Introduction

This blog documents the second annual offering of ENVIR 495, “Landscape Change in the Pacific Northwest”, a 9-day wilderness-based field course sponsored by the University of Washington’s Program on the Environment. 

From July 12^th to July 20^th 2014, this year being the 50^th anniversary of the 1964 Wilderness Act, and the 105^th anniversary of Mount Olympus National Monument, our course headed deep into the wilderness of Olympic National Park. At over one million contiguous acres of wilderness, Olympic National Park and its surrounding USFS wilderness areas, are arguably the largest tract of contiguous, roadless wilderness area in the lower 48. Shockingly, this wilderness is only 20 miles from the rapidly growing Seattle/Tacoma metropolitan area, home to over 4.2 million people, and hotbed of ultra-modern digital technology companies. During our trip, we used the wilderness landscapes of Olympic National Park as a model to understand the ways in which the landscape of the Puget Sound region has changed in the distant (1000s of years) and recent (last 100 years) past, and what human-imposed changes to the landscape mean for our future, from ecological, psychological, and philosophical standpoints. Direct observation of the effects of climate change and fragmentation on species and ecosystems, was coupled with student-led evening discussions on a variety of student-chosen topics related to “wilderness” including:

• native American perspectives and relationships of local tribes to the land through story telling
• perspectives on resource use in and around the national park, largely as debated by timber-based communities
• appropriate lifestyle, development, and settlement patterns for a rapidly growing Puget Sound region
• wilderness management concerns for endemic species threatened by changing climate, invasive species, and historical over-harvest
• when and whether active species management is appropriate or antithetical to the concept of “wilderness”
• Eco-feminism and other “unheard” voices offering alternative perspectives on land conservation

Readings included classical wilderness philosophy, as well as the philosophy of modern day writers and conservationists from this region, with much of our discussion beginning in an online format prior to the start of our wilderness trip. The course was taught by Dr. Tim Billo (faculty in UW Program on the Environment) and Carter Case (recent graduate of the UW Program on the Environment).

The purpose of this blog is to share the story of our daily adventures in Olympic National Park’s wilderness, and to invite you to join in discussion of the ideas we wrestled with often deep into the night during our trip. Each of us have written about a separate day of the trip, and added our personal impressions on the value of wilderness in today’s world. To give you a general sense of the location of the terrain we are talking about, a map of our hiking route can be viewed here. Enjoy!