This year students in the Kulshan Creek Neighborhood Youth Program have been focusing on the watersheds all around them. They have been everywhere imaginable in this journey: from the sub-alpine during Mountain School to getting soaked at Rasar State Park. But in late September they got to experience firsthand where some of this water ends: Bellingham Bay.
Gratitude Hike: A very Hobbit-like way to give thanks
Yes, all last year I was living and learning at the North Cascades Institute, fully immersed in the mountain landscape. I even kicked it up a notch and spent the summer in Stehekin; somehow even more remote than NCI!
But this trip would be different. I wouldn't be working or in class. And I wasn't trying to boost my self esteem by being a 'Bear Grylls' knockoff. By hiking alone for four days I had the time to reflect and thank the literal and figurative earth, fire, air, and water that have made me into the person I am today.
Stehekinaut
One statement often said in my generation is that "we were 100 years too late to explore Earth, and 100 years too early to explore our solar system." Even though I was never an oceanaut and won't be an astronaut, this summer I got to be a Stehekinaut. But what was this "Stehekin" and why was I there all summer? It was a strange mix of seeing both how pioneers lived hundreds of years ago and how future colonies could be fashioned on other celestial bodies.