened species). At the same time poverty driven issues are a plague in many timber dependent communities.

As to environmentalists enlisting scientists to their cause, I know there was a lot of science that indicated that the spotted owl needed a certain amount of old-growth forest but at the time of the whole controversy there was also a lot of evidence, which has, by this time, been confirmed, that the barred owl, which moved west on its own probably with some help from human activities unrelated to timber harvest in the Pacific Northwest, was going to have significant detrimental impacts on the spotted owl. One of the current strategies to deal with barred owls is for federal and other agents to actively hunt them and shoot them.

I think science is a very valuable tool to help us understand the world. However, just because a certain study is done and published, it doesn’t mean the matter is settled. Studies of the same subject often yield contradictory results. Quite often how you ask a question in a study and how you do your statistics influences the answer you get. Contradictory results are sometimes debated and argued for decades or more. And, as I mentioned earlier, scientists are humans too with their own filters and agendas.

So, it is quite often possible to cherry pick the studies you want to support your point of view and ignore the rest. On the issue of the spotted owl that Dietrich refers to (and probably other subjects he refers to as well) the environmentalists cherry picked their science and used this distorted view as a weapon agains vulnerable rural populations.  These rural populations were vulnerable because of their lack of media savvy. The distortion of the cherry picked science was transmitted through an organized media machine that got it wide distribution in media markets. For a rural person who has spent their entire life in a place, it is next to impossible to sum up decades of experiences in a place and knowledge about that place into a tidy catchphrase or buzzword for media consumers. This would be the work of a master wordsmith if it were possible at all. Then, even if you had your word or catchphrase or contrary bit of scientific evidence, you need some organized means to get that wide distribution to the general public. The rural people affected by spotted owl decisions made their livings doing things other than media marketing. A similar tactic is employed in this book by excluding the points of view of people who have lived and made their living in the North Cascades for decades and generations because those views would probably be contrary to the author’s. It would be hard or even impossible for 

Dietrich also points out that the term “wilderness Alps” or “American Alps” were coined to describe the North Cascades during environmental campaigns in the 1960’s. When one ignores the semantics and looks at the reality of the subject the irony is thick. The Alps of Europe, a beautiful area where access is very easy and thus a place that is known worldwide because people all over the world visit in significant numbers is used to describe an area, the North Cascades, where access is very difficult, thus making it an area relatively few people know about, even regionally and very few people visit. Here is another example of a subtle deception, using the term Alps to describe the North Cascades implies that these mountains are like the Alps of Europe where almost anyone can travel deep into them and see the sights. Nothing could be further from the truth.

On page 71 Dietrich lauds the wilderness campaigns of the 1960’s: “Environmentalists generated a steady campaign of sympathetic national press stories, organized hikes for power brokers and circulated spectacular pictures.”

I would point out here that those powerbrokers were driven to trailheads on roads built for timber harvest and paid for and maintained by timber harvest money and that those roads made it feasible to get those powerbrokers out to the mountains in a timely manner. Much of this access no longer exists and average Americans have been denied access to lands that they own due, in large part to those campaigns.

What were the materials for all of those wilderness campaigns printed on? Paper made from the pulp of trees in someone’s back yard. How were those environmentalists funded? Their monies were generated from an excess in wealth created in urban areas by practices that were every bit as harmful, if not more so, than timber harvest.  

On page 72 Dietrich reviews the debate to establish a park in the North Cascades: “The Seattle audience was overwhelmingly in favor of a park, while local communities were almost unanimously opposed. The result was a conservation triumph but a compromise on several fronts.” P. 72.

In the first place, this was a preservation triumph since preservation (“to preserve unchanged”) is the stated mission of the National Park Service.

No explanation is given as to why there was such disparity in support for the park. No acknowledgement is given to the concerns of local communities. It is left to the reader to fill in the blanks, maybe the local communities were just backwards and not well educated enough to appreciate the beauty all around them? Here is the reason local communities were against the park: They understood that they needed those resources to generate revenues to have the services and infrastructure to maintain a healthy economy and a decent living for a significant number of people. Active resource use not only created and maintained living wage jobs that circulated more money locally, creating even more jobs, the taxes on the resources produced and the businesses that produced them went to fund, among other things, local schools and counties, which meant more county services.

Establishing a national park effectively removed a large chunk of land from the tax rolls that generated monies to pay for a lot of public services. You need to have a certain amount of wealth or distance to be able to look at any resource and value it for something as superficial as beauty alone and not to think that you don’t need to make use of it to generate significant revenue.

The people in Seattle didn’t need those resources. Their economy, the jobs and tax revenues needed to fund their basic needs and standard of living was based on other things. And the heavy industry and international trade that made up the bulk of this economy, and still does to a large extent, was hardly benign environmentally.

Dietrich focuses on what the environmentalists had to give up in the deal and, again, not a single word on the impacts that the creation of this park had on resource dependent communities suddenly deprived of the use of a large part of those resources. And, no, the park didn’t employ large numbers of people to make up for any lost jobs. They operated on the cheap as a skeleton crew for years. I know because my mom was on that skeleton crew.

I would ask, “What is the state of those local communities now?” Since I live in one of them I can tell you that it is very hard to get steady, living wage work locally. I have been one of the ones lucky enough to do so. I can also tell you that public services in eastern Skagit County where I live, on the doorstep of the park, aren’t the greatest and the whole area is plagued with poverty driven issues that have preceded, for over a decade, the general malaise felt by the rest of the country recently.

On page 72 Dietrich states, “To stand at Artist Point and realize that Mount Shuksan in one direction is inside the park and Mount Baker in the other is not, is a testament to the oddities of compromise.”

Lets look at another compromise that happened with the establishment of this park. How is it that the headquarters for North Cascades National Park is in Sedro-Woolley nearly 50 miles (or more than 50 miles, depending on how one calculates the distance) from the physical location of most of the park? You can’t even see any part of the park from headquarters.

I don’t know if the events which I am about to relate are written down anywhere and I don’t know if they can be proven. I don’t present them as the unvarnished truth, because I don’t know for sure that they are, but they present a compelling explanation for why the headquarters for this park, unlike almost all of the other national parks is so far from the physical location of the park itself.

Here goes: As was stated earlier, local resistance to the establishment of the park was stiff and, if it were established over the wishes of local residents it would look bad, people who lived in the wealthier, more populated parts of the state taking resources away from people who lived in one of the poorer, less populated parts of the state. To legitimize this process, it was put to a vote in the local communities of the area whether or not a national park should be created.

But the vote was rigged. Supposedly national parks create an economic prosperity zone that extends for many miles around them. I think that, at the time North Cascades National Park was created, this zone was estimated to be 50 miles. I think this estimation has now been extended to 60 miles, or maybe I remembered wrong and it has always been 60 miles, but that is another subject.

A key consideration of this is that the city of Sedro-Woolley was within that 50 mile economic prosperity zone and thus was included in the communities who could vote on whether there was to be a park or not. Another key consideration of this is that Northern State Hospital in Sedro-Woolley was closing at the cost of a large number of jobs which a lot of people in the Sedro-Woolley area were understandably concerned about.

A deal was made that, if a national park was established, the headquarters, and all of the jobs that went with it, would be in Sedro-Woolley. While I am sure many people in Sedro-Woolley opposed the park because they also used the resources the park would put off-limits, the majority of the people there really had nothing to lose and everything to gain by the establishment of the park because they were guaranteed to get solid jobs as well as the prestige of park headquarters, an important public symbol of a national park. The population of Sedro-Woolley was a good bit bigger than the populations of the smaller, upriver communities and there were enough people from this larger population in favor of the park to swing the vote.

So the whole process moved forward with a cover of legitimacy. The outsiders who wanted the park could now say, “See, the local people want it” and, in fact, you often hear it said that this is a “park by the people.” I have heard that Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson spearheaded this effort, a slick bit of politicking but probably not a difficult feat for a politician of his caliber and connections against a small, relatively powerless group of people.

Whether or not the events did unfold as I have just related, a compromise of some sort was obviously made for the headquarters of this park to be so far from the actual physical location of the majority of the land being administered.

Sedro-Woolley is well positioned to have a much stronger strong economy than communities farther upriver. Though it is a little out of the way compared to some of the other communities in the valley, it is still close to I-5. State Highway 9 runs through the middle of it as well as rail lines and it is in fairly close proximity the larger population centers and industries of greater Puget Sound. The communities upriver are on a dead end road for almost half of the year, there is very little industry and the populations are small.

The permanent jobs that went with park headquarters would have probably had a greater positive economic impact if headquarters had been located upriver. There would be more people with permanent jobs (since the inception of the park, there have only been a few permanent park jobs upriver, the rest are seasonal) and thus more money in these communities, assuming most people would choose to live closer to their work. Not only that, but the local school would have likely benefited greatly as well. School funding in this state is in part determined by the number of students enrolled. Again assuming that many people would choose to live closer to their work, those people with school age children would have likely boosted the student body in the local school and thus increasing the funding for that school.

On a personal note, when I lost my logging job due to the Northwest Forest Plan and started working for North Cascades National Park after my two years of retraining, my original duty station was at headquarters. This meant that, even though I lived within a few miles or less of the physical borders of the park, I had to drive 44 miles to work and back every day, a round trip journey of 88 miles. The commute down and back took almost two hours of my time out of every working day. And I had to pay for my own fuel as well as the wear and tear on my vehicle.

My former job which was year round and paid between $15 and $18 an hour was 28 miles away. My new job with the park was seasonal, paid $7 to $8 an hour and was 16 miles farther away. That was one result of the headquarters compromise that hurt me economically.

My mom, after she had worked for the park out of Marblemount for over 20 years was reassigned to Sedro-Woolley. At this point in her career she had maxed out in her job class and pay grade so she couldn’t get a raise without moving into a different job. The reassignment however was not into a different job. It was the same job with a different duty station. This resulted in a net pay cut for her since, because her new duty station was Sedro-Woolley, she had to pay her own fuel and mileage not to mention two hours a day in commute time.

There are many stories similar to ours. Sour grapes on my part?  Maybe. I am not trying to pick a fight with the people of Sedro-Woolley. The point I am trying to make is that a lot of compromises and concessions were made in many areas when this park was established. Having the park headquarters in Sedro-Woolley wasn’t the end of the world for communities upriver and it didn’t have the impact that later federal land use decisions had, but it likely meant that those upriver communities and the individuals who lived in them got a smaller share of resources. Life is a competition for resources and it isn’t always fair. Compromises are made all the time. There are numerous examples of this whether it is between family members, communities or countries. More often than not, the smaller person or entity loses out.  

Back to the original subject, some preservationists see the fact that Mount Baker was not included in North Cascades National Park as some kind of great tragedy. Dietrich seems to portray this as some kind of shortcoming or deficiency—oddity he calls it. So what? The only people Mount Baker being in the park matters to are the ones who are seeking status for the National Park Service and evidently think that, if something isn’t in a National Park, it isn’t worth seeing.

These people need to expand their vision and get a life. Being in a national park doesn’t make something magically special over everything else that isn’t in a park. In fact, I am aware of a lot of pretty cool and spectacular things that aren’t in a national park or even in a wilderness designated area for that matter.

And as far as preserving Mount Baker goes, a large part of the area around Mount Baker was later designated wilderness so all mechanized development is prohibited there. This means that there aren’t going to be any roads built and neither is some gaudy, tasteless resort for the mega-wealthy. The level of resource use restriction for U.S. Forest Service wilderness is only slightly less than if it were in a National Park (actually it is even more so for some things).

So the compromise of not having Mount Baker in the national park even though it is on land federally designated as wilderness is mainly a question of semantics. For all intents and purposes, Mount Baker isn’t going to be harmed in any significant way by direct human use or development whereas, on the headquarters compromise, a lot of people lost out on resources that could have made their lives significantly better.

Compromises or concessions were also made when it was decided to not build developments that had been promised that would allow greater access to North Cascades National Park to the majority of the general public. A lot more people, most of the general public in fact, lost out on those compromises because the lack of those developments means most of the general public can’t access most of the park. So I wish those who think it is some kind of outrage that Mount Baker isn’t in North Cascades National Park would quit whining.

Dietrich does acknowledge on page 75 that in North Cascades National Park there were development plans for Shuksan, Colonial, Arctic Creek and a tram on Ruby Mountain (the developments mentioned above) and that all were opposed by environmentalists and none happened.

When this park was created the local communities were worried about how they would make a living if they weren’t allow to actively utilize the surrounding natural resources. This is how many of them made a living and it was very important to the local economy.  They were told that the status and prestige of a national park would bring in tourism money. The aforementioned development plans were for key infrastructure that would allow access to the park for the majority of average people, that is, the general public, thus creating a draw for large numbers of people.

Because these developments were quashed, access to the bulk of the park, including the most impressive parts of it is so difficult as to be impossible for most people. The result is that this park is perennially the second least visited park in the entire park service system.

The business of tourism operates on very thin margins because it depends on people’s disposable income. Therefore, tourism businesses need large volumes of people to come to whatever the attraction or attractions may be. How are people in the North Cascades supposed to make a living from tourism when very few people actually visit the national park that is supposed to be the big attraction because access to that park is so difficult?

On page 77, Dietrich knocks The North Cascades Highway, Highway 20, stating the “highway was built for speed, not contemplation, justified to move commodities” and states that a park highway would have taken longer to drive and have been more scenic.

Actually I think one of the agreements on approval of construction of this highway was that it was expressly not supposed to be a commercial highway. I think this kind of fell by the wayside as people realized that it was a very efficient way to move goods (and themselves) through this corner of the state.

State Route 20, The North Cascades Highway is, in fact, a designated scenic highway. This means that there are strict rules on signs and billboards along it, at least in rural areas, so the views won’t be spoiled and passers by can contemplate unhindered except by roaring motorcycles.

I know of several businesses who are regularly hassled about billboards advertising their businesses and some have had to be removed. I am not a big fan of billboards but this is asking people operating businesses in a lesser known part of the state along a highway that is only open for part of the year to operate with a minimum of advertising.

I am sure one assumption would be that they should be advertising online. I am sure that they do this but internet connectivity can be spotty here, mobile phones work intermittently and, at the end of the day, the impediment to billboard advertising probably costs these people a lot of spontaneous sales. For instance, someone sees a sign, has a little time to think about it before they get to town and decides it is a good idea to get a burger (or whatever) that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Internet ads aren’t going to catch these people if they don’t have cell reception and what mom and pop restaurant business has the money to stay at the top of the search engine?

As it is, the highway is one of the few bright spots in the local economy, bringing in probably ten times the people that the National Park Proper does (about five times as many people if you count visitation in the recreation area).  Though a lot of the jobs the highway creates are seasonal, low wage service sector jobs I don’t begrudge one bit the local businesses who make a living from the highway and create those jobs here. These businesses are valuable contributors to local communities and the jobs they create help. The alternative is no jobs.

I say this even though every year I kind of dread the pass opening. This means lots more traffic and lots of crazy drivers making things much more dangerous for myself and my family to be on the road. This is all the result of traffic volume. The businesses here need high traffic volume in order to be able to remain solvent. And it doesn’t matter if the people in those cars are just trying to get from point A to point B or if they are out on a contemplation tour.

The jury is out with me as far as whether a slower, more scenic highway would have been better than an efficient highway. A slower highway would probably have discouraged a lot of people from coming here though many that did come might have been more likely to stay a while longer. On the other hand, a more efficient highway is probably much easier to maintain and is safer. All that being said, given the history of broken promises concerning infrastructure when North Cascades National Park was created, if it had been left to the people who ushered in the park, no highway (or even dirt road) of any sort would ever have happened, especially not at the estimated $1 million per mile it took to build the highway in the mid-to late 1960’s.

On page 81 Dietrich states, “The mountains are not just a series of ecosystems of course. They mirror human needs and values. They have evolved from a commodity storehouse of minerals and timber to psychological sanctuary and recreational playground. In an increasingly frenetic world, they are the place our grandchildren will go for challenge, contemplation and fun.”

Do they also mirror the poverty and social dysfunction in the communities here? Whose needs and values is he talking about?

Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who studied the needs that motivated people. He proposed that people have a hierarchy of needs, the most basic being physiological needs, then safety needs, then needs to love and belong to a group, then esteem needs and finally self-actualization.

Some psychologists and sociologists hold the view that lines between hierarchies might be blurry and, beyond the basic needs, the other needs are arranged differently and hold differing levels of importance depending on cultural and societal values.

However, there seems to be some agreement between everyone about most of the ideas about the basic needs of humans, the two most basic being physiological and safety. If one’s basic physiological needs, meaning water, food and shelter are not met, then one doesn’t really care about much else. Those basic needs are all consuming and they have to be met before anything else is considered. If you think about it, this makes sense. If you don’t have those basic things, you will probably die. The next level of need is safety, meaning both physical and economic which again, have to be met before anything else is considered. Recreational or spiritual use, as Dietrich puts it, “challenge, contemplation and fun”, falls under the higher categories of human needs, group belonging, esteem and self-actualization. As I understand it, according to what most psychologists and sociologists would consider a hierarchy of human needs, if people’s basic needs, physiological and safety, aren’t being met, most aren’t going to choose some recreational use over having those basic needs met because recreational uses are a luxury they can’t afford. Many people who live in the North Cascades, myself included enjoy a comfortable level of existence. But there are also a lot of people living in the North Cascades whose basic needs aren’t being met or they aren’t being met very well.

I reiterate: Whose needs is Dietrich talking about? What about the needs of these people that aren’t being met, or the people in the rest of society whose needs aren’t being met? In the North Cascades, I think, for the most part, the physiological needs of struggling people are met through social safety net programs. It is when one considers the aspect of economic safety that one sees a huge deficit.

I think use of the North Cascades solely for recreational, psychological or spiritual purposes by people who are experiencing severe economic insecurity is probably quite limited. If one thinks about it, someone who is economically stressed probably isn’t going to be doing a lot of hiking or climbing or general outdoor recreating, especially if fees are required or access is so difficult it takes a lot of time and special gear. This is because they have limited resources and little or no disposable income and they need to concentrate on marshalling all of the resources they do have just to live day to day. They can’t afford to engage in a lot of superfluous activities and, in such a situation, “challenge, contemplation and fun” are superfluous.

That being said, I have known many people over the years who have had marginal or unstable incomes who have used these mountains for recreation and, I am sure, some sort of spiritual purposes. I mentioned earlier that there was disagreement on the structure of the hierarchy of human needs and this would appear to be a place where the boundaries are blurred.

In my observation, when people with marginal or unstable incomes use the mountains for recreation, it is quite often in combination with some sort of activity involving hunting and gathering. So, while they might be recreating, they are not recreating for the sake of recreating in order to meet their higher needs, they are also working at meeting their basic physiological and safety (economic) needs. In other words, they are recreating in a holistic manner.

I would guess that such people see these mountains holistically (I know that I do), as a place to get resources to meet their physiological, safety, esteem and self-actualization (spiritual) needs. The restriction of access to public lands through the preservation measures that I have seen over the years, i.e. tearing out roads or letting them deteriorate to impassability in order to “protect” the mountains I think has harmed economically stressed people on many levels, physiological, economic, psychological and spiritual.

I think that occasionally people who are under economic stress do recreate for the sake of recreating. Everyone on the economic scale has different priorities and everyone splurges sometimes. When they do, it seems that the kind of area that most of people in this situation use are the ones that have easy access and are cheap or free. You often see vehicles and camp setups in the cheap or free areas that appear to be outings on a tight budget.

Most of the people I see in the backcountry, far from roads and campgrounds are wearing expensive gear, the type of stuff you have to have disposable income to afford. I would also note that I know some people for whom the spiritual and psychological apparently outweigh economic security but I think these folks are the exception rather than rule. I wouldn’t want to live like they do and I don’t think many others would either.

In fairness, a number of frontcountry campgrounds where access is easy are featured in the book but most, if not all, are official and now require fees. Again, one has to have certain amount of disposable income to use these types of campgrounds. And most of these campgrounds are in the lowlands. So, while they are certainly in impressive forests, they lack the sweeping mountain views that are the crown jewels of the North Cascades.

It isn’t like the people who have lived here for generations don’t use these mountains to provide for their physical, psychological and spiritual needs. I have personally experienced a good bit of economic insecurity though not to the degree as others around me. I have been secure enough with enough disposable income most of the time to use the North Cascades for recreation a good bit. But, to a large degree, my mindset has always been that of the hunter gatherer.

Though I might be taking in a lot of the beautiful and interesting things to be found, my eye is always looking for resources that can be used to provide for the physiological needs of myself and my family. I think seeing these mountains in this way actually leads to a deeper appreciation of them.

Dietrich’s statement about using the North Cascades to meet human needs and values, and as a psychological sanctuary and recreational playground is one dimensional and definitely told from the point of view of someone who has had all of his basic needs met, who enjoys a high level of physiological and economic security, who doesn’t have to look at these mountains in any other way than as a playground and who is apparently either completely oblivious to the situation of others who don’t enjoy that level of security or doesn’t care. It is a little disturbing to me when one group’s recreational wants and higher, non-essential needs outweigh another group’s basic needs.

On page 82 Dietrich states, “Now that logging and mining have been globalized and regional markets have shrunk, do the North Cascades provide sufficient economic opportunity for mountain communities?”

The short answer to this question is yes. At least logging still provides very good economic opportunities.

I know very little about mining and almost all of that is about mines on the Skagit. On the Skagit the only paying mining interests that I am aware of were a few talc mines and the gold mines on Canyon Creek of which the gold mines are still active off and on even today. Most of the rest of the mining prospects in the Skagit area were too remote and the ore too poor to make them economically feasible. My grandpa packed in goods and supplies to a number of mines in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and most, if not all of these had been abandoned by the mid 1900’s.

Logging is another matter entirely. Global markets aren’t anything new. Timber was exported from Northwest forests, mostly to Japan, before the Second World War and it continues to be exported today, where one of the major markets is China.

To help make ends meet when I was laid off from North Cascades National Park in the winter of 2010/2011, I did a small select logging job on some land my family owned. The following excerpt is from my post  “Making a Living in the North Cascades” and it outlines my experience:

“For a total investment of 74 hours of work on the logging job, I grossed $8,245, of which $1400 went for rental and operation of logging equipment, $2250 went to pay to haul the logs to the mill, $1100 went to the State of Washington in the form of taxes and insurance, $1400 went to wages (me), leaving a net profit to us (mom, my sister and me), the land owners, of about 2,000 dollars. The rental and hauling money went directly to local business owners who lived 11 to 25 miles from where the trees were harvested. And at least part of the forest excise tax benefited the local school. In addition, once the logs had been hauled to the mill in the lower Skagit Valley, more people there were paid living wages to saw them into lumber. The majority of this lumber was sold on the international market, creating more jobs and wealth through international trade.

That same year I lost $6,400 on my photography business, much of which came directly from my own pocket. And that year should have been a good year. I got a small contract worth $2300 dollars early in the year to create a presentation. This was actually the only instance in the history of my business where I was paid a competitive wage for my time. So, for that year, I had a $2300 advantage that I did not have any other year.

My photography business suffered the losses in 2010 despite what I would conservatively estimate to be about 1220 hours invested into the endeavor, about 800 hours of which were spent by my mom, at no charge to me or my business, operating a gallery and going to art shows to sell my photographic prints and products featuring my photos. The gallery where my mom worked would have closed long before 2010 but for the fact that the people who staffed it, like my mom were retired and didn’t charge wages. So it could get by as long as they made enough revenue for rent.

Significantly, most of the money I lost, or spent if you will, since we are talking about what could only be characterized as a hobby, went to businesses 70 to 100 miles away and even as far away as Texas, well outside of the local community. Most of the tax dollars generated by my “business” went with the money I spent outside the community.

In the almost 16 years to that point, since I had been trying to sell my art, I had never made money. My yearly losses ranged from several thousand dollars to $10,000. Early on, I was only able to sustain these losses by working during my seasonal lay offs from the Park in one of the only other well paid jobs available to me locally: logging.”

There are several things to consider with the 2010 logging job.

It was just a fill in job for me. My experience with logging has mostly been as a worker for hire, not on the business end so I wasn’t as shrewd as I could have been about knowing the best way to sell the logs and other business practices that probably could have gotten a better return for my efforts. So, despite a little bumbling on my part, my wages, about $20 an hour, were pretty good for 2010.

There was a lot of associated revenue generated not only in taxes but in buying supplies from local stores and paying wages to other people both in the logging end and the mill end of the process. The other businesses I dealt with all paid business taxes. These businesses were the small local type that don’t move around the country or overseas to avoid taxes. As the raw material, logs, were processed into products every step of process added value and created economic activity and jobs were either created or sustained and wealth was created and taxes were collected.

I left up to 80 or 90 percent of the trees in some places. There were markets for the timber that I left and I could have kept at it all winter long and made a lot more money but we didn’t want to harvest the entire forest all at once. Wildlife habitat was retained and resources are available for human use in the future as well. This experience wasn’t restricted just to 2010. I did several logging jobs before this in 2005, 2007, 2008 and all made good profit and were well worth my time to do.

If one wants an example of someone who is familiar with good business practices in the timber industry, just last year my mom and cousins had some property that they inherited from my uncle and dad. The cut on this job was heavier than anything I have personally done but there were a lot of trees left standing and less than half the property was logged-about 40 to 50 acres.

In about two months time, over 280,000 dollars was generated on this project. My mom and cousin’s share was about $140,000 out of which they are liable for a number of taxes to the county and state. The rest went to pay the loggers and trucking who will also pay taxes on part of their earnings.

The raw logs that went to local mills were processed into more finished products and the workers who did that processing were paid a living wage and, in turn, taxed on those wages. Further processing of the lumber and pulp from those logs will create more jobs and taxes. The logs that were exported involved crews to handle them and ship them. Again more taxes and revenue were generated from international trade.

Every step of this process created more jobs and wealth, both for the people involved locally and regionally and for the local and regional governments that levied taxes on that wealth and economic activity. I am sure that there are figures out there that tell how much money additive economic activities like this, which multiply revenue at every step, add to the economy but I don’t have the time to research the subject. I feel safe in saying though that this amount is significant and it offers significant economic opportunity for many of those who live in mountain communities, much more significant opportunity than tourism.  

If one looks at my photography “business”, almost none of the wealth created wound up in communities in the North Cascades. All of the tools, camera equipment, film, film processing, digitizing equipment etc. were created almost exclusively overseas, well outside the North Cascades. This is where the wealth associated with my “business” was created.

All of the services I purchased and most of the taxes associated with the “business” were also outside the local community, again creating wealth somewhere else. The activities associated with my “business” weren’t additive to local economies, they actually sent a lot of money out of the local economy that could have created jobs here if it had been spent locally. Though I try very hard to shop locally, I have, and will continue to, purchase a number of things that don’t create much wealth locally.

I don’t begrudge people elsewhere in the world a living. I am trying to make the point that my experience with a business that depended pretty heavily on tourism and drawing in money from the outside, rather than creating a product from a raw material to sell or trade to the outside world to meet a demand, was a huge net negative for my personal bottom line and it added virtually nothing to the local economy.  

So I would say that if one knows what one is talking about, timber obviously holds significant value in local and global markets. I would note that timber based businesses aren’t a sure thing. Producing a commodity makes one subject to market ups and downs though nowadays these don’t seem to be as extreme as in the past. And, as with any economic activity, there are all kinds of deals and angles by which people can turn a profit or self-destruct. I have known many mills and logging outfits that, even in good times, have gone out of business, usually because bad business decisions were made.

It is important to note that all businesses suffer ups and downs. The difference with a business like tourism, the major alternative to resource extraction in this area, being that tourism has very thin margins, making much harder for many people involved in this type of business to weather downturns.   

The whole world (or most of it) lives on trade. To have a viable economy we need to be making things that have value in outside markets, regional, national and global. Timber and natural resources are one of the few commodities that are available to mountain communities to produce that can be traded with to the outside world where they have value in broad markets.

Wilderness tourism  generates little revenue outside small, highly specialized markets. A business in wilderness tourism isn’t a viable option to most people out here and the market is small and quickly saturated, further limiting the number of viable businesses. From my experience, living in the North Cascades quite often involves generalization, making a viable living by mixing tourism and timber, livestock and a regular job etc. Without a doubt this is true of other rural areas. This speaks to diversity and the need for as much diversity in job opportunities as possible in an area where such possibilities are naturally limited. While tourism can certainly be part of that diversity picture, tourism by itself as the sole major player in the economy isn’t going to hack it.

One final thing to think about on timber production in the North Cascades and the Pacific Northwest in general: Timber and forest products have been traded on global markets for at least the last 70 to 100 years. Japan was a huge importer of logs from the Pacific Northwest both before and after the Second World War.

Thanks to trade deals over the years, commodities, forest products included, can be more easily traded than ever on global markets of today. Because of these global markets, slack in timber production in the Pacific Northwest is picked up in other parts of the world, often in tropical areas where rates of endemic species are high, species tolerance to forest disturbance is low, environmental laws are weak and corruption is rampant, resulting in little incentive to use sustainable forest practices.

In the North Cascades species endemism is very low, species tolerance to forest disturbance is high and we have strong environmental laws, as well as the means and collective will to harvest timber sustainably and we have low rates of corruption.

Dietrich makes the statement on page 84 that “Pioneers had little interest in recording the ecological knowledge of tribes, and many oral memories were lost.”

I believe this to be, at least in part, true. We are talking about two very different cultures, which saw the world in very different ways. So there were probably a lot of cases where knowledge was lost because the potential learner, the pioneer, didn’t understand the manner in which the knowledge was being communicated. At the same time, along with all of the myriad problems like disease caused by contact with European Americans, federal policies were causing chaos and human misery in Native American communities, the fallout of which can still be seen today.

While I don’t think my folks were active participants in carrying out misguided federal policies or outright oppression, they probably didn’t actively oppose them either. From the talk I always heard, my folks knew many Indian people whom they considered to be friends and I don’t think my folks would knowingly do harm to these people. Things like assimilation were commonly thought to be the best way forward for Native peoples. They (the European Americans) didn’t know any better.

In hindsight, many of these ideas are clearly horrific when viewed through the lens of today. Those were the beliefs held by many at the time, they are not the beliefs I hold today or think that anyone should hold. Destroying or attempting to destroy a culture results in a lot of human misery for the people of that culture. This is one reason that it is wrong. And every culture is a unique way of looking at the world and I think all cultures have the potential to make all of our lives richer.

So I wouldn’t try to paint my folks as being completely blameless in some of the awful things that happened to the Native people here. They probably did the best they could to do right by other people in their time and situation and in their imperfect lives, like we all do.

All that being said, I also know that there was a good bit of cooperation between early settlers, my family included, and natives here and a certain amount of knowledge was passed between the groups. My dad and his siblings had lots of friends who happened to be Indians and so did my grandparents.

I grew up eating berries that grow here naturally. Before I could read I was made to know which ones were good to eat and which ones were poisonous. Later I learned which ones were okay if they were cooked. This knowledge was passed on to me by my dad who learned quite a bit of it, along with knowledge about fishing and hunting, from the Indian kids he ran around with when he was young. And much of what he learned about foraging in the local vicinity that he learned from his parents most likely had its source in Native knowledge as well.

My grandparents came here from somewhere else and, while there were botanical references available, I don’t think there were very many field guides available at that time. They didn’t automatically know where resources were and what plants and berries were or weren’t poisonous. How could they? I’m sure they figured some of it out on their own but the rest they learned from the people who were already here, other pioneers who probably learned a lot from the Indians and the Indians themselves

Here is a question: Do you write down the intimate details and beliefs of your friends and the people you know? That would be kind of weird unless you were an anthropologist and even then recording such information about your friends might be pushing the envelope of weirdness. This is why most people, myself included, don’t know much about their ancestry back more than a few generations.

From the way that my dad talked, their Indian neighbors and friends were just that. They were all trying to make a living in a hard place and just like any people in such a situation, they sometimes helped each other out and worked together. Sometimes they squabbled and fought. They knew certain details about each other’s lives and family history but they weren’t studying each other, they were trying to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

So I suspect that, while the process was far from perfect and a lot of ecological knowledge and human history was lost, a certain amount of this knowledge remains. Probably more than the “experts” suspect.

Finally, advancing technology regularly makes older knowledge obsolete. If the need for the older knowledge has been replaced by some technological advance, then quite often that older knowledge is no longer exercised and it is not passed on to future generations and is subsequently lost. This has happened throughout history as new materials, foods and processes appear they are quite often rapidly adopted by the population and the knowledge that attended the old ways falls by the wayside.

My grandpa and his contemporaries and some of their children regularly used the traditional Indian shovel-nosed dugout canoes on the river because that was what was available and everyone used them. These canoes have been replaced by any number of boat designs that are mass produced and relatively cheap. Factoring in materials and labor, one could get a pretty fancy power boat for what it would cost for a traditionally made dugout canoe. Though I have heard of people, out of curiosity, experimenting with shovel-nosed canoes on the river, I don’t know of anyone from my generation who can use one proficiently and I have never seen one on the river. I don’t know if there is anyone left who knows how to make one. And, at any rate, I can now drive in an hour distances it took my grandpa a day or more to travel on the river. So this knowledge was lost. I suspect a lot of the lost ecological knowledge went in the same manner.

Ironically much of what remains of the knowledge particular to the North Cascades is being rapidly lost today. Most of it is specific to a particular site or place and is out of context outside of the North Cascades where it becomes meaningless. To keep this kind of knowledge you need to actually live on the ground and use it. It is not the type of thing that one sits down and downloads from the brain to a piece of paper or computer file. More often than not I am not consciously aware of the knowledge I hold until a need for it arises. I think most everyone is this way and I think it is an example of the error people like Dietrich et al. make in thinking that books, scholarly or otherwise, about the North Cascades are the be all and end all of knowledge about this place without actually going out and talking to people who have lived here for generations.

Most of the people who have a long history here have never written a book but that hardly means that they know nothing about the place where they have lived most of their lives. Conversely, just because someone comes out here for a short time, sometimes just weeks or months, and then writes a book about it doesn’t make them experts on the place or that they got their information right or that their informants had their information right.

There are a lot of stories and information out there that vary dramatically depending on who you are talking to and I think it has been this way since humans have been talking. This is why, if you want to write an authoritative book or article about a place of culture, you need to talk to a lot of different people who live in that place and culture. In fact, I have read several books about the North Cascades where a lot of the information and views presented were way off base. “The North Cascades: Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby” is no exception.

Recent generations in the North Cascades, the future bearers of the knowledge specific to this place, are leaving it in droves because of lack of economic opportunity. I think similar processes are happening all across this country and around the world and it is why we are losing cultures and languages at such a rapid rate.

On page 82 Dietrich poses the question: “Are teaching institutions and organizations such as the Environmental Learning Center on Diablo Lake and the Mountaineers examples of the future utility of these peaks? Will the North Cascades become temple monastery, or church where we come to understand our own civilization and its problems?”

I really don’t know where to start here. Dietrich seems to be talking about some sort of place nestled amongst some of the poorest rural communities on the west side of the state, where those in our society who can afford to, can pursue higher goals while ignoring the plight of those around them.

Now I won’t knock religion and contemplation. Religion, at least for some, falls amongst the order of human needs but not at the basic level. The pursuits Dietrich is talking about are frivolous compared to having one’s basic needs met, which many people in North Cascades communities struggle to do every day.

If you are contemplating our civilization and its problems, I think one of the biggest problems identified lately is increasing wealth disparity. Dietrich’s utopian vision of the North Cascades would be a model of just such disparity, a distopia. In this neo-feudalist world, the people who come here to pursue higher goals to contemplate existence and our civilization etc. will, almost by definition, have had their basic needs, and more, met. They will be from the higher classes of society in contrast the many of the people who actually live here who will occupy the lowest rungs of society in grinding poverty with very little opportunity to improve their lot.  

The Environmental Learning Center Dietrich plugs is not some free campground. Most people have to pay to partake of it. I don’t know about the Mountaineers but I suspect it is the same with their programs. What happened to outdoor experiences being unstructured and free? Democratic and open to all? This brings up the question: Are they businesses? The parent of the Environmental Learning Center, North Cascades Institute is sponsored (partnered is the preferred term nowadays) by several federal agencies, The National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service.

It is my understanding that this is in part because they are a non-profit educational organization. But they are also renting out their facilities in direct competition with tourism businesses in the area. These other businesses are on their own, they get no government sponsorship and they aren’t non-profits so they don’t get a tax break either. Is that fair?

Dietrich also makes some religious references. I can’t tell from the reading how to interpret this. The two named organizations and the religious references are mentioned in separate sentences but they are right next to each other in the paragraph. So this could be two separate thoughts. If, however, this is referring to the two named organizations as some kind of religious entities, or that they are carrying out some sort of religious activities, this is a mixing of church and state.

On page 82 Dietrich asks: “While Suncadia, Leavenworth, Winthrop and Chelan are examples of what is possible, could there be strategic placement of interpretive centers, campgounds, outdoor schools and easily negotiable paths that bring more diversity among visitors?”

This sounds great. I am not at all opposed to interpretive centers, campgrounds and outdoor schools and easy access to at least certain parts of the North Cascades. My question is: How are you going to pay for it? None of this stuff is free. If by easy access trails he means ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant, you are looking at around 100,000 dollars per mile. The other facilities he talks about come with a big price tag too.

We’re currently having problems funding state parks, many of which have closed. Federal facilities of this sort, campgrounds and trails, aren’t much better off. To help pay for operation and maintenance you currently have to pay entrance fees for most national parks and state parks, you have to pay to use campgrounds in state and national parks and national forests and you have to pay to park at national forest trailheads.

This is not very democratic. It excludes people on the margins, the poor and the working poor who can’t spare the 30 to 40 dollars for a permit to use public lands (that, at least in theory, they own too). Funding such projects with grant money seems to be a popular approach today but I am a little skeptical of that. With that approach, money can be pretty fickle, maybe it gets funded, maybe it doesn’t or maybe only part of it gets funded, hopefully a part that can function on its own or in concert with the other parts of another project that got funded as well.

What kind of jobs will these interpretive centers and schools and campgrounds provide for local communities? Under a patchwork model of a grant here and a grant there and then maybe no grant, not very good jobs I would guess. And they would be highly seasonal. After construction, the bulk of the jobs these facilities would create would be at the low end of the wage scale. There would probably also be a few jobs on the high end of the wage scale but employment in them would be unpredictable and as ephemeral as the grant money or whatever seasonal funding source is available.

Given the current sad state of our general infrastructure, roads and bridges etc. that are crucial for the functioning of our society, most governments have huge problems to deal with and probably aren’t going to be coming up with a lot of money to fund recreational infrastructure as is outlined above. Any government that funds an interpretive center or campground or very expensive trails built to ADA standards at the expense of the major thoroughfares and bridges that are the life blood of our present economy is probably going to be seen as negligent by a majority of the electorate. Private grant money is another avenue but, again, fickle, in that game, you are depending on the generosity of others and your own ability to convince them that they should give you money.

In the past, multiple use, which Dietrich mentions almost in passing in the book, was one answer to this problem. Timber harvest revenues which were (still are) dedicated to the operation of our national forests. A certain percentage of the funds were dedicated to the different divisions to carry on the business of that forest. This included, among other things, silviculture (to make sure there were trees for the future), biology and other sciences, roads and recreation.

This is why for years you could park at U.S. Forest Service trailheads for free. The trail maintenance (as well as maintenance on the road to get you to the trailheads) was paid for in large part by timber revenues. Timber harvest, being an additive economic activity, generated a lot of sustainable living wage jobs in local communities, both in the timber industry and on the federal side of the equation. It also created jobs in the local tourism industry because increased access brought more clientele.

It would seem that I am painting a very rosy picture of perfection here. I am not. Timber, like all commodities, can be fickle. That being said, it appears to have stabilized quite a bit over the boom and bust cycles of the late 19^th to mid 20^th centuries. When I worked solely in the timber industry, we were very rarely out of work because of a lack of markets for logs. This has been the experience of people I know who still work in the timber industry today. At any rate, it would be inherently more stable and produce more family wage jobs than Dietrich’s scheme of interpretive centers and outdoor schools.

It needs to be said though, that the multiple use type of system, using timber revenues to pay for forest operations and maintenance can create a lot of pressure to overuse resources both to pay for upkeep of recreational facilities like roads, trails and campgrounds and to support local economies. Sometimes this has been the case in the past but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen in the future, especially if proper limits and procedures, many of which already exist, are put in place to ensure environmentally sound timber harvest practices. If timber resources were used more conservatively in an environmentally sound manner, and this can be done, they probably won’t generate as much revenue as in the past.

However, the revenues generated, while maybe not paying for everything that they did in the past would go a long way towards funding a lot of infrastructure and programs that would benefit everyone and everything, including forests and wildlife. These revenues would be significant and relatively predictable and they would continue to be generated potentially for centuries or even longer. I think with proper planning, these revenues could be harnessed over the long term to pay for things like environmental education facilities. Of course this all assumes that the climate doesn’t change to the point where our forests no longer exist, in which case, all bets are off anyway.

Dietrich also states on page 82: “What kinds of mountain experience make sense for racial minorities, the elderly, the disabled, urbanites and the rural?”

Why would racial minorities be any different than any other people?

Maybe Dietrich assumes that many racial minorities are new to this country and it isn’t cultural norm where they are from to do a lot of things outdoors away from human created landscapes. Maybe he assumes many racial minorities in this country also fall into a category of people to whom non-human created landscapes are a new experience. I don’t think this is true of all people who are racial minorities. It almost seems as if he is trying to touch all of the politically correct bases.

As to his question, to my mind it all goes back to the issue of ease of access. You can’t get much easier access than roads. Roads provide access to disabled people, people on lower end of economic spectrum and people who don’t have a lot of spare time. They also provide access to people to whom non-human created landscapes are a new experience. Roads are that one bit of human created infrastructure that allow access to people who otherwise would not be able to have the experience of the non-human created. This applies to both urban and rural people but I would think that urban people who have to travel long distances on top of their busy lives would benefit the most along with anyone for whom the non-human created landscape is a new experience. .

I personally spend a lot of time going to remote locations in the North Cascades and I depend on roads heavily when I want to get out and don’t have a lot of time or when I want to take my small children with me. Roads also provide easy access to people who are unfamiliar with a given area and maybe outdoor activities in general because it isn’t part of the culture of the place where they came from.

Maybe he is also speaking of increasing the general diversity of the people who use the outdoors or live in the North Cascades. If you want more diversity, create good, living wage jobs. If you create economic opportunities, people from all sorts of backgrounds will come to take advantage of them. If you work for wages, there are not a lot of economic opportunities for the majority of jobs in the tourism industry. If you want people from different backgrounds who might not necessarily be inclined to experience the outdoors to do so, make access easy and cheap, or even better, free.

As far as rural communities go, I think communities with a high degree of self-sufficiency, generating most or all of the revenues they need by themselves with help and guidance from governments are definitely stronger than those dependant upon governments for hand outs. There is something psychologically invigorating about providing for yourself. Waiting for government handouts is dysfunctional and psychologically depressing.

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you have to depend on the generosity and good will of others and being able to spin a good enough story to convince someone else to give you money. But I think it is better to make your own way as much as possible. There is a proverb that speaks to this: Better to beg than to steal but better to work than to beg.

Timber jobs are additive to the economy and create jobs that are on the living wage end of the spectrum. In concert with sound multiple use strategies they also create better access for the general public, including disabled people and people who don’t have the knowledge (i.e. those whose background doesn’t include outdoor activities), skills, physical ability, money and free time to access remote areas.

Easier access is not only more democratic, it also boosts opportunities for tourism businesses. Tourism businesses are important in local mountain communities but they are not additive and they are a poor economic engine if that is all you have. I’m sure most of the business owners in the places Dietrich names, Suncadia, Leavenworth, Winthrop and Chelan do okay for themselves but I am just as sure that a lot of the people who work for them aren’t making a stand alone living wage. This is no knock on those business owners or the tourism industry. I just don’t think the margins are big enough in the tourism industry to pay high wages across the board and that is the nature of the business and no fault of the business owners.

On page 79 Dietrich states: “The bald eagle, wolf, grizzly bear, wolverine and fisher are examples of species either recolonizing on their own from Canada, or that appear likely to flourish if reintroduced.”

Bald eagle recovery had more to do with the ban on DDT than on any land use practices. DDT weakened the shells of bird eggs and decreased reproductive success. This was especially problematic in birds like eagles that were near the top of the food chain because DDT tended to concentrate in their tissues through bioaccumulation. The increase in bald eagle, and many other bird populations was quite dramatic in the decades after the ban on DDT. There have always been a few resident bald eagles in the North Cascades but these few and far between. They typically inhabit rocky, mountainous headwater areas that were historically of little value for resource extraction activities anyway.

The great quantities of eagles one sees in the winter along the rivers are following chum and coho salmon runs. These salmon runs, to a degree, are adversely impacted by land use practices in the North Cascades but many of these same adverse practices have been made much more salmon friendly in the last few decades. However, these salmon are also vulnerable to ocean conditions which may change dramatically due to climate change and increased carbon dioxide, international fishing and development in Puget Sound lowlands, all of which are more impactful than land use practices in the North Cascades. The fate of bald eagles in the North Cascades has less to do with land use practices in the North Cascades than in the land use practices and conditions created in Puget Sound and the North Pacific and in the world in general.

Many of animals Dietrich lists have possibly been here all along. The North Cascades are so remote and difficult to access that comprehensive studies to find these animals are hindered. I have been involved in a few wildlife studies and have followed many others. Quite often the difficulty of access combined with a lack of, or spotty funding makes it logistically impossible to cover more than one small area at a time.

I have also, unlike Dietrich and the other authors, walked to the majority of the mapped high lakes and ponds in the Skagit River watershed in the North Cascades and I can tell you that there are a lot of very remote hard to access nooks, crannies and valleys in the North Cascades that probably few humans ever visit. In my travels I have seen and bypassed so much remote ground that it would require a lifetime to explore and I haven’t made a dent in the entirety of the North Cascades.

I have been aware of reports of wolves at places like Hozomeen near the Canadian border for decades, years before anyone with a science background took an interest in verifying that they were really there. The same is true of wolverines. I am aware of at least 6 separate reports of wolverines in the North Cascades over the last 40 to 50 years. The thing is, none of the people who made the sightings were wildlife biologists so their reports, if they were even passed on to wildlife officials, were probably not seen as valid, at least I never heard of any action taken by officials.

When I received several of the wolverine reports I was specifically not told to tell anyone where it was because the person who made the observation was worried about even more draconian land use policies being implemented if environmentalists discovered that there were wolverines around. Recently some wildlife biologists went out for the first time and caught a few wolverines and suddenly this species has made a comeback!!! I think wolverines were here all along but nobody was looking for them until recently.

While we are on the subject of wolverines, it is my understanding that this species needs deep winter snows. If many of the climate change predictions I see out there come true, the snowpack in the North Cascades might soon be quite unreliable and quite ephemeral. This has to do with the larger climate and human impacts on the entire planet. No amount of land you set aside in the North Cascades will change that. In fact, depending on how things turn out, more active management might be required in order to maintain some semblance of historical snowpack.

As far as grizzly bears go, based on scattered, verified reports, I think they have also been here all along, though in very small numbers. Overhunting, much of which occurred before the main waves of European American settlement was probably largely responsible for that decline so I have been told by a bear biologist. This has been changed. Killing a grizzly bear in this state is now illegal.

When one considers that there was a bounty, which actively seeks to depress populations, on wolves until well into the 20^th century, I think that might be why wolves experienced a decline in their historic range as well. A species can have all of the habitat that it needs to maintain a healthy population but will decline anyway if overhunted. Prevention of such a decline due to overhunting has more to do with utilizing accurate information on the health of a given species’ population to create hunting regulations that will meet management goals for that species than it does with land use practices. I think it is also important to have accurate information on a given species’ historic range so species aren’t introduced into an area where they didn’t occur historically in an effort to “recover” the population.

Dietrich states that these species are poised to “recolonize” the North Cascades on their own from Canada. Well, if one looks just across the border at British Columbia, much of it is hardly an untouched wilderness. There are certainly parks and set aside lands but there is also a lot of historic as well as active logging and mining going on. So apparently those species poised to “recolonize” the North Cascades south of the border seem to be able to maintain healthy populations under less restricted land use practices north of the border in British Columbia, at least the way the Canadians are conducting them.

If these species aren’t doing so well north of the border because of all of the resource extraction activities, this is an example of the lack of a holistic approach to how our modern society gets its resources. Meeting society’s demands for resources is a game of whack-a-mole being played on a global scale. Resources are being extracted north of the border and in other areas around the world in part in order to fill demand that is not being met by lands south of the border.  

On page 132, other authors in the book detail the preservation campaign to “save” the Loomis State Forest and state, “money raised in the preservation campaign has been used to benefit schools and compensate the trust (school trust funds supported by timber revenues) for loss of logging revenues.”

The main driver for this was to prevent roads from being built in this forest. Again, this is an issue of limiting or denying access to the majority of the public who own these lands. The argument for denying access is that there is less disruption to wildlife.

If you want to follow that line of reasoning and you agree with the tenet of keeping the majority of the general public out, after timber harvest is complete the roads can be gated and put to bed, basically stabilized and made unusable for motorized use while being in a condition to be easily recommissioned.

The tactics employed at the Loomis State Forest follow a typical myopic view of those outside the timber industry who apparently think that anything is better than logging. I am not familiar with the effects of this land set-aside in the communities surrounding the Loomis State Forest but such set-asides have affected the communities where I live in many negative ways.

Are the funds that were raised to pay the trust going to be available in perpetuity? Somehow I doubt it. Timber could be harvested off that land in perpetuity and revenue generated in perpetuity (again assuming climate change doesn’t alter conditions to the point where this is no longer feasible and, if this happens, the forest would be lost anyway). I have a hunch that the revenue for “saving” this forest is a one time deal but it will be expected to be preserved in perpetuity, thus foregoing all of the funds that could have been generated in the future.

This is something that I have noticed about environmental crusaders who try to shut down logging jobs every chance they get. They think that once a forest is harvested, it is gone forever. In a sense this is true, that particular forest is gone forever. But forests here don’t disappear forever. If the land isn’t developed, forests don’t disappear even for very long. New forests usually grow back at astounding rates, even faster if trees are planted. Of course if you want old-growth or late successional forest, you would have to wait longer intervals between harvests but this isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Another thing that isn’t addressed is the number of living wage jobs to harvest the timber and build and maintain (or retire) roads that were lost in this deal and the additive effect of creating even more jobs that those jobs would have on local economies. It makes a big difference in small communities to have a solid core of people with steady jobs that pay decent wages. This creates stable homes for kids to grow up in. School funds go further in this situation than one in which a large number of the kids come from poverty stricken homes. School funds are often spent on pressing issues related to students living in poverty rather than basic education in such situations.

They did allow grazing in this forest. I am glad that those public lands have been allowed to generate at least a small fraction of potential revenues to counties and the state and that some individuals have been given the opportunity to use public lands to meet their needs. I am sure that raising livestock has its own additive effects on local economies though I doubt that they are at the level of timber harvest.

However, grazing cattle on that land is far from benign. Don’t get me wrong. I own cows myself and through this activity I admittedly practice land use that is less than benign. And my grazing practices could stand to be improved. In a perfect world, I could get right on that problem and fix it posthaste. However, I, like a lot of other people I know, have a number of other more pressing issues on my agenda. So someday hopefully some of the problems caused by my practices will be remedied. That’s life. I would hope the grazing in the Loomis State Forest is being well monitored so it isn’t overdone.

Cattle can have a heavy impact on the vegetation growing under the tree canopy. While the large trees remain, the vegetation underneath can be severely depleted. I have seen several instances of this, including a forested area where my cows are allowed to graze.

One of the more current definitions of old-growth forest is a forest having multiple canopy layers. A lot of different species depend on those multiple canopy layers for food and for cover. The diversity of plant species and sizes leads to a diversity of organisms that use those different habitats and resources. This multiple canopy layer forest is one of the distinguishing characteristics of an old-growth forest.

Cattle can be very hard on old-growth conditions, effectively removing the lower several vegetation layers of a forest if overgrazed. Many other species depend on those understory plants for food and habitat. So, while cattle might not be in direct competition with an animal like a lynx, they are probably in direct competition with snowshoe hares, an important prey species for lynx. If you run too many cows and they eat the vegetation down to the point where the snowshoe hare population declines, the lynx population will decline as well.

The same can be true for any species that utilizes the trees but also depends on heavy undergrowth, either directly as a food source or indirectly as a food source for other species that it preys upon. Even thought the trees remain, if too much undergrowth is removed, these species might not have enough food resources to maintain a very large population.

It is hard and expensive to measure such effects. I won’t even go into cowbirds. Again, if I’m pointing fingers, the first person I have to point at is myself. I am pointing out that there are no silver bullets and no land use is without its impacts and one has to think about these impacts if you want to use resources wisely. You can’t get by with some simplistic mantra that as long as it isn’t being logged, its okay.

Depending on how the grazing program is administered, selective logging that mimicked a natural disturbance like a forest fire or created gaps in the canopy similar to gap dynamics in the Loomis State Forest would potentially have less impact on the native species. Those species are adapted to such disturbances as fire and canopy gaps, in that forest.

Which brings up the question: If the Loomis State Forest catches on fire, and it will some day, will this fire be fought or left to burn out naturally? Either way, large parts of it will be gone that could have been harvested in a way similar to natural disturbances. This harvest would have generated the aforementioned jobs with additive effects on local economies.

If it is decided to fight the fire, that will create jobs, but when the fire is done, any of the local jobs and economic activity it created will go away. More importantly, the additive effect of taking raw materials and producing something from them would be lost. The money to pay to fight such a fire would come directly from county, state and federal coffers rather than being generated from the land itself.

Here is another excerpt by the authors on page 132: “In the late twentieth century the northern spotted owl became the centerpiece of a bitter battle between environmentalists and the logging industry. It received legal protection via the Endangered Species Act and became a national symbol for a key environmental issue: whether to log or preserve old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. In a perverse twist of fate, the spotted owl faces a new battle with extinction. The new threat comes from an invasion of its last territories from one of its own cousins-the highly adaptable and aggressive barred owl.”

Well…for starters, they didn’t stop logging in old-growth forests alone. Within a few years of the Northwest Forest Plan being implemented, logging of all types of timber, both second growth and old-growth virtually stopped on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in Skagit County where I live and I haven’t seen much in the surrounding counties either. There is a lot of second growth timber that is merchantable and could be harvested to generate much needed additive jobs and tax revenue here but I haven’t seen a tree cut in over 20 years in many of the areas that I am familiar with.

At the same time I have seen the quality of life for people living in the North Cascades erode. This has been on top of the erosion of the middle class that is happening everywhere in this country.

For what? The spotted owl is now a candidate for listing as an endangered species. This is despite that fact that there has been a steady increase in de-facto wilderness creation through road closures because the U.S. Forest Service no long has funds to maintain roads. And despite the fact that, at the time the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented, there was already over 2 million acres of designated wilderness where any type of logging or development was prohibited.

I would characterize this as a failure in policy on the part of the federal government who I would hope is somewhat responsible for the well being of all of the citizens of this country. Local people are poorer and the spotted owl appears to be headed inexorably toward extinction.

It is also a potential failure of strategy by environmental groups. Choosing the northern spotted owl as the poster species to stop logging was a move calculated to sway public opinion but it had some serious problems. I recall that at the time that the spotted owl controversy was brewing up there was a big debate among environmental activists on whether to make the argument to stop logging based on broad arguments based on science or on a gimmick like using the spotted owl as a poster species to tug at people’s emotions. Some people didn’t want to pin the anti-logging campaign on a single poster species, creating a powerful image without a lot of substance and good science because if things didn’t work out, it would weaken their case and cause. They lost.

To be clear, there was scientific evidence that showed that the spotted owl was probably adversely impacted by logging but just because some studies were done that showed a certain result hardly means that the issue is settled. There is, or should be, vigorous debate over all scientific studies and whether they properly represent reality. On top of that, things constantly change and different factors constantly come into play.

With the spotted owl, a major factor was the barred owl. Barred owls outcompete spotted owls for resources as well as interbreeding with them or killing them outright.

The authors in the book describe this as a “perverse twist of fate”, an anthropomorphism. As Webster’s Dictionary defines it, anthropomorphism is: “an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics”. In other words, assigning human traits to things that are not human.

The phenomenon of barred owls outcompeting and causing or hastening the extinction of the spotted owl is not perverse. Perversity is an abstract, subjective human concept. The process of extinction is part of a process that has been going on since life began on this planet, long before humans were around to apply abstract labels like “perverse” to things.

In direct competition between species or individuals, the fittest survives. This process has caused the extinction of countless species. This is also known as evolution, a solid scientific theory and it appears that the spotted owl is losing out in the evolutionary competition.

One of the biggest causes of extinctions today is undoubtedly the sheer mass of humans on the planet and their collective activities. The barred owl’s westward migration was probably helped by human activity but it was not purposely introduced into the Pacific Northwest and timber harvest wasn’t the sole factor in this migration. The barred owl had to travel a long distance before reaching the west coast and all of the human activity that aided this migration had nothing to do with the timber communities on the west coast. These communities were not responsible for the barred owl’s appearance yet they paid a steep price for it.

The barred owl was a known or suspected threat to spotted owls well before timber harvest on National Forests was effectively halted by the Northwest Forest Plan. For all we know, if the barred owl hadn’t shown up on the scene, the spotted owl may have been able to maintain healthy populations in the face of human activities such as timber harvest, as do other species in the region.

Choosing the spotted owl as an anti-logging poster species was a cynical ploy to sway public opinion by manipulating people’s emotions. The small owl is cute and fluffy and, more importantly, because their eyes are situated on the front of the head like humans, they can be readily anthropomorphized.

In fact owls have been anthropomorphized for millennia, being the symbol of wisdom in some cultures, despite the fact that, from what I understand, as far as the animal kingdom and the bird world goes, owls in general are pretty low on the intelligence scale.

Intelligence notwithstanding, the fact that owls appear to be so human-like helped to generate a lot of empathy for them from the general public. This empathy generated momentum to stop timber harvest on federal lands.

However, the sad, shameful thing about this is that spotted owls don’t care about any of this. They don’t have the capacity to. They aren’t human and have no awareness of their own significance as a species. If the spotted owl were to go extinct, the last one wouldn’t suffer like a human would. It isn’t going to suffer because it is sad and lonely and worried sick about what tomorrow will bring. It isn’t human and has no concept of past or future. It would do what instinct dictates a spotted owl do until the day it died without a single abstract thought or worry. A lot of human suffering was caused for the sake of a creature that doesn’t even appreciate and can’t understand what has been done on its behalf. In truth, this wasn’t really to save a species. It was done to impose one group of human being’s sensibilities on another group at that other group’s expense.

From the perspective of a human being, it is a terrible thing to be told that you and your efforts to contribute to society are not needed. In essence, that you are worthless. I have been told this several times in my life. First when the Northwest Forest Plan severely curtailed logging where I live. I was told in effect that my efforts to contribute to society through the revenue I generated through my job, the taxes I paid and the raw materials that were turned into products that everyone in society used every day were not needed, they would be gotten somewhere else. Then, when I worked hard, got retrained and got a job in natural resources, monitoring and restoring natural areas, I was often told that I wasn’t needed because there was no budget to pay for me to work. This was often in spite of the fact that there was plenty work that could have been done. Obviously this work wasn’t important enough to enjoy a steady source of funding. These situations made me feel pretty worthless and words fail me to describe how depressing and worrisome that is.

The environmental activists that Dietrich et al. seem to think so much of supported the Northwest Forest Plan and many filed lawsuit after lawsuit that halted timber harvest on federal lands. This effectively placed most of the economic burden of the effort to try to save the spotted owl on people who depended on that timber as an economic base to provide for their livelihoods and maintain stable communities. These people lived with an economy where it was already hard to make a living and the Northwest Forest Plan and attending lawsuits abruptly gutted it and destabilized many rural, mountain communities. This caused human suffering and declines in the quality of life and threatened the ability of people to meet their basic needs.

The activists from wealthy urban areas had access to resources that rural timber communities didn’t. A lot of rural people in the North Cascades suffered and continue to suffer today because of the deliberate decisions and actions of other, more powerful people in their efforts to save the spotted owl an animal, unlike a human, without a psyche and thus invulnerable to psychological suffering. This is perverse.  

Dietrich and others have characterized various successful efforts to preserve lands such as the Northwest Forest Plan and the attending lawsuits as triumphs. How does one consider destroying other human being’s lives and livelihoods, sowing human misery and destabilizing communities a triumph? How does one justify doing this to people who, for the most part, are just trying to do their part to make an honest living for the sake of an animal that probably isn’t even aware of its own existence?

The people who brought about this suffering seem to have a callous disregard for their fellow human beings, considering them, apparently, to be less important than animals. Almost all of the people behind the closure of federal forests lived in the urban areas around Puget Sound or feathered their nests there. These "environmental” activists appropriated resources that were shared in common with everyone else to be used in service of certain ideals while ignoring the negative impacts this had on the people who were excluded from their fair share of the resources.

And, when I talk about people being excluded from their fair share of the resources, I am not talking about the “Big Timber” bogey-man the environmental activists are always trotting out to scare people. Big timber companies typically have their own land and timber holdings independent of federal forests. The Weyerhaeusers of the world seem to be doing quite well. If anything, less available federal timber makes their timber even more valuable due to decrease in overall supply. The people I am talking about are the small business owners that operated in the timber industry who had little or no land holdings and were heavily dependant on federal timber. These small businesses are exactly the type of businesses that one hears about constantly as being so important as economic engines in this country.

This is also not to mention all of the federal land that, through their efforts, environmental activists have basically removed from the tax rolls. The federal government doesn’t pay taxes so the only way to generate revenue from federal lands is economic activity on those lands. These revenues go to fund infrastructure and public facilities in rural areas. While it is true that there is a system to provide federal monies to timber dependent counties hurt by federal timber harvest restrictions, this has been, not surprisingly, inconsistent. And these federal monies don’t make up for the multiplicative effect of people with living wage jobs not only paying taxes on their wages but spending those wages in local communities and generating more jobs and taxes.

I would argue that there is something inherently hypocritical, morally bankrupt and even perverse about people who have had their needs met by an economic system that has created and operates in a veritable biological wasteland (that, ironically used to be, but is no longer, spotted owl habitat) telling someone who is already struggling to make ends meet, that they can’t use the resources around them because owls need those resources and the owls are more important.

From what I gather by listening to NPR and other radio stations based in Seattle, the majority of the population of the greater Puget Sound region seems to be quite environmentally conscious and socially conscious in their particular cities or neighborhoods. But this population also seems to be socially comatose when it comes to the rural areas on their doorstep
   

Those who would save the spotted owl or any other species are not saving them as a favor to the species, these people are making the attempt based on their own subjective sensibilities to serve an abstract ideal. These sensibilities, if offended, don’t mean that these people will lose their means to meet their basic needs or that their community of choice will lose the solid jobs that create wealth and stability within that community. It is a luxury, not a basic need, to be able to hold such sensibilities and be so idealistic, to be able to look at natural resources like timber without an eye to using them for more than just trivial things like recreation or simple not-in-my-backyard aesthetics. The luxury to hold such sensibilities and ideals is based on wealth created by economies that cause widespread environmental degradation both here in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in the Puget Sound area, and around the world.

Trying to prevent the extinction of species is a laudable cause and I get it that extinction is a serious thing that is, for the most part permanent, barring new technologies, and can be harmful to human beings. But one group should not impose their sensibilities on another group without first taking into account the needs of that other group who are going to be most heavily impacted by the imposition of those sensibilities.

The argument is always framed as jobs vs. environment. What is missing in this argument is the human element. “Jobs” makes it sound like there are a lot of options for employment so people need to quit being so greedy and just take another, more environmentally friendly job. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of job options in rural areas. Believe me, unlike Dietrich et al., I’ve tried it.

People need jobs in order to build secure lives with economic safety, which, in turn, helps create more stable communities. Everyone should have the right to have their basic needs met and, if the resources are available, the economic means to create a prosperous and stable community. This should be the first consideration every time. If this never happens, then don’t expect to solve the problem of rural poverty.

I have no argument with anyone, urbanites included, who is minding his or her own business and just trying to make an honest living. I know that people living in urban areas have their own sets of struggles. My argument is with those who apparently make no apologies for the impacts that their presence has on this planet has while seeking to impose strict limitations on the activities of people whose experience they don’t share. This is hypocrisy. Most of the activist environmental groups that I am familiar with that seem so concerned about other parts of Washington State and the world are based in the Puget Sound area. They haven’t been doing a very good job taking care of Puget Sound and the Puget Sound orca, so what business do they have meddling in other places?

The authors of The North Cascades: Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby, in effect, state that they are concerned about humans getting disconnected from the natural world. This book itself is a striking example of this disconnect, not only from the natural world but from their fellow human beings who are trying to make a living in rural areas. The book presents the mostly urban centric view of a group of elite people who recreates in the North Cascades and apparently doesn’t want to share its playground with anyone else.

I would also argue that there are other ways to connect with the natural world than recreation alone. I think that getting some of the resources that go to meet ones basic needs, food and shelter connect one to the natural world in a deeper, more meaningful way than something as superficial as recreation alone as the book seems to put forth.

A misleading tenet presented by this book is that recreation is a basic human need. Several interviews with high school youth are presented. These kids, fresh from recent hiking and camping trips, gush about how inspiring and life changing their experiences were.

A more realistic perspective would be to interview these individuals ten years from now when they will probably be out on their own or at the very least trying to make their way in the world mostly independent of parents and school. Maybe they will still owe a lot of money on college debt or the new baby is sick or their car or some appliance has broken down and the rent has just been increased or any of the other endless challenges that life throws at us all. This is where the societal decisions about natural resources will be made.

I am sure that some of these folks in situations like I have laid out would still be willing to pay extra taxes or at least forgo tax revenues that could make their lives easier for the sake of setting aside lands. I’m guessing though, that most won’t. This isn’t to diminish their outdoor experiences or insult their intelligence, it is pointing out that, for most of us, our perspective changes with time and our current situation and many of us tend to change our priorities.

And don’t forget, there are a lot of people who don’t get to go on those hiking and camping trips as kids. Recreation is not a basic human need. Recreation is important for a lot of people and it does fulfill certain needs for certain segments of society but these are the higher needs of those who, for the most part, have had their basic needs met. I say this as one who recreates outdoors frequently and for whom this activity is very important. But I will be the first to tell you that I won’t be out on some frivolous hike if I don’t have food on the table or a roof over my family’s head or a job that generates enough income to allow me to take some days off. I don’t know very many other people who would act differently. So this aspect of my needs, my playground or religious beliefs or spiritual needs, or anyone else’s for that matter, should never trump other people’s abilities to meet their basic needs. Not if we want to live in a socially just society.

There are 2.7 million contiguous acres set aside in North Cascades. That is enough for me for a playground and to meet my spiritual needs and whatever higher needs I might have. And there are enough nooks and crannies in that 2.7 million acres to harbor a lot of plants and animals, almost certainly more than we know about. I have spent over 30 years of my life exploring the North Cascades and I have barely scratched the surface. The rest of the land base should be used to help meet the basic needs of rural mountain communities in an environmentally responsible manner. Tourism alone isn’t going to do it.

The so-called conservation strategies and triumphs celebrated in the book would be more accurately labeled preservation strategies which allow only minimal human use in the vast majority of the set aside lands and, in effect, exclude most of the public from public land. Excluding people, whether it is with barriers or through lack of good general access only serves disconnect more people from the natural world. In the view of the authors of the book, the way people in the future should get connected with the natural world is through certain organizations presenting highly managed and structured experiences (presented from the point of view of the organization providing the experience) for a fee (of course) rather than do-it-yourself unstructured exploration. There is nothing wrong with organizations presenting structured information and helping people get out into nature but there should also be plenty of opportunities for people who would rather have these experiences on their own terms.

How can you connect people with nature when you support policies and practices that limit the ability of the majority of people to access public land?

I think the drive to limit access to public lands stems from the idea that human activity and nature are separate from each other. Ironically, I think the idea that human activity isn’t a natural part of the processes on this planet stems from the idea that humans are separate from nature. There are at least two manifestations of this idea. One is that anything we do in the environment like acquiring and using natural resources is bad because it isn’t a natural part of the planet’s processes. The other is that we are separate from the environment so therefore we are free to exploit it in any way we see fit because it won’t affect us or at least if we make enough money from it we can buy protection from the detrimental effects of our activity.

To my mind, while movements to preserve lands are a natural reaction to the economic systems which advocate turning natural resources into cash as quickly and efficiently as possible, damn the consequences. Preservation and all out exploitation are closely linked. They occupy opposite ends of the same spectrum of ideology that states that humans are separate from Earth and its systems and processes. The one justifies the other and can’t exist without the other. I also think, ironically, that many preservation efforts are funded by exploitative activities in other areas, whether this results from mitigation attempts or someone seeking absolution or maybe just a tax break. Under this type of ideology, in order to save more, we need to exploit more in other areas.

Preservation or mitigation strategies are doomed to failure if they are dependant on a larger, unsustainable economy to fund them. And I believe that most of them are. To pay for projects to mitigate damage to natural systems you have to generate more revenue. Generation of this revenue results in the destruction of other natural systems. In the case of land set-asides, you are usually not generating money from outside to pay for the set-asides, you are foregoing natural resource generation and revenue from those lands. The pressure for natural resources and revenues then shifts to other lands. The more you want to save the more you have to destroy. This is a losing strategy. A better strategy would be holistic and utilize resources in a sustainable way to produce the raw materials human society needs while generating revenue that could be used to benefit human society and to reinvest in the resource to ensure it remains healthy and viable for the long term.

The authors seem to be completely blind to, or ignore, the high rates of poverty and social dysfunction in those communities closest to large park and wilderness set-asides on public lands. The solution they present for such communities is an economy based mostly on tourism. Such an economy will produce very few living wage jobs. The tourism economy they promote is supposed to be based on beautiful lands to attract tourists. But, with limited access, most people won’t be able to get to the majority of those lands. For the majority of the public that isn’t much of an attraction.

And one doesn’t have to wonder whether or not a tourism based economy will support mountain communities. Over the last twenty years or so we have been testing this idea. Since the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented in the early 1990’s, the economy in the North Cascades has become much more dependant on tourism and the local economy has drifted ever farther into a backwater.

Timber harvest, hands down, is one of the most environmentally friendly land use practices in the Pacific Northwest. I have tried to explain this in Farming and the Fragile Forest post of 12/8/14. It is also one of more economically viable alternatives for local, rural communities. It is mentioned only in passing in the book and even then it is presented as a thing of the past. There are entire colleges in this country and around the world dedicated to forestry and there are a lot of ideas and scientific research out there about how it can be done sustainably and in an environmentally responsible manner. And there are a number of examples of such forestry already in existence. Yet none of this was presented as an option for the North Cascades.

I do not make the claim that timber harvest has no impact on the environment. It does. What I am stating is that, compared to other land use practices that generate significant revenue and resources, timber harvest in the Pacific Northwest has the least impact.

However, aided by semantics and spin to play on people’s emotions, many so called environmental groups and activists have very effectively sold logging as being extremely harmful to the environment. According to the information as it is presented by these groups, logging is one of the most environmentally harmful practices that can be undertaken. This effort has been so successful that nowadays it is dogma that logging is bad. Time and time again I see it blamed for any sort of environmental malaise.

Timber harvest, or logging, can have a very dramatic effect on large scales and can look awful and untidy and have a big emotional impact. So it is, not surprisingly, easy to sell to the general public as a very bad practice, especially to people who no longer understand where their resources come from. Certainly there were harmful timber harvest practices in the past and some harmful practices continue even today. However, there have been many changes in the timber industry in the last several decades that serve to lessen its environmental impact. It is important to remember though, that, unlike almost every other land use practice by which our society gets its raw materials, even heavy handed timber practices leave much of the native biota in the soils and woody debris intact to recolonize a new forest. 

Extracting raw materials of any sort will always have some environmental cost, for example, I have heard farming characterized as a war on the land. Think about farming, mining and petroleum development. Each has its down side but now there are also a lot more environmental rules in place than there were historically. In this way logging is no different than any other means by which society acquires the raw materials necessary for its continued existence.

I think for many people concerned about environmental problems and looking through an emotional lens it is easy to see timber harvest only as a threat and not part of the solution. I think it is obligatory for anyone seriously claiming to be a conservationist in the Pacific Northwest to take a good hard, non-emotional look at the science of forestry and the many alternative methods of timber harvest that can be employed.

You can’t make the argument that science has come down wholly against logging and forestry. As I stated earlier, there are entire colleges devoted to forestry in this country and around the world. It is hard to believe that there aren’t any science based answers to how we can harvest timber while avoiding many of the environmental problems that can potentially be created. Anyone vaguely familiar with the science of forestry and forest ecology should be aware of a multitude of timber harvest methods and treatments.

Viewed from another perspective, timber harvest, or logging, creates recyclable, biodegradable products that are renewable and can be gotten in ways that don’t dramatically alter natural areas. This isn’t what anti-logging environmentalists use to sell their agenda. They present unsustainable practices or practices that are less desirable from an environmental standpoint as the only way logging can be done. I think that this is misinformation propagated by people who either don’t know any better or don’t want to know.

Generating revenues in rural communities is important. In today’s world, over half our population lives in urban areas where people have their basic needs met through concentrations of human capital and raw resources gotten through trade from a worldwide base. In rural areas the ability for such concentration is much more limited and rural people are much more dependant on local resources for viable economies. Usually the most lucrative means to use these resources is extractive.

I should point out that I use the word lucrative to describe activities that pay better in contrast to other possible activities and not to imply that a lot of people are getting incredibly wealthy. People are generally better paid for extractive types of use in comparison to non-extractive types of use but not many gain incredible wealth.  

This means people who make their living in this manner generally have enough to live in relative comfort, pay taxes and raise families whereas people involved in non-extractive types of work generally don’t.

Extractive is another term that has been given a negative connotation. It is often equated with destruction. In essence, extraction is drawing or pulling something out. Anyone who thinks they live a life that doesn’t use natural resources extracted from this planet is fooling themselves. Most of the things that make our lives possible from the food we eat to the materials we build shelters and clothing with to things like plastics and metals that make high tech possible and even organic foods are extracted from somewhere on this planet. If these demands aren’t met, society will cease to function.

Many extractive processes are very destructive but others aren’t. A simple example would be extracting maple syrup or, along the lines I have been following, sustainable forestry. We should be working on means to acquire renewable resources that we all use in the most environmentally sound manner possible. Sustainable or “organic” forestry, if you will, is a very good candidate to meet these goals.

People who concern themselves with simply stopping the resource extraction activities of others (often after vilifying and dehumanizing them) without going deeper into the reason those activities are occurring in the first place (i.e. what is the need, computer parts, energy, building materials etc, that is driving the activity?) are part of the problem if you ask me. Anyone who doesn’ t look at these deeper questions isn’t seeking a solution. Even if you succeed in stopping a particular resource use activity that you don’t agree with, if the demand for that resource still remains the problem still remains.

I know for some cutting down a tree, especially in a nearby forest, seems like a shocking act but if you recognize that this is done to provide a biodegradable, recyclable product that is also renewable, to fill the demand that you yourself help create then you recognize that this is part of the price for your existence. This is much more honest than getting resources from some anonymous place halfway around the globe. If your local tree isn’t cut, then one somewhere else in someone else’s back yard will be cut to fill the demand. That other tree might be in a more environmentally sensitive place or it might mean the other tree might not get as big as it possibly could have and created habitat for any number of organisms before it is gone.

It would also seem less shocking if your local tree was cut as part of a carefully thought out plan that ensured enough trees were left in the forest to provide structure and retain native habitat. If you want to save the world you should be seeking solutions where everyone wins, the people who make their living by making products from natural resources, the environment itself and society which has its needs to continue functioning fulfilled by the materials and other necessities created.

Probably the best way to come up with such solutions would have a scientific approach that employs not only environmental sciences, biology and ecology but also social and economic sciences. In the interest of social justice, studies should center on how particular actions affect the well being of local human populations. This should be the question that underlies every land use policy, because even if science is being done, quite often the emphasis and how questions are asked determines the result of any given study. If the well being of local populations isn’t the main focus of a study, it will often get short shrift.

In the Pacific Northwest and the North Cascades, timber is one of the best options for sustainable resource use. It has the potential to meet at least part of the global demand for raw materials while, if done properly, leaving natural systems largely uncompromised or in some cases, enhanced. At the same time it would provide much needed jobs and tax revenues in our rural areas and, as an added bonus, on federal lands, it would increase or maintain ease of public access for recreational use to many areas. This last is important in order spread the pressure for resource and recreational use over a wider area thus lessening the impact on any given area.

Not far from where I live there is a large lumber mill. I am sure many anti-logging environmentalists decry this mill. It is owned by a regional company that has mills up and down the west coast so it qualifies as “big timber”.  The log yard around the mill is kind of ugly, a brown colored industrial area that smells funny (I actually don’t mind the smell which isn’t the result of harmful emissions. I would describe it as sour bark, or probably more accurately, sour cambium).

Despite this mill being owned by a large regional company, many of the logs supplied to this mill are produced by local logging companies, the type of small businesses I constantly hear touted as being so crucial to local economies as well as the larger economy. Even if the absolute best forest practices aren’t used to supply this mill, (logs are logs so, without a doubt, probably at least some of them have been harvested using very good practices, over and above standard environmental requirements), it still produces a renewable, recyclable, biodegradable product that fulfills societal demand for building materials and other forest products.

This mill has a co-generation plant. With the co-generation plant it uses less energy than other mills and factories that produce all manner of the other materials that we all use. At same, it time creates living wage jobs in the area plus tax revenue from all of the economic activity that it spurs and it hands out some pretty big scholarships at the local schools.

I am sure that there are a number of anti-logging environmentalist groups who would decry this mill and celebrate if it shut down. The thing is, those groups don’t make anything that anyone can use to meet their basic needs. They are supported by donations from a larger economy, much of which isn’t sustainable and probably does as much or more harm to the environment than the mill in question does. Yet they would sit in judgment on others who do make products that fulfill societal needs.

Most of these environmental groups aren’t big job creators in rural areas and they generate little, if any, tax revenue. And they certainly don’t hand out any scholarships at the local schools, at least not from my observations.

The alternative to extractive activities, which, in the North Cascades mostly means timber harvest, that I see put forth most often is tourism. From the standpoint of an economic engine, tourism depends on a lot of people having disposable time and disposable income. In other words, it is optional for just about everyone. Timber production goes to meet basic human needs, shelter being chief among them and along with that, a large number of other products in wide use by modern civilization. The general population pretty much has to buy timber products in one form or another to go on with daily life. Timber products are not optional for most people. This creates a much more stable demand and market for forest products than for tourism.

So tourism is a luxury indulged only if one has the disposable resources. This is not to say that tourism isn’t important. But in the North Cascades, the relationship between timber and tourism is complex. To draw more people you need more access to some pretty formidable terrain. The costs for providing this access on federal lands used to be, in part, funded by timber harvest activities. The best solution for this problem is a multiple use strategy. Timber supports tourism and both together create a stronger, more stable economy and this, in turn, makes more resources available to people living in marginal areas.

Trying to make tourism stand on its own without good access for the general public to public lands and without huge marketing campaigns for tourist activities on those lands is an over-simplistic idea held by people who don’t live and work in the North Cascades and are clearly not familiar with the situation of those who do.

This book is just what one would expect from a group of people who, while they may visit occasionally, don’t actually live in the North Cascades and apparently don’t want to deal with the day to day problems and inconveniences that such a life entails. The authors are only familiar with the area from a narrow perspective, safe within their respective bubbles and the book’s narrow focus is on the people who are able to function or operate outside of the realities of this place, the exceptions to the rules. The people behind the book come to the North Cascades to escape. What about the people who already live here dealing with the harsh realities of an economically depressed area?

Apparently, the authors think the local people who have spent much or all of their lives making a living in the North Cascades independent of federal agencies don’t have anything worth saying because no on like that is in this book. This absence is glaringly obvious to someone like myself who has grown up here. I know quite a few such people who have a lot of insights about the North Cascades but I think a lot of what they might say wouldn’t fit with the message purveyed by the book.

The book makes several references to authenticity. Yet it specifically omits anyone who has spent their lifetime living and making a living in the North Cascades independent of the National Park Service and other government agencies. These people’s authenticity is based on living and making a living in this place. The National Park has only been here for forty years and many of its employees are highly transitional, staying only a few years or less.

I have lived in the North Cascades almost my whole life. The creators of “The North Cascades, Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby” haven’t.

I have made living here almost my whole life (except for six years in the U.S. Navy), working in almost every job market available, logging, federal, park service and forest service and hydropower, including operation of several small businesses. I have lived here for real. The creators of this book haven’t.

I have walked to the majority mapped highland bodies of water in the Skagit Watershed, in the North Cascades, including a lot of off-trail travel to remote areas. The creators of this book haven’t.

I have family history here that goes back over 120 years. The creators of this book don’t.

I have studied environmental science and been involved in a number of environmental studies and field work. I don’t know the qualifications of the creators of this book in this field but I would guess that they aren’t on a level with mine.

I will be first to tell you I don’t know everything there is to know about this place. What does this say about the creators of “The North Cascades, Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby”, people who don’t even live here? What qualifies these people as authorities on the North Cascades? What qualifies them as experts on authenticity?

I don’t question the authenticity of anyone featured in this book. Many good people are featured in it and I would hope that everyone is authentic to themselves and their life experiences. Their experiences show certain ways to make a living here but many of these ways not available to everyone. For my part, I don’t want to commute for several hours every day to work or stay away from home for weeks at a time .I couldn’t support myself or my family on the tourism jobs available here.

I probably could have limped along to retirement at the park but I doubt that I ever would have gotten the economic security and safety of a permanent job. Ironically, I have been to more out of the way places in North Cascades National Park than the people charged with managing it, my family history in the North Cascades goes back over 120 years (obviously this is an accident of birth and not the result of any particular action on my part) and so I am the bearer of unrecorded history, knowledge and culture. Yet in the federal government’s eyes I am no more qualified than anyone else in applying to work at this park. The same holds true for all federal or state agencies in general for that matter, and depending on the hiring scheme, in some instances I am less qualified than someone who has never even set foot here before.

Most of the people who have lived here for great lengths of time are nearly invisible in the overarching culture of today. If anything these folks might be a little recalcitrant and seem a little cool or distant. I know for myself, I am a little tired of having people who have just shown up here tell me all about the North Cascades, and how beautiful everything is. I try to be polite but I usually don’t volunteer much because if they find out that I live here I usually then get to hear how lucky I am.

I suppose I am lucky. I live a modern life in a technologically advanced country where I have access to decent health care (which due to my present situation I can afford) and I get to enjoy a lot of leisure time. But I am not on vacation in the North Cascades. I live here. While the North Cascades are certainly beautiful at times, they are a lot more than that to me. They are a place where a lot of human experience happened. Along with the happy, good times and fun recreational activities, there was also a lot of human pain and suffering. The North Cascades provide a beautiful backdrop to places where family and friends sweated and struggled and lived and died and where many are buried or their ashes rest. Nothing like this point of view is presented in “The North Cascades, Finding Beauty and renewal in the Wild Nearby”. For the authors of this book the North Cascades are an idealized, objectified place to project their fantasies and ideology and to pursue recreational and esoteric activities that are trivial compared to the real existence of many of the people who actually do live here.  

Many of these local people of longevity have to be sought out. You actually have to invest a lot of time to get to know these people and live with them before you can see anything but what is on the surface. I suspect any kind of meaningful interaction with many of these folks is as rare as an endangered wildlife sighting. They are not often liable to burst into a spontaneous litany about themselves and this place. Personally, I am wary of folks who do burst into streams of canned messages. Sometimes they are genuine, most often they are trying to sell you something.

I would ask these questions about diversity and authenticity: If you were visiting someplace new, would you want at least an opportunity to meet and interact with local people who have lived and made a living in that place for decades? Who have been shaped and informed by that place and the scars and hard-knocks that life in that place dishes out? Or would you want some watered down, over-romanticized caricature of local people presented by people who don’t actually live in that place but buzz in for the summer to present canned presentations to provide light entertainment for the tourist crowd? Who do you think you might present a more authentic experience? Who do you think would have a deeper, multi-dimensional knowledge of that place? Wouldn’t you consider people with that deeper knowledge part of our overall cultural diversity?

Gimmicks are commonplace as people try to squeeze more and more out of already thin tourism economies. Interactions with folks truly authentic to a place might be hard to come by and they might not always be pleasant because they don’t always fit with overarching cultural norms but these interactions also stand chance to be more fulfilling than gimmicks and canned presentations.

Someone once told me that nothing grows in the understory of high elevation forests. This was not correct. A lot of things grow in the understory of high elevation forests but you have to look for them and you have to know what you are looking at.

In claiming that human history in the North Cascades has largely been lost and forgotten, the authors of this book are as ignorant in their own way as that person was. While that person was certainly familiar with high elevation forests, they hadn’t taken the time to study out all of the intricate details. The authors of this book have done the same thing with the human aspect of the North Cascades as it pertains to people who have lived here and made a living here for many years and even generations.

The only way to really become privy to this kind of knowledge is to live here and throw your lot in with the people who live here. Invest your time and resources. Live here for real. Dietrich talks about spending months observing in order to gain access to the North Cascades. It is the same with learning about what it is really like to live here and the human history that exists. Dietrich and the other authors have not done this. Yet they present themselves as some kind of experts on the North Cascades, at least experts enough to feel that they can write a supposedly authoritative book on the North Cascades. How can they say that human history here has been lost and forgotten when they haven’t looked for it outside of a few books written by other people who didn’t look very hard for it either?

Granted, my 128 year family history in this place isn’t very long compared to other people around the world but it is 28 years, almost three decades, longer than the National Park Service has existed and 8 decades longer than North Cascades National Park has been in existence.

I interact with the outdoors in the North Cascades almost daily and I learn something new about the North Cascades just about as often. This doesn’t include the many things I have forgotten. I have lived and made living here almost my entire life. This experience has shaped me. I don’t remember every single experience verbatim but who does? Very few remember many experiences from childhood verbatim or even experiences of just a few years ago but most would probably say that these experiences have shaped them and their points-of-view. So it is with me and probably many others who grew up here or who have lived here for decades. It is ridiculous to think that people such as this have nothing to add to any discussion about resource and land use policies in the North Cascades.

And, as far as spending months observing the North Cascades, I know of people who live here who have spent lifetimes doing this. Again, no one who has made a living independently of the federal government, mostly the National Park Service is featured in this book. What makes Dietrich’s observers so special? Just because most of them have come here from the outside?

I am really tired of people who buzz in here from somewhere else with agendas about public lands that effectively disenfranchise local populations. I especially have a problem with those who have come here specifically to support a cause like saving the environment. As surely as I write this, the environment wherever these people came from needs help too. To my mind this is nothing more than scapegoating vulnerable segments of our population.

Preservation schemes that disenfranchise people only seem to work when they are painless to the majority of people. Witness the plight of the Puget Sound orca, a federally listed endangered species, and the health of Puget Sound in general. The activities that support the lives and lifestyles of not only the authors of this book, but the so called environmentalists that do so much to disenfranchise local populations, are a major source of these problems yet I don’t see the authors or any environmentalist groups for that matter putting any ideas forth for Puget Sound to move to a tourism based economy.

 

The parable of a speck of sawdust in the neighbor’s eye compared to the plank in your own seems to apply quite well to the authors here. This is a reference to Christian doctrine but I think most folks of any stripe, religious or otherwise would recognize the wisdom and fairness in it.

I was minding my own business and doing my best to contribute to society through a steady job that created materials needed by society and created wealth and generated tax revenue when my community and I were visited by the propaganda and lawsuits of so-called environmental groups and, among other things, the Northwest Forest Plan.

I lost steady job but managed to make out okay, partly due to blind luck. Unfortunately my community and neighboring communities were hard hit. It is not enough for me to do okay by myself, I need critical mass of people around me with steady work and stable lives. It has always been hard to make a living in the North Cascades. Many resources are limited and some there has always been some dysfunction. There is much more dysfunction now, mostly due to a lot less wealth in local communities and, I feel, increased psychological stress.

I have always been willing to work for what I get and contribute to society and don’t think the world owes me, or anyone else, a living. I do however, think that I, or anyone else, is owed fair chance at making a decent living, assuming the regional economy is doing well, i.e. we are not in a general economic downturn of some sort. I also think it is the responsibility of our governments at all levels to ensure that my community is allowed access to local natural resources in order to generate stable revenue sources to build an economic base to support the most stable community possible, assuming those resources exist. These resources do exist in the North Cascades and they can be used for industrial purposes in a responsible manner.

Our governments, especially the federal government, have been doing very poor job of taking care of rural communities over the last 20 years. There aren’t enough resources for a silver bullet solution here. As I stated, it wasn’t perfect world before the lawsuits and the Northwest Forest Plan. And, if more sustainable resource practices are used, this will reduce the immediately available resources. But there are enough natural resources to generate more revenues to local economies than is being done at present.

We live in a democracy where the government is supposed to implement the will of the people and more people now live in cities where more wealth is concentrated. More constituents live in urban areas today and the interests of the urban population aren’t always the same as the rural population. Politicians won’t get reelected if they aren’t representing the interests of the majority of their constituents. So it would seem that the responsibility for meeting the needs of the underserved in a democracy would fall to society in general.

Most of the decline in the wealth and quality of life in my community has been visited on it by people who don’t live here and don’t share my quality of life and economic fate. This has largely come in the form of lawsuits and organized publicity campaigns like the ones Dietrich describes in the book. In many cases the people behind these actions didn’t even know North Cascades or the communities here existed until they moved here themselves. Probably in most cases, my family had lived here many decades or even a century before these people knew the North Cascades existed.

If they can be bothered to live here, most of the people from outside with public land agendas that hurt local populations usually have a nest egg generated from somewhere else. Because they don’t live here or have to make a living here, most, if not all, of the ideas they put forth and the causes they support are theoretical and have no real world consequences to themselves other than reduced government services. The people who do live here without the benefit of outside resources and nest eggs will have to live with the realities of such theories put into practice such as an economy based mainly on tourism. The people who live here will have to deal with all of the downstream effects that lack of wealth has on a community.

A cousin of mine has a saying, “Without honor, all is shit.” The same is true with environmental causes and preservation schemes. If you ask me, one is no hero and it is no triumph if, in the attempt to save something, one disenfranchises and oppresses one’s fellow human being or leave them by the wayside to fend for themselves after one has taken their best means for economic viability away.

In promotional materials for preservation campaigns in the North Cascades I have seen the terms “conservation giants” and “visionaries” to describe preservationist leaders (the reader might remember that there is a difference between preservation and conservation but preservationists appear to use the term conservation loosely and, I believe, deceptively). Given the state of economies in the small communities of the North Cascades, these “visionaries” have a lot to answer for. How can any movement or land use policy, no matter what the scale and purpose (for the greater good allegedly) be valid if it involves dispossession of the disadvantaged?

One might not think that the independent types that often live in rural timber communities are disadvantaged. As a general rule, these folks are quite physically capable and as intelligent as anyone else. Where they are disadvantaged is in lack of organization, lack of communication skills and resources to communicate their message to the larger population and in not having enough members to be a significant voting block on state and national levels.

Semantics and shenanigans have been used to dispossess rural communities from their resource bases and so called “preservation triumphs” by “conservation giants” have left socioeconomic disasters in their wake in many of these communities. Animals do not suffer like humans do and no species, endangered or not, is an analogy for human suffering. If we want to live in a socially just society then the needs of human beings living in a given area and dependant upon the resources of that area have to be considered before any set asides for non-human species or before policies to assuage the sensibilities other human groups are pursued. The needs of local human populations need to be considered first, before the needs of non-human species.

Another aspect of the disenfranchisement of people, beyond social injustice, is that it creates fault lines in our society. If people don’t feel their government is making an honest effort to meet their needs, that government begins to lose legitimacy. This is probably one of the reasons for so much anti-government sentiment in rural areas. I’m not so naïve as to believe that our politicians will always look after the needs of the underserved because, again, they are, in large part, bound to the will of their overall constituency which nowadays often has interests far removed from the interest of our rural citizens but they should make better attempts than they have been.

There is an argument that a healthy environment benefits everyone on the planet. I don’t disagree with that but I would point out that the benefits aren’t shared very evenly. Urban areas create wealth that isn’t well shared with rural areas but the pollution caused by the activities that generate that wealth is shared by all. Some of the pollution generated in the creation of wealth in large urban areas near the Cascades falls out on the Cascades.

By the same token, preservation benefits are theoretically shared by all as well but the cost for these falls disproportionately on rural areas that depend on the ability to actively use resources that preservation puts of limits. Ironically, activities like timber harvest that benefit rural communities more can be done in a manner more benign to the environment that many of the activities that benefit urban areas.

Some believe we are living in a new epoch, the Anthropocene. The thought is that human activity is modifying the planet on a large enough scale to significantly change its biological processes. This may be true, I happen to think that it probably is true but humans have modified their environments and landscapes around them for millenia to the extent that it was within their capacity to do so.

This benefitted some species and hurt others. As long as the human population remains as large or larger as it currently is, we will continue to modify the planet. It is unavoidable.

Positive human intervention will possibly be needed in the future in order to maintain certain ecosystems and species. The trick is to not be too heavy handed in the approach. Set-aside areas are good controls as a benchmark to evaluate the results of management practices but they are not the be all and end all. Going forward, it would be much better to figure out how to create or maintain more habitat over wider area while still being able to utilize those areas for the resources to meet basic human needs. Recreation might be a need but it is not a basic need.

Local people, especially those who have been here for many years or even generations, are on the front lines of how we are going to figure out the wise use of the planet’s resources, if it is even possible to support the current population sustainably. You can’t blame people for trying to meet their needs within any given system, situation, rules, limitations, etc. Rather than scapegoating and marginalizing them we should be working with them to develop more sustainable methods of resource use and extraction. Their knowledge, when paired with scientific knowledge and societal values, will probably come the closest to creating the best solutions for everyone.

The rural resource producers are the first to feel the impacts on the local economy, both positive and negative as well as positive and negative impacts on local environmental conditions. Rural people who have traditionally produced commodities from natural resources have, in many instances, a practical knowledge of resources and a lot of knowledge and insight on how to use these natural resources wisely. Over the years I have regularly heard complaints from many of these very same people about how resources were being abused. Since their livelihoods depend on these resources, most of these people who hold a long view don’t want to see them damaged or destroyed. They are the practical side of the equation of wise use and they need to be included in any discussion on how these resources will be used, as do rural people all around the world.

We are fortunate enough to live in a rich enough country where resources are available to develop models of sustainability that could be employed elsewhere in the world.

That’s pretty much all I have. I might continue post my journeys into the mountains over the summers but at this time I need to turn my attention to other things. If you have read this far, congratulations for having the stamina to follow this rambling, repetitious diatribe. And Thank You! I can only hope that at least some of it was presented in a manner that makes some sort of sense.

“If there is a culminating core to this geography it is the remote Picket Range east of Mount Baker and Shuksan. Largely hidden from view from paved roads……..are only accessible only by overnight backpack and then bushwacking scrambles and climbing.” William Dietrich, The North Cascade Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby. Above is a view of the Pickets, which are in North Cascades National Park from the Illabot Creek Road, USFS Road 16. Granted it isn't a close up view but it is nonetheless impressive. More importantly it is accessible to anyone who can ride in a two wheel drive motor vehicle. At least until the next road failure or slide closes it permanently. This would undoubtedly please many elitists who would then not have to share any part of their playground with someone who hasn't "earned it". Apparently paying your federal taxes doesn't count towards "earning it". The Illabot Creek road and others like it were built and maintained with timber harvest revenues. Those revenues are now mostly gone. These roads allow access to the mountains in a more democratic fashion to a wider variety of citizens who aren't physically capable, or have the knowledge or gear or time to access the mountains otherwise. They are rapidly disappearing. 

Picket Range from Illabot Creek Road, USFS Road 16. Even though it costs money for fuel to get to this spot, that expense is still much less than the gear or time it would cost to access such a spot otherwise, assuming one has the physical capability and knowledge to do so.  

Picket Range and Diobsud Buttes (to left) from West Jordan Road. This road is now under the ownership of Sierra Pacific and is gated. It took me about 5 hours to get to this spot. When I was a kid this land was owned by Scott Paper and was not gated. I spent a lot of time up here when it took less than half an hour to get to this spot. This is an example of the rapidly shrinking access to private land that once existed. You can still go here if you have permission and the time and physical ability to do so. Prior to gating, there was a lot of garbage dumped on these roads after the county closed the free dump. And, every so often, some idiot would be playing with fireworks or be sloppy with a campfire and millions of dollars would go up in smoke. So I don't blame private timber companies for putting up gates. 

Jordan Falls from West Jordan Road. I took about 6 hours to walk to this spot above the gate. Jordan Falls are visible from several spots around Marblemount but they don't really stand out from that far away. You have to know what to look for. They are quite impressive from a closer perspective. This view from West Jordan Road is one of the better ones. It is an easy hike to get right up next to them from the East Jordan Road but it is a long 4 hour hike above the gate to get to the point where you take off from the road. 

Mount Chaval from Upper Illabot Creek Road. The section of road where this was taken from was blocked off when the road was reopened in 2010. There is a trail into Jordan Lakes that follows the road here and I understand that it is still in use. Mount Chaval is in the Glacier Peak Wilderness.

Bacon Peak with Green Lake just visible mid frame. This photo was taken en route to Berdeen Lake but you can see a corner of Bacon Peak and the glaciers on it from the Oakes Peak Road, USFS Road 1062, off the Bacon Creek Road, USFS Road 1060. At least you could about 20 years ago. It is likely that the spot at the end of the road that allowed the view is now grown up too much to see Bacon Peak. It is a fairly short hike from the end of the Oakes Peak Road to the top of Oakes Peak where you can see most of Bacon Peak and the glaciers and roughly where Green Lake sits. The Oakes Peak Road was closed a number of years ago. I understand the gate at the bottom is now open but the road is completely washed out. This photo is an approximation of what one would see from Oakes Peak. I substituted this photo because I don't have any photos of Bacon Peak from Oakes Peak. The last time I was up there I wasn't taking photographs and, ironically, since I don't have any trips I need to do in this area, I didn't have the time, a day or more, to hike to the top of Oakes Peak to get photos for this post. With the road in, such a project would take less than a day. Bacon Peak is in North Cascades National Park.  

Waterfall below Green Lake. This might not look that impressive in a photo but this waterfall holds some record or is in some category for tallest waterfalls. Unfortunately the photo is a little dark but for a sense of scale, the trees near the waterfall are a hundred feet or more tall. And only the upper section, maybe the upper half or third, of the waterfall is shown. This waterfall, or parts of it, is also visible from Oakes Peak. This waterfall is in North Cascades National Park.  

Mount Formidable from Irene Creek Road USFS Road 1550. As of this writing this road was still open. 

Sibley Creek and the head of Marble Creek (Eldorado in the background) from Irene Creek Road.  Eldorado is in North Cascades National Park. 

Unnamed (to my knowledge) mountain from Irene Creek Road. I call this Haystack Mountain and there is a Haystack Creek at the foot of it. The mountain might officially be called Haystack as well but this isn't shown on any maps that I have and it wasn't passed down orally to me. This mountain is in North Cascades National Park. 

Hidden Lake Peaks and Sibley Creek from Irene Creek Road. 

Hidden Lake Peaks from Irene Creek Road. In sunny weather in summer at the right time of day, you can see the sun glint off the windows of the lookout on the main peak at the right. 

My family on Irene Creek Road in 2014. I did a blog post on this trip. Vashti was about 2 1/2 and Phoebe was about 8 months old when this photo was taken. The white rocks between Sacha/Phoebe and Vashti are a memorial of some kind. I didn't record what was on the rocks because I didn't really want to pry into someone else's personal life, but they seemed to be memorializing some folks and their pet who loved this particular spot and found peace here. This spot was someone's spiritual refuge. The important thing to note is that the folks who found that refuge here probably couldn't have accessed it without the road. I could be wrong on this but, judging from the way those rocks were painted and the sentiments expressed on them, the folks who did it were not your hard core backcountry, leave-no-trace hiker types. I have serious doubts that they did much hiking at all. I kind of fit in the harder core category and this type of memorial isn't something that I, or most of the folks that I know in this category would do. For folks steeped in the leave-no-trace ethics where even cairns made of natural rock are frowned upon and often knocked apart, painted rocks would be anathema. All that being said, whether these folks were avid hikers or just causal users who never really left the road, I don't begrudge them their experience one bit. As citizens of this country, I think they are entitled to enjoy at least some of the public lands that they, in theory, own. They got to experience this place and it made them feel good and may have eased some of the pains that are inevitable in everyone's life. Without the road this probably wouldn't have been possible. We have 2.7 million acres set aside in the North Cascades for the hard core types. We need to keep places like this open for everyone else. 

This photo is the same used in a previous blog post. As I recall it was semi-staged. I ran out ahead so I could get a shot of everyone coming towards me with the scenic background. Vashti decided to run ahead too so I barely caught everyone in the picture. The memorial rocks are back by Sacha and Phoebe. This photo illustrates several things: Unstructured use of the place. We got to get out and experience the mountains on our own terms for the price of a little time and gasoline rather than paying for a tour or lecture on top of the other expenses. Tours and lectures aren't bad. That is how knowledge is passed along and people are entertained. However, it is different to experience things on your own terms. The other thing this photo illustrates is that we were able to bring our young children out to a spot that we otherwise didn't have the time or physical ability (the children) to access. Much as I would like to paint a perfect picture of the situation it wasn't. There was a good bit of little around and on this trip in particular I remember a lot of toilet paper blooms because there were no sanitary facilities available. Even with those unpleasantries I still think it is worth having places like this available for the average public. The sanitation aspect might be dealt with to some degree by either providing sanitary facilities, which would be expensive or by educational signs that explained proper sanitation in this type of setting. Again, this wouldn't be perfect. I could almost guarantee any signs would have to be replaced because they would be shot full of holes in a few years time. But I would reiterate, I think places like this are still worthwhile and, if there were more of them to spread the use pressure and a solid educational program, I think the litter and sanitation issues would improve. 

Prairie Mountain and Mount Baker from trail a short distance from the end of USFS Road 2435, Dan's/Decline Creek. Sauk Mountain is on the right edge of the frame. As far as I know this road is still open. 

Whitechuck Mountain from USFS Road 2435.

Mount Pugh from USFS Road 2435. Half of Mount Pugh is in the Glacier Peak Wilderness. 

Sloan Peak and Bedal Peak from USFS Road 2435.  Sloan Peak is in the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness. 

Mount Pugh, Sloan Peak and Big Four Mountain (L to R) at sunset from trail at end of USFS Road 2435. This trail isn't too difficult and this spot can be accessed with relative ease. Glacier Peak Wilderness and Henry M. Jackson Wilderness. 

Mount Higgins from USFS Road 2435. 

Whitechuck Mountain from USFS Road 2510. This road is not closed/washed out. 

Mount Pugh from USFS Road 27 at Rat Trap Pass. This road is still open as far as I know. 

Whitechuck Mountain and Mount Pugh from USFS Road 2642. This road might still be open. The last time I was on it, in the fall of 2015, it was being severely damaged by running water due to lack of maintenance.

Wilderness Area Map from National Geographic. Credit: National Geographic, September 2014. 50 Years of Wilderness. Pp 66-81. Map page 72, America’s Wilderness Areas.  Martin Gamache,  NGM Staff,  Jamie Hawk, Sources: USGS; Wilderness.net; Wilderness Society. Unfortunately, it is a little hard to pick out the details on this version of the map because it is to small but I think it is still legible enough to illustrate my point.  The dark green areas are wilderness areas and, as one can see, there is a large patch of dark green in Washington State running from the Canadian border south. This is the bulk of the North Cascades, 2.7 million acres. This area is, in theory, preserved forever. There is also no way to generate revenue for the communities that surround this wilderness area beyond tourist activity which typically generates anemic revenues. The light green areas symbolize other federal lands. Whatever problems faced by any species in the North Cascades are probably not going to be solved by annexing the last few scraps of federal land into wilderness. These non wilderness lands should be multiple use which benefits a wider section of our population by providing relatively easy access to the fringes of the wilderness so they can experience some semblance of it too. This multiple use should also involve generation of  significant revenues for the surrounding communities through some level of sustainable, environmentally responsible industrial use (no, these are not oxymorons). These wilderness areas aren't generating a lot of revenue in most of the surrounding communities at present, at least not mine from what I can see. As I see it, these lands surrounding the vast wilderness areas are the perfect place to figure out how we can acquire at least some of our natural resources in a sustainable manner. 

Credit: National Geographic, September 2014. 50 Years of Wilderness. Pp66-81. Map page 73, America’s Wilderness Areas.  Martin Gamache,  NGM Staff,  Jamie Hawk, Sources: USGS; Wilderness.net; Wilderness Society. This is the second half of the map above. The map was a two page spread that I scanned but could not figure out how to stitch back together in photoshop. This half of the map contains the legend which, unfortunately is too small to read.