The Skagit River sustains humans in many ways, from providing drinking water to irrigating crops and nurturing fisheries. Of course, the basin is also home to a profound richness of wildlife, including bears, salmon, bald eagles, otters, trout, voles, elk, swans, and the Pacific giant salamander. The river is a popular destination for recreation—camping, kayaking, rafting, fly-fishing, skinny-dipping—as well as …

When Americans travel to Europe, many flock to the antiquities, looking to trace the roots of Western Civilization. They tour the crumbling Coliseum baking under the Roman sun or the Acropolis of Athens standing timeless in the glare of Aegean heat. But for this son of the Pacific Northwest, give me the lichen-encrusted ruins, ring forts, and standing stones weathering …

It was the adventure of a lifetime that got its start from a typo, a fateful slip of the finger. I had been researching a trip to my ancestral homeland of the Emerald Isle, but instead of typing I-R-E-L-A-N-D, I tapped out I-C-E-L-A-N-D, and that one misplaced consonant  opened up the door for a memorable journey to a land I …

  It was the adventure of a lifetime that got its start from a typo, a fateful slip of the finger. I had been researching a trip to my ancestral homeland of the Emerald Isle, but instead of typing I-R-E-L-A-N-D, I tapped out I-C-E-L-A-N-D, and that one misplaced consonant  opened up the door for a memorable journey to a land …

Grizzly bears roaming the hills a few ridges east of Bellingham? A pack of wolves on the hunt in forests less than 100 miles from downtown Seattle? In a time of environmental crisis – a warming, overcrowded planet, ocean acidification, an ark’s worth of species on the brink of extinction – there is something amazing happening here in our own …